Véronique LE RU: The Encyclopédie’s two-headed eagle: agreement and disagreement between Diderot and D’Alembert between 1751 and 1759.

The aim of this analysis is to understand not only the agreements but also the disagreements and tensions undelying the co-direction of the Encyclopédie from 1751 to 1759. There is a real dialogue between Diderot and D’Alembert in the articles concerning the conception of the Encyclopédie, the role of the contributors, the organisation of knowledge and the classification of the sciences. This discussion between the two editors takes place not only in articles but also in their works. D’Alembert’s decision to publish his Éléments de philosophie in 1759, at the very moment when he resigned as director can surely be seen as the sign of a rupture between Diderot and D’Alembert concerning what would today be called the Encyclopédie’s editorial strategy.

 

Marian SKRZYPEK: The central categories of Diderot’s thought.

Diderot’s philosophy, which is unjustly depreciated because of its non systematic character, can be expoounded in a coherent manner if the central categories of his thought are analysed. The notions which, when articulated, explain both Diderot’s paradoxes and his rationality are : matter, energy, dynamic order, chain of beings (regular or monstrous), intuitions and astounding parallels of genius, dialogue, splits and alienation between nature and social comedy. Diderot, the precursor of romantic ideas and herald of Hegelian dialectic, is a philosopher of both of those eras.

 

Eliane MARTIN-HAAG: Natural law and history in Diderot’s philosophy.

Diderot slides from the concept of nature to that of living animated matter in the context of a philosophy which refuses any recourse to finalism; thus is forced to equate natural law with possibility as it was discovered and invented by the ‘rational’ and ‘experimental’ philosophies of his time. Hence the contradiction which he unceasingly denounces between the natural code on the one hand and the ‘civil and religious codes’ on the other coincides with an opposition between the individual and collective right to construct history and a civilisation which imposes on humans the ideal of inaction, renunciation, moral or intellectual asceticism and even passive obedience. This article studies this opposition in the field of the history of knowledge, where geniuses exemplify human capacity to resist the despotism of the civil and religious codes; thus Diderot invents, before Nietzche, a monumental history of geniuses which serves life and preserves the possibility of human perfection or a development of rationality. This enables us to understand that genius should not be judged in terms of a unilateral opposition between good and evil, true and false.

 

Mariafranca SPALLANZANI: Figures of philosophers in Diderot’s work.

A study of how portraits of philosophers are presented in Diderot’s work, in view of the inexhaustible complexity of these characters. This complexity, part of the philospher’s nature, is historical (different philosophers in different periods and places), sociological (how to be a philosopher in a particular society at a particular historical period) and ideological (that of Diderot as himself a philosopher). The philosopher’s vocation, namely to read the great book of nature in its infinite variety of forms, to ‘meditate on the great lessons of life’ and to ‘practice virtue openly’ despite everything, can lead to internal conflicts, between the sceptic, the deist and the atheist of the Pensées philosophiques, the Horatian beatus ille and the ‘soldier philosopher’ of the Promenade, the experimental and the rational philosopher in the Interprétation de la nature. They can also lead to paradoxes, or opinions which go against received wisdom but which nevertheless, despite their apparent contradictions, can come closer to the truth.

 

Stéphane LOJKINE: The materialistic decentralisation of the field of knowledge in the Encyclopédie.

The Encyclopédie can be defined as a perpetually evolving work on matter. It is not an object but a Thing (Lacan) tending towards the dignity of object. The article CARACTÈRE reveals particularly clearly this new relationship between encyclopedic culture and matter, both the matter of knowledge and technical matter or, more generally, the materiality of reality. This article analyses the development of definitions of the word CARACTÈRE from Furetière to Trévoux, then to the Encyclopédie, and its ideological implications, namely the abandoning of taxinomy, historicisation of the Thing, decentering and symbolical refounding by passing from pure textuality to communication, technology, images. For to study materialism in the Encyclopédie does not only concern historians, wary of anachronisms; there is also a new and revolutionary relationship to the real whose inheritance we have not yet completely adopted.

 

Jean-Claude BOURDIN: Materialism and scepticism in Diderot’s thought.

As a good rationalist, Diderot inevitably rejects scholastic or systematic scepticism as alien to reason (article PYRRHONIENNE PHILOSOPHIE). But throughout his life he saw the scepticism of Berkleyan ‘idealists’ as a challenge which cannot be taken up by rational philosophy or d’Holbach’s type of materialism. Speculative philosophical thought, as opposed to philosophy which tries to imitate positive science, is surely intrinsically pathological, like the folly of ‘idealistic’ sceptics. Cannot the ‘sensitive clavichord’ also become delirious? This article proposes the hypothesis that Diderot wished to accept completely this delirious side of philosophical thought, including in the way he expressed his materialism. It thus would appear that Diderot’s ‘materialism’, bathed in a sceptical atmosphere, tries less to propound theses than to widen the mind’s faculties in order to enable them to open to the immense possibilities of nature which is ‘perpetually at work’.

 

Gerhardt STENGER: The materialistic theory of knowledge in the Lettre sur les aveugles.

In the Lettre sur les aveugles, Diderot adopts, essentially, Berkeley’s theory of vision and moves the question of the origin of knowledge to a different terrain; he is not interested only in knowing how we acquire ideas but above all in how far they teach us about reality. Our sensations do not reproduce outside objects inside us but send us more or less abstract signs which reproduce objects; these are touchable points for blind people and visible coloured points for the sighted. So human knowledge is the product of an interpretation of these signs, and objective reality is ultimately unknowable. The Lettre sur les aveugles, which is a true Critique of blind reason, warns philosophers and scientists against giving too much credence to the visual spectacle of objects. Mechanism of the classical age excluded the time factor and thus the very idea of evolution. To understand that nature is permanently evolving and that the present order of the universe is only momentary, we must go back to the origin of the universe where eyes are of no help. The clear-sighted philosopher should not be contented with visible phenomena but should pay attention to hidden relationships and secret analogies between phenomena. The model of a clear-sighted scientist is the blind Saunderson.

 

Franck SALAÜN: Personal Identity according to Diderot.

The question of the nature of the self was the subject of numerous reflections in Diderot’s work, but he did not provide a synthetic presentation of the issue. This study, while not claiming to provide a definitive version, tries to extract from certain of Diderot’s works his conception of personal identity. Thus we find that Diderot takes over Locke’s basic conception of the problem without being satisfied by his answer; his originality consists in looking at the possibilities of the body, in particular in the experience of memory. To sum up, bodily organisation, individual history, habit, and the way individuals work on themselves allow Diderot to sketch out a non-reductionist materialistic definition of personal identity.

 

Annie IBRAHIM: The matter of metaphors, metaphors of matter.

Diderot’s thought, which many of his readers refuse to call philosophical, presents a resistance to the traditional architectonic of system and concept. Instead of the old systems of matter, which, to him, have failed, Diderot constructs a free investigation into the idea of matter which takes the form of an integration of material elements according to an open and unfinished regional principle of order. The philosophical tool of this new materialism is metaphoric expression. Diderot’s masterstroke was to give metaphors the signifying power of concepts. Metaphors are appropriate to Diderot’s investigation of the idea of matter because he thinks of matter in terms of a chance mutations. The inventive dynamism of material molecules, like that of metaphors, invites us to expect something new, such as living monsters and new literary images. This metaphorical philosophy of matter, rejecting the weight of architectonics, thus shows a type of systematisation whose logic is alien to both predictability and exclusion.

 

Dominique LECOURT: The philosophy of Jacques le fataliste.

Jacques’ fatalism, which is Stoicism mixed with Spinozism and repeated according to someone else, is a chorus which denounces the systematic spirit. Beyond the couple formed by the peasant Jacques, and his master, who is a sort of automaton and whose master Jacques is to a certain extent, Diderot’s position is to undermine from an essentially moral point of view self-control and any form of absolute. The unity of the individual is an illusion which we cannot rationalise without falling into the most dangerous type of madness.

 

Anne DENEYS-TUNNEY: The criticism of metaphysics in Les Bijourx indiscrets and Jacques le fataliste.

We here raise the question of the relationship between philosophical statement and literary content, based on a study of these two novels. As the question of the way philosophy is inscribed in Diderot’s novels has never been really posed, one must first examine the content of the criticism of the metaphysical system (dualism) and of rationalism as it is explicitly presented in these two works. Afterwards, it is clear that the most radical destabilisation of metaphysical discourse occurs at the level of the criticism of logical operators as they are used in communication and dialogue. If Diderot’s materialism exists, it is to be found in the aporetical, dialogical, a-logical criticism and self-criticism of his novels.

 

Paolo Quintili:Revolution and praxis in Le Neveu de Rameau, the play of social ethics.

Diderot’s Satire seconde puts on stage the tragedy of the modern subject’s liberty. Lui’s autonomous action is detached from ‘ethical substance’ and society denies him any value. Hegel’s reading of the Neveu, in the Phenomenology of mind, is still valid, despite its limits. He sees it as the expression of divided consciousness and the analysis of a society of individuals, which coincides historically with the French Revolution. Lui’s pantomimes and ‘organic industry’, devoid of any representation of himself, express the revolutionary syllogism of moral consciousness for which feudal society with its laws and constraints, is ‘fit to be drowned’. We also present here ‘ten theses’ conerning the Neveu, which bring out the work’s revolutionary historical and hermeneutic system, centred around a common core, namely the question as to how ‘I’ and ‘he’ are transformed into ‘us’. This satirical form of the tragedy of liberty has a history and two literary sources, namely the picaresque novel and the Commedia dell'arte, whose key underlying philosophical concepts are discussed. The Neveu leads on to considerations concerning the ‘reversal’ of noble consciousness, opposed to LUI during the revolutionary era, to be found in Hegel’s reading of Jacques le fataliste et son maître.

 

Aurélie SURATTEAU-IBERAKEN: Diderot and medicine, vitalistic materialism?

We try to show how Diderot finds in medical knowledge arguments in favour of an axiological materialism. The natural norm guiding the doctor’s action provides his pragmatic philosophy with an object of reflection concerning the reference to nature in recognising, defining, treating and preventing illness. The uncertain status of the natural regulation of illness seems to lead Diderot to criticise both relativism and and empty optimism concerning the possibiity of escaping organic conditions. He explores the considered use of normative biology in order to elaborate treatment and prevention.

While exploring certain pathologies, Diderot undermines notions of willed decision, spiritual freedom and even personal identity. But the fragility of intellectual activity and its physiological conditioning cannot make Diderot accept reductionism or relativism. Despite his prudence concerning the constitution of subjective unities capable of recognising their malfunctioning and helping thmselves heal, Diderot is in favour of identifying natural criteria for distinguishing unhappiness from happiness and tries to conceive the conditions which produce happiness. The perverse use of natural norms in the distribution of functions in society makes him prefer biological norms. This emerges from reflections on the conditions of positive equality. They consist in the power of exchanges between bodies, in intuitive inventions against ‘hereditary’ data, breaking with the promotion of talents and tricks as practices which weaken the self.

 

Ann THOMSON: Diderot, materialism and the divisions of the human species.

This article tries to situate Diderot’s thought in relation to contemporary reflections on human varieties, in view of the fact that several of the founders of 19th-century physical anthropology, creators of systems classifying races, adopted a materialistic conception of the human being. We first summarize certain aspects of Diderot’s reflection on humans and their place in nature, in particular the type of determinism governing them, their place in the chain of beings and geographical variations in human types. He insists on the unity of nature and criticizes any attempt to classify beings, but, like other contemporaries, he is interested in the question of human varieties and repeats generalisations about the differences between ‘races’; in the article HUMAINE ESPÈCE, he even affirms the intellectual inequality of races. Diderot was fascinated by physiognomy and the theories of P. Camper, inventor of the ‘facial line’, adopted by physical anthropologists, but he used it to emphasize the continuity between species. What emerges is the difficulty he experiences in theorising human differences. His desire to create a materialistic anthropology leads him to emphasize the influence of the physical organisation on intellectual capacities, but this is countered by his refusal of classificatory systems, his conception of the chain of beings and his awareness of the instability of nature. His desire to proclaim political liberty and to found morality on similarities between humans prevented him from going down a path that later thinkers did not hesitate to follow.

 

Charles T. WOLFE: Machine and organism in Diderot’s thought.

I. Is it possible to distinguish radically between a mechanical and a materialistic explanation of life? Even in the mechanical vision, there is a compromise, as materialism is not simply abstract but truly living on the anatomical level of micro-machines. A new problem: if the machine is vivified or animated, do we come back to the idea of the universe as a living macrocosm or animal (Rêve de D’Alembert)? The important of the solution of the great predecessor Leibniz, philosopher of the organism as a ‘natural machine’.

II. Partial description of the conceptual framework of natural and material philosophies of the organism. Reference to the argument of Paul Janet (1881), that the late Diderot constructed a type of philosophy of the organism, thus escaping the narrow boundaries of materialism, in particular in his Réfutation d’Helvétius. But where does this philosophy begin? Are the leitmotiven of Diderot’s philosophy, namely sensibility and organisation, equivalent to the topos of organism?

III. Does the conceptualisation of the organism, which may imply the notions of individuality and interiority, imply going beyond materialism? The more one emphasizes vital phenomena and thus Life itself, a meta-scientific function, the further one goes from a generalised counting of material forms. The more one develops a dynamic materialism, the more one looks at emergent functions, vital forces, all that represents a leap beyond the primitive Urschleim, — in other words the more one states that the brain is the problem for materialism to solve — the more one develops a philosophy of the brain. The epistemological status of neurology is touched on in the Eléments de physiologie.

Conclusion. The status of the machine is complex; there are natural machines and everything in nature is done mechanically. If the machine is demoted in favour of the organism, we run the risk of a certain Hegelianism, leaving the terrain of matter. Is the distinction between machine and organism valid?