Rameau's Nephew and d'Alembert's Dream

by Denis Diderot

Book Overview

One of the key figures of the French Enlightenment, Denis Diderot was a passionate critic of conventional morality, society and religion. Among his greatest and most well-known works, these two dialogues are dazzling examples of his radical scientific and philosophical beliefs. In Rameau's Nephew, the eccentric and foolish nephew of the great composer Jean-Philippe Rameau meets Diderot by chance, and the two embark on a hilarious consideration of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140441735
• ISBN13: 9780140441734
• Release Date: October 1976
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 7.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

a member of the family

Rameau's Nephew is one of the the world's best books. It is a supremely entertaining and profound examination of the puzzling capacity of human beings to simultaneously contain both vile selfishness and the ability to self-sacrifice, and why corruption and dishonesty often seem to have the upper hand. Diderot's triumph is that he manages to eschew didacticism for an artistically well-rounded study of one of the greatest characters - whose honest venality calls forth a sympathetic response from all of us - ever to appear in a work of fiction. Taking the philosophical dialogue form as its structure, the book presents an extremely vivid conversation (often sublime, sometimes crude) between 'I', a philosopher presumably based on Diderot himself , and 'He', Rameau, the nephew of a famous musician in France around the middle of the eighteenth-century. The philosopher represents many of the best aspects of the 'enlightenment' - honesty, hard work, patriotism, concern for his fellow-man, while Rameau is precisely the opposite - he is a sponger, a parasite who lives off - when he can - the rich and corrupt members of society, utterly disdaining work (though he has intelligence, some musical gifts and a near-supernatural talent for mimicry and impersonation) unless driven to it by imminent starvation. He throws away his self-respect to toady to the idle bourgeois who keep him in funds, food and clothing, only occasionally letting his true feelings be seen. As the novel begins, Rameau ('one of the weirdest characters in this land of ours where God has not been sparing of them') meets the philosopher in a public garden, where chess is being played, and tells him the sad state of his affairs - he has in an ill-timed moment been cruel to another of his 'patron's' hangers-on, and as a result is now back on the street with no money and no prospects. The conversation shifts to a discussion on the subject of genius, the philosopher arguing artists who have achieved great works can be forgiven dissolute habits and viciousness, while Rameau is mainly interested in the fact that (rare) artistic success usually brings in money, something he truly loves, along with 'good wine...luscious food...a tumble with lovely women...soft beds. Apart from that the rest is vanity'. The topics covered in this book seem endless: music, literature (in one wonderful section Rameau tells how reading the 'moralists' has taught him to lie and deceive more effectively!), virtue, wisdom, fame, reputation, children, education - yet we always return to the woeful amount of corruption in society, for whom Rameau's ideas, claims 'I', 'are so exactly made to the measure of'. On rare occasions the tone is a little too dry, the discourses on current political and musical controversies go on too long, yet these contribute verisimilitude to the outrageously honest remarks by Rameau: 'the rascal by nature only offends now and again, but the evil-looking person offends all the time',

Waiter, theres a Gadfly in my Perrier

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.

Not Candide, but still great fun

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 wer

A Refreshing Look at Society Without the Usual Hypocrisy

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.

I FIND THIS BOOK VERY PLEASANT.

THIS BOOK URGES ME TO LET MY MIND THINKING OF THE NATURE.IT IS THE BESTWAY FOR TRANSMITTING IDEAS ON THE HUMAN BEING.WE CAN SEE IN OUR SOCIETY NOWADAYS MANY PEOPLE WHO CAN'T BEAR SOMEONE ELSE THINKING BETTER THAN THEM AND I WOULD LIKE TO TELL THEM THAT A PHILOSOPHE IS SOMEONE WHO IS NATURAL.