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The Instrument Philosophe: Identity, Free Will, and Morality in the Rêve de d’Alembert
- The French Review
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 88, Number 3, March 2015
- pp. 151-162
- 10.1353/tfr.2015.0346
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
Diderot’s Rêve de d’Alembert has generated numerous studies, some arguing the presence of free will in the Rêve, others seeing in the Rêve a universal determinism. The present study negotiates the tensions between these interpretations by using Diderot’s metaphor of the instrument philosophe to analyze the questions of free will, identity, and morality. The study’s thesis is that the configuration of these three elements in the Rêve leads inevitably toward a polysemic conception of the instrument philosophe, as not only a musical instrument, but also an instrument-as-tool, promoting moral and ideological free-thinking and progress.