Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream (Penguin Classics)

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Summary: A Refreshing Look at Society Without the Usual Hypocrisy
Review: Denis Diderot's groundbreaking philosophical text, Rameau's Nephew is a discourse between Rameau, a musician and jester for the rich, and a philosopher, possibly Diderot himself. Rameau takes the name of "He" throughout the discussion, while the philosopher is referred to as "I". One of their first areas of disagreement arises with their discussion on men of genius; this discussion then leads into many other areas of philosophy and music. He takes a definite position on the side of materialism, greed, nihilism, and cynicism, and goes to the farthest extreme in defending the accuracy with which these ideas explain why people act as they do. On the other hand, it is more difficult to determine the position that I takes, the philosopher possibly argues Diderot's ideas on these subjects, but there is also evidence that Diderot in fact disagrees with him, and merely uses I's stance to show many of the conventional and socially accepted ideas of the time. Problems arise when one tries to classify where I's ideas come from, and they strange events surrounding the printing of the text only add to these woes. Diderot never allowed Rameau's Nephew to be printed during his lifetime; it was only after his death that versions of the manuscript were printed. These concerns make finding a definite position for I to take a difficult proposition. Taking into consideration the printing dates of the text as well as discrepancies within in the ideas of the philosopher lead to a conclusion that Diderot probably does not agree with the philosopher, but uses him to serve a purpose in regards to Rameau. Diderot makes the philosopher's defense of genius based on amoral grounds and contradictory to his later arguments on virtue and morals because Diderot wants to show the inanity in conceptions commonly held by the general public.

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Summary: Waiter, theres a Gadfly in my Perrier
Review: If ever there was a cafe novel this is it though it is not really a novel as it consists mainly of dialogue or a dialectic between(perhaps) the two sides of Diderot himself. It is very funny and its all very staged to be that way of course. It makes fun of what passes for reason as this was The Age of Reason and so it has been called a precursor to the romantic movement but still what it most values is cleverness and that seems to fit very well with the age it comes from. Chock full of witty chat, and anti establishment(accepted views) banter in the Candide to Celine tradition of French letters, Rameau's Nephew plays devils advocate to an entire epoch . What is most appealing about this is the earthy idleness which is the center the wandering intelligence(s) roam around. It is a liberating feeling to read a book which challenges a whole societys agenda and self view. It is interesting to see that this is the tradition Celine and Beckett inherited and furthered(well, used) in their own way. A sort of gleeful anti utopian pessimism seems the attitude to adopt if one wants to keep ones dignity in the face of society's sometimes ludicrous efforts to maintain the appearance of civilization . Of course the greatest cafe novel is Man Without Qualities but that is just too long to read at one sitting. Check please, garcon.

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Summary: Not satisfying
Review: The layers of this work contain important, interesting questions. Many of these questions are universal and enduring, but appreciating 'Rameau's Nephew' depends on knowing his contemporaries and some fairly obscure historical information (and I'm not referring to pre-Enlightenment 101, but specific pockets of Paris culture in the late 1700's). The footnotes in this edition give some context, but working through this book was torture. The prose is odd, part philosophy part pedagogy. If you enjoy a Sunday night of Kant or Descartes, then this book will satisfy your appetite for language run amok. If, however, you prefer to have your great questions asked in metaphor, allusion, and story--if you think in pictures and find academic prose too absorbed in its own process to touch human experience, pass on this one. I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from educating themselves--but I found reading 'Rameau's Nephew' intellectually unsatisfying and aesthetically empty. Unless you're absorbed in Deiderot's time and place, or have specific academic interests, I think one's time is better spent with other thinkers, thinkers who question with depth and complexity without leaving the aethestic landscape barren. Even though Diderot is considered a great figure in French literature, I wasn't touched emotionally or intellectually by 'Rameau's Nephew.' I'm ready for a good dose of Flaubert or Camus.

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Summary: Not Candide, but still great fun
Review: This is probably Diderot's most widely read work in English translation. There is good reason for it. Rather than strict philosophical treatises, Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream are a series of comic dilogues which serve as vehicles to attack conventional 18th century social mores and theology. In the first book, Rameau, who is an actual historical figure, the nephew of the famed composer, runs into the narrator (Diderot) in a parisian cafe where games of chess are going on around them. Rameau is one of the great comic creations of 18th century French literature. He is a cross between Lear's fool and Dostoevsky's Underground Man. Like the fool, he gets away (until recently) with saying outrageous things to his benefactor's faces, because they tend to regard him as a buffoon. Like the underground man, he is constantly vacillating in terms of his self-image. For the most part he excoriates himself and even seems to revel in the fact that he has brought his misery upon himself. This is in fact a rather ennobling trait, and probably part of the reason that Diderot doesn't dismiss him out of hand. Rameau really doesn't blame others. He accepts resposibility for getting himself kicked out of his rich sponsor's household. He also blames himself for the loss of his attractive young wife. Diderot's descriptions of Rameau's japery is hilarious. Rameau is an accomplished mimic. He performs an entire opera there in the cafe, singing all the parts and providing his own unorthodox instrumental accompaniment. Diderot writes: "What didn't he do? He wept, laughed, sighed, his gaze was tender, soft or furious: a woman swooning with grief, a poor wretch abandoned in the depth of despair, a temple rising into view, birds falling silent at eventide, waters murmuring in a cool, solitary place or tumbling in torrents down the mountainside, a thunderstorm, a hurricane, the shrieks of the dying mingled with the howling of the tempest and the crash of thunder; night with its shadows, darkness and silence, for even silence itself can be depicted in sound. By now he was quite beside himself. Knocked up with fatigue, like a man coming out of a deep sleep or a long trance, he stood there motionless, dazed, astonished, looking about him and trying to recognize his surroundings." Yet, as Diderot the narrator acknowledges, there is method to Rameau's madness. Again like Lear's fool, truth is to be mined beneath the jester's antics. Within the context of the flippant diologue, Diderot addresses many of the philophical concerns that were coming to the fore at the time of the enlightenment. There is a groping towards a definition of evolution that predates Darwin in some respects. There is even a brief discussion of social, vs. gentetic engineering (sustitute "gene: for Diderot's "molecule"). On man's natural state, which was so integral to Rousseu's optimistic philosophy, here is what Diderot has to say: "If the little brute were left to himself and kept in his native ignorance, combining the undeveloped mind with the violent passions of a man of thirty, he would wring his father's neck and sleep with his mother." Remind you of any 20th century father of psychology? D'Alembert's Dream , the companion-piece in this edition, is less entertaining than Rameau's Nephew, but still worth reading. The conceit doesn't work quite as well and the diologue tends to get bogged down at times. For students of the history of philosophy it makes for a lot less dry reading than Hobbes or Descartes however. I was surprised at what a big influence Lucretius must have had on Diderot (something I missed when I first read this work 20 years ago - but then I hadn't read Lucretius "On the Nature of the Universe" at that point). I would definitely recommend reading Leonard Tancock's introduction to both these works, not only for an overview of the subjects that Diderot is tackling, but for the intersting family backgrounds of D'Alembert (who was a revered mathematician and a contributor, along with Diderot and Voltaire to the monumental "Encyclopedie")and Mademoiselle L'Espinasse.