d'Alembert

Summary

Dominique Pagani reads d'Alembert almost entirely through the Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopédie. He regards it as the best presentation, or even the best summary, of Enlightenment thought1, and he notes that d'Alembert was also a great mathematician2. What he mainly takes from it is the opening thesis: knowledge divides into direct knowledge, received passively through the senses, and reflected knowledge, which is composed from the former3. He sees in it a manifesto of mechanistic empiricism, in which everything comes down to the simple and the compound. He links this division to the atomism of civil society4 and reads in it a dream of a pure origin. In his view, the text sets a zero degree of the subject: it is the object that acts, and the subject must abstract itself from itself5. He considers that this approach leads from science to scientism, and he presents this empiricist thesis as the one Kant refutes6. He also mentions d'Alembert as the addressee of Rousseau's letter on theatrical performances.

1. 1#3.5 From Ulysses to Daedalus1 Aug 2017 · 1:01:21
2. 2Nature vs. freedom?8 Oct 2026 · 7:21
3. 3#9.17 The geopolitical metaphor: Planck, Descartes, Clouscard17 Mar 2021 · 55:37
4. 4#3 What is called modern music?3 Dec 2020 · 1:22:56
5. 5#9.17 The geopolitical metaphor: Planck, Descartes, Clouscard17 Mar 2021 · 1:07:33
6. 6From Copernicus to Lenin: revolution!28 Aug 2026 · 32:51

Summary produced automatically from 7 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.