Le Neveu de Rameau

Neveu de Rameau, Le. Dialogue by Diderot, begun c.1760. It was published in 1804 in Goethe's German translation; the first French publication was a retranslation. The original manuscript was discovered at the end of the 19th c. Today this short and vivid dialogue is widely regarded as Diderot's masterpiece. It was admired by Hegel, who gives it an important place in his Phänomenologie des Geistes, and its enigmatic quality has attracted many differing interpretations.

The two interlocutors (‘Moi’ and ‘Lui’) are based on real individuals, Diderot himself and the nephew of the composer Rameau. They meet and talk in a Paris café on a great variety of subjects, including art, music, morality, and education. Against the philosophe's conventional good conscience, the bohemian Rameau, whose gifts are for music, mime, and parasitism, sets a radically amoral view of human life. For him, virtue is a cant phrase, and society is ruled by the law of the jungle. With his histrionic gifts, racy language, and brutal cynicism, he seems to have the best of the dialogue, yet he too leads an unfulfilled life in the corrupt Paris of the day. Diderot does not conclude; the dialogue ends: ‘Rira bien qui rira le dernier.’

[Peter France]