D'Alembert's dream

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D'Alembert's dream (the original title was in French : Le rêve de D'Alembert ) is one of Denis Diderot's main philosophical works. As such, it can be counted among his later writings. He wrote it in a short time, in the summer of 1769 , but was not published until posthumously in 1830 . An anonymous partial publication took place during his lifetime in 1782 in the Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique . D'Alembert's dream is one of the few works of the 18th century whose scientific content is communicated through dialogue as a literary genre .

Bust of Denis Diderot by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1777)

That summer of 1769, M me Diderot and their daughter Marie-Angélique Diderot had stayed in Sèvres , his confidante Sophie Volland at their castle on the Isle-sur-Marne and Friedrich Melchior Grimm had been in Germany since May, so that the editorial staff of the Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique was in the hands of Denis Diderot.

Le rêve de D'Alembert is the second part of a trilogy consisting of three philosophical sections, the first part Entretien entre d'Alembert et Diderot (English: The meeting between d'Alembert and Diderot ), the second part Le Rêve de d ' Alembert (Eng .: D'Alembert's dream ) and the third and last part La suite d'un entretien entre M. d'Alembert et M. Diderot (Eng .: after the meeting between d'Alembert and Diderot ). The Entretien entre d'Alembert et Diderot were created around August 10, 1769, the Le Rêve de D'Alembert was created between August 15 and September 5, 1769.

requirements

At the center of Diderot's thinking was the tension between reason and sensitivity, sens et sensibilité . For Diderot, reason was characterized by the search for scientifically founded knowledge and the verifiability of empirically observed and proven facts, without remaining stuck in the purely quantitative recording of reality, in mathematical statements.

In 18th century France, the concept of sensibilité came up with two very different ideas. On the one hand, the term referred to the moral quality of a person who thus expressed himself as a tangible , moving and also sensitive being , in order to express the basis for virtue and humanity in general . On the other hand, it denoted that physiological quality in the sense of a fundamental nervous excitability of life, thus also of human life. After all, the irritability or sensitivity of the nerves was one of the fundamental characteristics of life.

The concept of sensibilité and many others were a creation of the 18th century that did not yet exist in the vocabulary of the 17th century .

General

Denis Diderot summarized the various scientific and philosophical problems that preoccupied him for a decade in D'Alembert's dream . Beginning with the Pensées sur l'interprétation de la nature (1754), individual strands of his questions can be found both in his correspondence and in various contributions to the Encyclopédie . His central question was: Can self-creating nature produce organic life from the inorganic state, and what are the prerequisites for this? In 1759 Diderot wrote a letter to Sophie Volland in which he reported on the discussions he had with Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach at the Château du Grand Val . The articles on the animal animal and the naître to be born also revolved around this complex of topics. The idea of ​​a "sensitive matter", or a universal sensibility, sensibilité universelle , developed Diderot between 1754 and 1765, more precisely in a further letter this time to Charles Pinot Duclos dated October 10, 1765.

While working on the work, he met Léger Marie Deschamps personally , he named Marie Deschamps as "moine athée" atheist monk.

The location of the fictional plot was the drawing room of Julie de Lespinasse , the partner of the French mathematician and encyclopaedist Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert . The following people were present: Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert, Julie de Lespinasse, Denis Diderot and Théophile de Bordeu and an unnamed servant from M lle de Lespinasse. The real person of the doctor Théophile de Bordeu was in direct relation to the environment of Denis Diderot, but he turned in his writings against the mechanistic ideas of Herman Boerhaave in particular , as he represented a vitalistic one (see e.g. Doctrine médicale de l'École de Montpellier ) view. Incidentally, Théophile de Bordeu was not the family doctor of d'Alembert, but Michel-Philippe Bouvart (1707–1787), he was an opponent of de Bordeu, who had him deleted from the register of the Parisian medical profession.

For example, the text also shows influences and the examination of ideas by Albrecht von Haller , Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon or Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, as well as doctors known to him such as Bordeu, Théodore Tronchin , Antoine Petit and Augustin Roux .

Diderot probably didn't create the work so that it should be published as soon as possible. Nevertheless, he reported in a letter to his friend Sophie Volland from September 2, 1769 on the progress of his work on the trilogy. But through an indiscretion by the journalist Jean Baptiste Antoine Suard , Julie de Lespinasse also learned that Denis Diderot had incorporated her as a character in an essay and that she was there with Théophile de Bordeu et al. a. discussed questions of sexual morality. Which is said to have upset her very much. However, Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert was also angry and demanded, according to Jacques-André Naigeon , that the manuscript pages should be burned in his personal presence. Diderot refrained from publishing the dialogues and tried a new version of the trilogy. However, since there were obviously copies of the original original text, these could be found in the 1830 edition of his "Memoirs, Letters and Unpublished Works Diderot", Mémoires, edited by Auguste Sautelet (1800-1830) and Jean-Baptiste-Alexandre Paulin (1796-1859) lettres et œuvres inédites de Diderot be published.

construction

The structure of Diderot's writing from 1769 shows certain similarities to the Système de la Nature ou Des Loix du Monde Physique et du Monde Moral from 1770 by his friend Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach . There, in the first parts of the seventeen chapters in total, material nature was explained, that is, the object of the physical explanation of nature, and then in the following chapters the nature of man was explained.

All three philosophical dialogues from 1769
Entretien entre d'Alembert et Diderot Meeting between d'Alembert and Diderot
Le Rêve de D'Alembert D'Alembert's dream
The suite d'un entretien entre M. d'Alembert et M. Diderot After the meeting between d'Alembert and Diderot

In the first two parts of the dialogue by Le Rêve de D'Alembert , Diderot drafted an overall naturalistic theory . Here the concept of sensibilité is linked with that of “matter”. Diderot shows his fictional discussant that this makes the paradoxical idea of ​​a creator god obsolete. In the third part, Diderot then developed the possible ethical implications and effects of his comprehensive, naturalistic theories. While in the second part of Le Rêve de D'Alembert the mathematician Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert and the doctor Théophile de Bordeu discuss the universe from the respective perspectives of their scientific interests, in the third part only that expresses itself Doctor de Bordeu. The doctor is the critical authority on moral issues. For Diderot, a science of man, science de l'homme and its ethical implications, could only be thought of through the participation of medicine - this is synonymous with the term biology. For Diderot, a science de l'homme was based on the findings of an experimental theory of nature , physiology .

content

Entretien entre d'Alembert et Diderot

In the conversation between d'Alembert and Diderot, the latter raises the question of how the inorganic, which is what the “marble” stands for, the organic, which is what the “meat” stands for. To this end, he first reflects on the concept of “movement”. This should not be understood as (physical) movement in the narrower sense, i.e. the transport of a body from one place to another, but rather a property of the body itself. Even before Diderot, in the further dialogue, to a certain extent come to speak of the unity of matter and sensibility, sensibilité générale de la matière or sensibilité universelle , he tries to draw an analogy from physics. Thus he compares, in dialogue with d'Alembert, the living force, force vive, with the dead force, force morte .

The living force, the modern physical meaning of work or kinetic energy , would be assigned, while the concept of dead force would be ascribed to potential energy . This against the background that the difference between mechanical force and energy was not yet clearly conceptually differentiated in the 18th century. The concept of kinetic energy (still without the prefactor 1/2) was introduced in the 18th century by Émilie du Châtelet , based on the considerations of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (as vis viva , living force). Up until then, Newton's view was that kinetic energy was proportional to speed. These two forces correspond, as it were analogously, to the sensibilité inert and the sensibilité active .

Then the question of the cycle of life is discussed and the presence of pre-existing germs is negated. Here Diderot is very direct and lets the origin of d'Alembert flow into it, as Diderot mentions his mother Claudine Guérin de Tencin and father Louis Camus Destouches (1668–1726), fertilization, implantation of the fertilized egg and the development of the fetus about his birth and his training as a mathematician.

Then Diderot shows the connection between solar radiation and the development of organisms and he asks an interesting question whether, with a temporary, hypothetical interruption of solar radiation and subsequent desolation of the earth, the organisms would arise in the same way as they existed before (cf. also history of the term biosphere ).

In summary, in the first section of the trilogy Entretien entre d'Alembert et Diderot, a naturalistic conception of the universe is drawn up. He defended his materialistic position against d'Alembert, who increasingly withdrew to a skeptical stance. Diderot now tried to analyze the course of the discussion by explaining to d'Alembert that an equilibrium of opinion was not possible, but rather one of two opposing positions was leaning towards. Diderot said goodbye and d'Alembert, completely exhausted, went to bed.

Le rêve de d'Alembert

D'Alembert, still confused by Diderot's natural philosophical explanations, now dreams vividly and announces his dreams aloud. Using modern terminology, one could also describe his dream-like state as oneiroid syndrome or lucid dream .

D'Alembert's partner Julie de Lespinasse, concerned about his condition, had called for the doctor Théophile de Bordeu; so began the second part of the trilogy, Le rêve de d'Alembert . D'Alembert's partner was not only astonished by the wondrous statements, but at first it was hidden from her and so she kept the minutes . Both tried to reconstruct the remarks made. Diderot lets de Bordeu expand the statements and support them with scientific observations.

While Diderot and d'Alembert were in direct conversation in the first section of the trilogy, in the two other sections mainly only Julie de Lespinasse will be in dialogue with Théophile de Bordeu, whereas d'Alembert is mainly only through his dream expressions in the second section of the Trilogy, including the Le rêve de d'Alembert , involved.

The dream utterances, quasi the oneiroid state, d'Alemberts now made it possible for Diderot as the author to formulate his considerations as provisional positions, because the utterances made in dreams could be presented more easily by the author Diderot as hypothetical and unproven facts.

While a conversation is sparking between Julie de Lespinasse and the doctor de Bordeu about the content and the utterances of d'Alembert, the latter occasionally interferes, partly by continuing his dream speech, partly by waking up briefly and addressing those present directly. The next morning the doctor has to visit another patient or visit another patient, which interrupts the progress of the dialogue.

Scheme for the representation of the emergetic monism by Denis Diderot

Diderot advocates the following consideration of “matter”, that it is in motion , but this being in motion is not brought about from outside, but is to a certain extent immanent in it . With the same immanence, this “matter” is assigned the possibility of development, of advancement to independent formations. According to Diderot, the prerequisite for this is that one assumes “sensitivity”; He differentiates between inactive and active sensitivity. "Matter" is the whole consisting of individual "molecules", Diderot sometimes also spoke of "atoms", which then combined in an infinite variety to form bodies or components, including living organisms.

To this end, he cites the metaphor of the material world as a beehive , in which the bees as individual “material” and “sensitive” building blocks come together to form a superordinate whole. This image was used by Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis in his Essai sur la formation des corps organisés (1754) also before Diderot. These building blocks combine to form a whole, a coherent whole, which has the potential to become living organisms and the development of consciousness. This explains beings as a combination of “sensitive molecules”. Thus the transition from the inorganic to the organic and ultimately to the living becomes a continuum.

Diderot ascribes the inorganic world the potential for an immanent development towards the organic. However, this should not be misunderstood as a spontaneous generation or generatio spontanea . Rather, the Diderotian “molecules” show their characteristic properties of constant transition and permanent transformation through their sensibility, sensibilité .

As such, some of these Diderotian “molecules” have properties that already have their precursors and that, as it were, they get from them; in addition, “resulting” properties or new properties arise which the preliminary stages did not yet have and which only “emerge” from the interaction of the elements. The prerequisite for this is "sensitivity", sensibilité . Whereby “sensitivity” only emerged with a certain level of organization, so that Diderot's conception of matter or his concept of materialism could also be called emergetic monism. Monism holds that " matter " and " spirit " are in a sense the same thing. In contrast, dualism pursues the view that both consist of different materials.

Since everything in the universe consists of the different formations of the "sensitive molecules", the concrete being is the form that things take on, never final, rather it is the constantly changing whole of the inanimate and animate world that makes the difference between minerals and living organisms.

The suite d'un entretien entre M. d'Alembert et M. Diderot

While a fictional conversation between d'Alembert and Diderot is portrayed in the first part of the trilogy, Diderot emerges completely as a conversation partner in the further parts of the trilogy, as does d'Alembert in the last part, the "After the meeting between d ' Alembert and Diderot ”. About two o'clock the doctor de Bordeu came back to Julie de Lespinasse, while d'Alembert had gone to dine out. The doctor and Julie de Lespinasse finished their meal.

expenditure

Contemporary

Translations

  • Denis Diderot; Richard Koch, Kurt Sigmar Gutkind: The dream d'Alembert. Frommann's philosophical paperbacks. F. Frommanns Verlag, Stuttgart 1923.
  • Denis Diderot: D'Alembert's dream. (1769). Translation by Theodor Lücke; Afterword by Eckart Richter Reclam. Reclam, Leipzig 1963.
  • Denis Diderot: Entretien entre d'Alembert et Diderot. In: J. Assézat (Ed.): Œuvres complètes. Paris 1875, Vol. II. (German: The dream of Alembert , translated by CS Gutkind, Stuttgart 1923)
  • Denis Diderot: Philosophical Writings. Vol. 1 Edited by Theodor Lücke. Publishing house "the European book". Berlin 1984, pp. 511-580

literature

  • Peter-André Alt: The sleep of reason. Dream and dream theory in the European Enlightenment. P. 55–82 In: Hans Adler (Ed.): The eighteenth century. Academies in the Eighteenth Century. In: Journal of the German Society for Research in the Eighteenth Century , Volume 25, Issue 1, Wallstein Verlag, Wolfenbüttel 2001, ISBN 3-89244-461-7
  • Miran Božovič: Anatomy, Section and Philosophy: Diderot and Bentham. In Matthias Jung; Jan-Christoph Heilinger: Functions of Experience: New Perspectives on Qualitative Consciousness. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2009 ISBN 3-1102-237-16 , pp. 221–241
  • Herbert Dieckmann : The artistic form of the Rêve de d'Alembert. West German publishing house, Cologne 1966
  • Beatrice Didier: Diderot dramaturge du vivant. Presses Universitaires France, 2001, ISBN 2-13-051638-6
  • Veit Elm: Scientific storytelling in the 18th century: history, encyclopedia, literature. Oldenbourg Akademieverlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 3-05-004934-0 , p. 197
  • Jean Firges : "Le Rèce d'Alembert". In: Ders .: Denis Diderot: The philosophical and literary genius of the French Enlightenment. Biography and work interpretations. Sonnenberg, Annweiler 2013, ISBN 9783933264756 chap. 8, pp. 93–141 (with an excursus on the image of women in this text) In German
  • Sebastian Gießmann: Networks and networks. Archeology of a Cultural Technique, 1740–1840. Transcript, Bielefeld 2006, ISBN 3-89942-438-7 , pp. 41-46
  • Angelica Goodden: Diderot and the Body. Legenda Main Series, David Brown Book Co 2001, ISBN 1-90075-556-4
  • Mary Efrosini Gregory: Evolutionism in Eighteenth-Century French Thought. Currents in Comparative Romance Languages ​​and Literatures, Peter Lang Publishing Incorporated, 2008. ISBN 1-4331-0373-7 , p. 119
  • Vittorio Hösle : The philosophical dialogue. CH Beck, Munich 2006 ISBN 3-406-54219-0 , p. 200
  • Thomas Klinkert: Epistemological fictions: on the interference of literature and science since the Enlightenment. FRIAS, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-022915-8
  • Georgi Walentinowitsch Plechanow : Contributions to the history of materialism. Holbach, Helvetius, Marx. Neuer Weg, Berlin 1946, p. 13 f.
  • Jennifer Vanderheyden: The Function of the Dream and the Body in Diderot's Works (Age of Revolution and Romanticism). Morehouse Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0-8204-5842-2
  • Anne C. Vila: Enlightenment and Pathology. Sensibility in the Literature and Medicine of Eighteenth-Century France. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2007, ISBN 0-8018-5677-9
  • Rene Wellek: The late 18th Century - The Age of Romanticism. Volume 1. In: History of literary criticism 1750–1950. 4 volumes. Walter De Gruyter, Berlin 1959, reprint, ISBN 3-11-005914-2 , pp. 58–73.

The non-fictional people

See also

Web links

Wikisource: Le rêve de D'Alembert  - Sources and full texts (French)

References and comments

  1. ↑ Thomas Klinkert: Epistemological fictions: On the interference of literature and science since the Enlightenment. In: Linguae Et Litterae. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, ISBN 3-11-022915-3 , p. 76
  2. ^ Andrew Curran: Monsters and the Self in the Reve de d'Alembert. In: Eighteenth-Century Life , Volume 21, Number 2, May 1997, pp. 48-69
  3. ^ Johanna Borek: Denis Diderot. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-499-50447-2 , p. 102 f.
  4. ↑ Le Rêve de D'Alembert; Entretien entre D'Alembert et Diderot; The suite d'un entretien entre M. d'Alembert et M. Diderot . (PDF; 469 kB) pp. 1–81 (French)
  5. ↑ Frank Baasner: The term 'sensibilité' in the 18th century. The rise and fall of an ideal. Studia Romanica. 69. Carl Winter, Heidelberg 1988, ISBN 3-5330-3965-X , p. 257.
  6. ↑ Lucien Febvre: The problem of unbelief in the 16th century: the religion of Rabelais. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-6089-1673-3 , p. 313.
  7. ^ Herbert Dieckmann: Théophile Bordeau and Diderot's Rêve de d'Alembert. Romanische Forschungen Vol. 52, 1938, pp. 55-122.
  8. ^ André Babelon: Lettres à Sophie Volland vol. I Librairie Gallimard, Paris 1930 p. 109
  9. ↑ Ursula Winter: The materialism in Diderot. Droz, Genève 1972 ISBN 2-600-03851-5 , p. 24
  10. ↑ Annie Ibrahim: Maupertuis dans Le Rêve de D'Alembert: l'essaim d'abeilles et le polype.
  11. ↑ Le procès de Théophile de Bordeu . ( Memento of October 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 50 kB; French)
  12. ↑ Vittorio Hösle: The philosophical dialogue. CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54219-0 , p. 203
  13. ↑ Denis Diderot: Philosophical writings. Vol. 1 Edited by Theodor Lücke. Verlag das Europäische Buch, Berlin 1984, p. 622
  14. ↑ Thomas Klinkert: Epistemological fictions: On the interference of literature and science since the Enlightenment. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010 ISBN 3-1102-2915-3 , p. 76
  15. ↑ Ursula Winter: Scientific Methodology and Morals. In: Dietrich Harth, Martin Raether (Ed.): Denis Diderot or the ambivalence of the Enlightenment. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1987, ISBN 3-88479-277-6 , pp. 157-184.
  16. ^ Entretien entre d'Alembert et Diderot. (PDF; 96 kB) Collection "Les auteur (e) s classiques" Denis Diderot: 1713-1784. Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, p. 5
  17. ↑ Jean Varloot : Diderot's philosophy in “Le Rêve de d'Alembert”. In: Jochen Schlobach: Denis Diderot. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1992, ISBN 3-534-09097-7 , p. 309
  18. ↑ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Complete writings and letters. Volume 2. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2009, p. LXXXVI
  19. ↑ Helmut Holzhey, Vilem Mudroch, Friedrich Ueberweg, Johannes Rohbeck: Outline of the history of philosophy: The philosophy of the 18th century. 2 half floors. Schwabe-Verlag, Basel 2008, ISBN 978-3-7965-2445-5 , pp. 530-531
  20. ↑ Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow: Diderot for an introduction. Junius, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-88506-902-4 , pp. 145-160
  21. ↑ Pierre Lepape: Denis Diderot. A biography. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-593-35150-1 , pp. 354-366.
  22. ↑ Jean Varloot : Diderot's philosophy in “Le Rêve de d'Alembert”. In: Jochen Schlobach: Denis Diderot. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1992, ISBN 3-534-09097-7 , pp. 307-330
  23. ↑ The idea of ​​“atoms” and “molecules” in the 18th century was different from that of contemporary conceptions, so it cannot be completely matched with our terms. Projecting the current term back into the 18th century shows that Diderot's “molecule” or “atom” is close to the hypotheses of the corpuscles of Robert Boyle. Boyle developed an idea that there is a multitude of very small particles that are combined in different ways and that could form shapes that he called corpuscles.