Fibers, organs, lines, and strings: A study of physiology and aesthetics in the works of Denis Diderot.

详细信息   

• 作者：Clark ; Andrew Herrick.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2003
• 导师：Gossman, J. Lionel
• 毕业院校：Princeton University
• 专业：Literature, Modern.;Literature, Romance.;History of Science.
• ISBN：9780496328482
• CBH：3085041
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：22717286
• Pages：495

文摘

When faced with the diversity of Diderot's work, scholars have either focused on one aspect of his writings, or attempted to find a principle that unifies or explains all the philosopher's intellectual pursuits. This last approach has too often resulted in a simplification of Diderot's philosophy.;I, too, investigate Diderot's versatile output, studying texts as different as Elements de physiologie and Lecons de clavecin. Unlike preceding scholars however, I focus not on a unifying theme, but on one of Diderot's ever-present structural concerns: the articulation that links an individual concept to the general networks to which it belongs. Diderot rethinks the relation of part to whole both in the material world and in the production of knowledge, art, and meaning.;In chapter 1 I analyze the physiological experiments of Haller, Bordeu, and others in the second half of the eighteenth century explaining how Diderot adapts these in his Elements to reconsider the relation of part to whole. Focusing on Le Fils naturel, Essai sur le merite et la vertu, and the Salons in chapters 2 and 3, I explore the status of unity and order in Diderot's theory of the tableau. In chapter 4 I analyze dissonance in the contemporary debates on music and language and in Diderot's texts such as Lecons de clavecin and La Religieuse. Dissonance, I argue, disrupts a given order and increases the relative autonomy of the part, resulting in a reconfiguration of the whole. It is also crucial in Diderot's reflections on the physiology and aesthetics of genius. In chapter 5 I argue that a man of genius' physiological predominance of one organ calls into question the hegemony of the whole in the creation and reception of art and knowledge. By advocating the dynamic relation of part and whole, Diderot disrupts eighteenth-century epistemologies, aesthetic categories, and somatic taxonomies that rely on preconceived transcendent or geometric wholes. Diderot preserves the multiplicity, heterogeneity, and dissonance of the whole while he maintains the specificity and vitality of the part. His work encourages us therefore to look beyond the principle of identity in our encounter with his complex thought.