Rameau's Nephew - Denis Diderot - book

No one has taken the brilliant mastery of dialogue further than Diderot, and it is the virtuosity of this speech that we find in each of the pages gathered here: Le Neveu de Rameau , Satire seconde , attacks all the powerful of the moment, financiers as well as adversaries of the Encyclopédie ; Satire première multiplies anecdotes and free reflections in the manner of ancient satirists. As for the Entretien d'un père avec ses enfants and the Entretien d'un philosophe avec la maréchale de ***, they revolve around a fairly well-defined theme: the first evokes the danger of putting oneself above the law, and the second makes heard, in counterpoint to the conversation with the devout marshal de Broglie, something of Diderot's conversations with Tsarina Catherine II. Despite their diversity, all these texts respond to each other. But at the same time they are turned towards the reader, a reader too seduced by the philosopher not to understand the father's indulgence towards his rebellious son: "I would not be too angry if there were one or two citizens like you in the city; but I would not live there if they all thought the same."
Edition established by Pierre Chartier