Diderot

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani sees Diderot as a teeming thinker who is hard to reduce to a unity1. He mentions him as the team leader of the Encyclopédie, who entrusts Rousseau with the articles on music2, and places him among the Enlightenment figures who shook religion and discredited the Church. He also discusses his relationship with Rousseau: Rousseau borrowed the dialogue form from him, and Diderot later held him, as Voltaire did, to be the most dangerous man. He often returns to the bishop who tells an orangutan "Speak and I will baptise you," and to D'Alembert's Dream, to think about what sets man apart from the animal34. Through Rameau's Nephew, which Goethe translated, he links him to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and to Marx5. In aesthetics, he shows him as a libertine moved by Greuze's paintings and as a modern who dreams of a past utopia, with tastes that remain classical6. He also compares him with Kleist in connection with the Paradox of the Actor. In Nerval, he makes him the first link in the chain of imitations at the end of Angélique.

1. 1#1.8 Entre crise et guerre : Philosopher ?28 Jan 2016 · 34:40
2. 2Musicosophie 11. Musiques modales et tonales24 Jan 2021 · 1:06:55
3. 39 #21 Science et/ou philosophie de "l'Intelligence Artificielle"12 May 2021 · 5:44
4. 4Flagrandélices27 May 2025 · 1:09:42
5. 5Hommage à Jacques D'Hondt (2)2 Aug 2016 · 16:57
6. 6Musicosophie 3. Qu'appelle-t-on une musique moderne?3 Dec 2020 · 39:31

Summary produced automatically from 35 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.