Diderot’s D’Alembert’s Dream develops a mythological monistic materialist ontology in which multiplicity develops from an original “polyp” but where nothing ever becomes really distinct from the whole or from anything else. There is no freedom, no real otherness, no real possibility of love. D’Alembert describes this ontology while masturbating in front of his lover; it’s a perfect image of his cosmos - fruitless distribution of seed.
In Diderot’s evolutionary scheme, the cosmos gradually grows toward self-consciousness, and this is perhaps the rationale for the Encyclopedia . It’s not an expression of the rationalist attempt to comprehend everything in a single set of volumes, but a mythical enterprise, the expression of the world’s coming-to-self-consciousness.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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