Dramatic Experiments: Life according to Diderot

One: Life’s Drama

PART I Diderot and the Problem of Metaphysics—D’Alembert’s Dream 19 one Life’s Drama D’ALEMBERT: J’avoue qu’un être qui existe quelque part et qui ne correspond à aucun point de l’espace; un Être qui est inétendu et qui occupe de l’étendue; qui est tout entier sous chaque partie de cette étendue; qui diffère essentiellement de la matière et qui lui est uni; qui la suit et qui la meut sans se mouvoir; qui agit sur elle et qui en subit toutes les vicissitudes; un Être dont je n’ai pas la moindre idée; un Être d’une nature aussi contra­ dictoire est difficile à admettre. Mais d’autres obscurités attendent celui qui le rejette; car enfin cette sensibilité que vous lui substituez, si c’est une qualité générale et essentielle de la matière, il faut que la pierre sente. DIDEROT: Pourquoi non? D’ALEMBERT: Cela est dur à croire. DIDEROT: Oui, pour celui qui la coupe, la taille, la broie et qui ne l’entend pas crier. D’ALEMBERT: Je voudrais bien que vous me dissiez quelle différence vous mettez entre l’homme et la statue, entre le marbre et la chair. DIDEROT: Assez peu. On fait du marbre avec de la chair, et de la chair avec du marbre.1 Thus opens Diderot’s enigmatic text of 1769, D’Alembert’s Dream. Written as a series of dramatic conversations, the text is composed of three parts: “A Conversation between Diderot and D’Alembert,” “D’Alembert’s Dream,” and “Sequel to the Conversation,” all unified by convention as D’Alembert’s Dream. To quickly rehearse the basics, in the first part Diderot and his friend D’Alembert enter into a debate about the question of sensibility and 20 DRAMATIC EXPERIMENTS its relation to the general questions of the nature of life and matter. Can we account for both life and matter with a single principle, or do we need an additional, extra worldly element? The second part, presented as having occurred on the night of the conversation, and in which the day’s residues form the conversation are transformed into an enigmatic dream, marks the disappearance of Diderot as a speaker and the introduction of two new characters, Mlle de L’Espinasse, D’Alembert’s companion, and one doctor Bourdeu, who both try to respond to D’Alembert’s dreaming hallucinations regarding the essence of life. In the third part, taking place the following afternoon, D’Alembert himself disappears, leaving the doctor and the Mlle to discuss briefly some issues regarding “unnatural sexuality” that are unfit to discuss in company. It is around the question of the essence of life, then, in its relation to the phenomenon of dreaming, that D’Alembert’s Dream will develop that fundamental insight of Diderot’s regarding a positive alienation which marks the self and the world with an originary intimate/external disaster, and which we are tracking through several of Diderot’s fundamental texts. As with all Diderot’s major works, one asks upon a first reading, “What the hell is this thing?” “What just happened?” “Is it some bizarre three-organed monster, a three-headed creature perhaps, an unrecognizable fabulous animal that just crossed our path on its way to the mysterious cave that is its hidden dwelling?” “Or perhaps it is not one creature, or text, at all, but three smaller creatures somehow artificially joined together for a moment before parting company, each going its separate way?” “Were we dreaming or awake?” “Did we just see what we thought we saw or was it our imagination?” This text is so strange and enigmatic partly due to the relations established between its dramatic form, its content—having to do with the development of a general materialism and a theory of life—and its characters: a philosopher, a doctor, a geometrician, and a woman. It is not exactly clear what kind of text it is. Is it a metaphysical treatise on the nature of that which is? Is it a scientific treatise in natural zoology, describing the history of the development of animal life? Is it a theatrical play? A love story? The delirious hallucination of a mad dreamer? A pedagogical text written by a man and intended for the education of women, or perhaps for the education of men by women? Is it perhaps all of...