Discussion Questions for "Rameau's Nephew"

Left: Portrait of Denis Diderot by Louis-Michel van Loo, 1767. The great humanties scholar Jacques Barzun writes of Diderot: "Diderot was one of history's born conversationalists, and his writings repeatedly fall into dialogue. A tale, an essay, a rebuttal will start out sedately in expository form and soon dash and question mark break up the line as a living or imaginary interlocutor doubts or denies -- it is interactive prose."(1) Rameau's Nephew takes this form.


Interpretive Questions

Why is the Nephew poor if he thinks so much about his own self-interest (cf. pp. 85, 97, 144)?

What is the significance of the Nephew's little "performances" (pantomimes, impersonations, "air violin," etc.?)

P. 95: "But, Master Philosopher, it is with universal morality just as with universal grammar: there are exceptions in each language that you learned people call ... idioms." Is an "idiom" really analogous to a lapse of morality?

P. 95: "The older the profession the more the idioms; the worse the times become, the more the idioms multiply." Agree or disagree?

Rameau says of his famous uncle (p. 73), "If he ever has done anything for anybody, it must be without knowing it." Is this remark meant to be sarcastic?

Why does the dialogue end with the Nephew stating "He who laughs last laughs best."? (p.144)

Why did Nephew's wife leave him, and what effect did this have on him?


Evaluative Questions

Is the Nephew correct when he asserts (p.114): "Vice offends men only from time to time; but the symptoms of vice offend day and night." How do "vice" and its "symptoms" differ?

What does this dialogue say about the artist's role in society? The philosopher's?

Do you think the Nephew benefitted or suffered because of his uncle's fame? Is the piece a commentary on fame? If so, what position does it take?

Why was this work never published in Diderot's lifetime?


For Textual Analysis

Pp. 95-98: From "Why resort to these vile little tricks?" to ... "outside of that, all is vanity."

Pp. 102-4, From "Virtue is praised, but hated" to ... "You can guess what harm so much uncertainty does to talent."

Pp. 119-21, From "Because it is a good deal less than right" to .. "abide by the terms of the contract aforesaid."

Pp. 127-29, From "The true, the good, and the beautiful will prevail" to "... man in a passion will supply the accent."

Pp. 130-131, From "How is it that with such fineness of feeling" to "But such parents do not exist."

*From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present, New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

A Montaigne Sampler

I was interested to hear from our discussants at our February 15th meeting if they thought Montaigne's "Of Experience" hung together as a philosophical work, or if it was more a collection of random musings by the great essayist. I'm not sure we resolved this question, but most people seemed to enjoy Montaigne's bon mots, and so here I offer a few of them (from the Donald M. Frame translation):
There is no end to our researches; our end is in the other world. It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength; it has impulses beyond its powers of achievement. If it does not advance and press forward and stand at bay and clash, it is only half alive. Its pursuits are boundless and without form; its food is wonder, the chase ambiguity.

I often say that it is pure stupidity that makes us run after foreign and scholarly examples. There is as great an abundance of them in this age as in that of Homer and Plato. But is it not true that we seek rather the honor of quoting than the truth of the statement?*

On raising children: Let them be formed by fortune under the custom of the common people and of nature; leave it to custom to train them to frugality and austerity, so that they may have rather to come down from rigorousness than climb toward it.

I am more naturally inclined to follow the example of Flaminius, who lent himself to those who needed him more than to those who could benefit him, than that of Pyrrhus, who was prone to truckle to the great and be arrogant with the weak.

[W]e should not so much consider what we eat as with whom we eat. (quoting Epicurus)

Greatness of soul is not so much pressing upward and forward as knowing how to set oneself in order and circumscribe oneself.

There is nothing so beautiful and legitimate as to play to man well and properly, no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally; and the most barbarous of our maladies is to despise our being.

*Present company excepted, bien sûr.