Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream Book

Rameau's Nephew is an examination of the dilemma of a social-hanger-on, an intellectual near-genius, who is just short of becoming a great man, but who is also a sort of product of a degenerate society, who can't manage to rise above the demands of his stomach, and so he has to behave in a somewhat craven way. He's somewhat short of greatness... but he's also somewhat short of complete depravity. He has a mind and inclination to become a very talented devil and rogue, but yet at the same time he can't become such an out-and-out rogue because his intellect and self-awareness provide him with an unwanted sense of honor, and his potential for virtue (though he is not a virtuous man) is a stumbling block to true "success" in roguery.

Thus, the text is, in part, a condemnation of a society that seems geared to producing mediocrities. The not-great Rameau (as opposed to the Great Rameau, his well-regarded uncle) is really painful to see, actually, because he could and should, if the world were virtuous, achieve great things. Instead he's a talented critic, mimic, and buffoon with the kind of fatal flaws that will get him alternately invited into and then rejected from society (that is, the society of the influential, wealthy, important people who will pay for flattery and and a bit of entertaining "wit").

The text, sadly, feels a bit like a study that could have been developed into something greater. Ironically, for me the story/dialog seems to be a bit mediocre in its execution. We've been introduced to this character, and a lot of what goes on in his mind is exposed in his dialogue with "I" (Diderot's assumed avatar within the text, who yet serves more as a surrogate for the reader than as a mouthpiece for Diderot's own opinions). But some of the details which could give this more poignancy seem to have been handled in an ambiguous and sketchy manner. Some interesting ideas to meditate on are introduced, yet seem also to trail off. I don't demand that the book reach neat conclusions in everything, but there is an overall feeling of incompleteness and indistinctness. There is not much to latch on to that feels memorable. In fact, this was a reread for me, and I could hardly remember anything from my first read... this may even be my third exposure after a nearly completely forgotten attempt to tackle it a decade ago.

And yet, as I was reaching the end of the text, I found myself feeling more positive about the work. It did achieve something in the way of a notable effect. It's ambiguous character, lack of a firm moral conclusion, and effective expression of some of the doubts and frustrations experienced by "I" (and thus, probably Diderot) felt like something that needed to be written. So I can't reject or disdain the work. It just didn't have such a profound impact on me, or produce such an impressive result as Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist.

Thus, this may not be a masterwork for Diderot, but it has its value for a reader who is interested enough and patient enough to want to explore one of Diderot's sketches, and to tell the truth I feel that I will be returning to this once again someday.
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D'Alembert's dream is an extremely ambitious philosophical exercise. The author attempts, in a relatively short series of dialogues, to demonstrate that lifeless matter, through natural processes, can develop into sentient and intelligent beings without the intervention of a supernatural agent. In other words, the origin of life does not imply a God or immaterial spirit, and so the last objections to atheism and materialism are put to rest.

Along the way, he illuminates topics ranging from evolution, neurology, the nature of consciousness and dreams, the primacy of memory in developing an individual identity, determinism, what we can learn from examining malformed children and conjoined-twins, and even the ethics of sexual relations. He argues in favor of masturbation, and proclaims the ethical legitimacy of homosexuality.

Much of his musing goes beyond what had yet been developed into a science. Note that this was written seventy years before Darwin's origin of the species, for instance, and so it prefigures some of the ideas that will be more fully developed in later generations, and it proposes ideas which would be more readily acceptable in the nineteenth century. In this way, Diderot can seem to be remarkably progressive and well ahead of his times.

At the same time, the text does reflect some ideas of its time which have since been invalidated. For example, it makes reference to spontaneous generation, the frequent and observable production of life without parentage from within a non-living organic matrix.

The text is certainly interesting, and at times it's entertaining, while at other times it may seem a bit obscure, dry, even sometimes tedious. It's hard to evaluate it as a reading experience. For one thing, the author has obviously contrived to put his ideas into the mouths of the participants in a didactic dialogue which doesn't resemble any conceivable actual dialogue. He is certainly aware of his own artifice, and even plays with it by pushing it to a kind of extreme:

Mademoiselle De L'Espinasse: As the doctor has listened to your story he will have to hear mine as well. A young man of eighteen or twenty, whose name I don't remember....

Bordeu: It was one M. de Schellemberg of Winterthur, and he was only fifteen or sixteen.

The characters are so skilled at anticipating one another's thoughts and completing them, that the Doctor here immediately knows who De L'Espinasse is going to talk about, and what she's going to say about him, despite the fact that his only clue is his age, and she even got that wrong! But the doctor Bordeu is always staying a step or two ahead of the others and can instantly comprehend and interpret the most obscure comments.

This made a kind of sense to me, as exhibiting the idea that the individual is an illusion, and we are all a part of a universal natural system. The author can manipulate this while at the same time self-consciously putting the lie to the dialectical method by making the artifice apparent.

There was one reflection in particular that I related to, and that is rarely raised. It seems largely in opposition to today's dominant faith in the inherent value of "nature" and the inherent badness of the synthetic/unnatural. That was the statement that there is nothing that is unnatural.

Yup. Diderot scores some points with me. I wonder to what extent, however, many readers today will feel challenged by the text's ideas, and how many will approach it as merely quaint.