Diderot and the Encyclopædists Volume II. by John Morley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Like an encyclopaedia, this volume is mainly a list of various aspects of Diderot and his fellow encyclopaedists. As such, this is not a very coherent work, as there is no real theme. One does get a sense of the times Diderot lived in and the various influences they all had on one another.
The excerpts of Rameau’s Nephew did serve to highlight some of Diderot’s perversity, especially in how he is able to take what is inessential out (social relations) and highlight absolute judgement on those unfavorably. By showing the relativism of valorization and the contingency of opinion, Diderot gets at a particular kind of “heart” of the issue of what is value itself. This is a dyadic work, one that is based in the shadow of “absolute principle” (or at least its absence) and thus tears apart various opinions by which we may hold dear, if we are not very analytic. A start at getting at the relations in mind, but one which still speaks to a kind of essentiality — that certain ways of thinking are more or less real than others.
