The Atheist's Bible: Diderot's 'Éléments De Physiologie'
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The Atheist’s Bible Diderot’s Éléments de physiologie Caroline Warman In off ering the fi rst book-length study of the ‘Éléments de physiologie’, Warman raises the stakes high: she wants to show that, far from being a long-unknown draf , it is a powerful philosophical work whose hidden presence was visible in certain circles from the Revolut on on. And it works! Warman’s study is original and st mulat ng, a historical invest gat on that is both rigorous and fascinat ng. —François Pépin, École normale supérieure, Lyon This is high-quality intellectual and literary history, the erudit on and close argument suff used by a wit and humour Diderot himself would surely have appreciated. —Michael Moriarty, University of Cambridge In ‘The Atheist’s Bible’, Caroline Warman applies def , tenacious and of en wit y textual detect ve work to the case, as she explores the shadowy passage and infl uence of Diderot’s materialist writ ngs in manuscript samizdat-like form from the Revolut onary era through to the Restorat on. —Colin Jones, Queen Mary University of London ‘Love is harder to explain than hunger, for a piece of fruit does not feel the desire to be eaten’: Denis Diderot’s Éléments de physiologie presents a world in fl ux, turning on the rela� onship between man, ma� er and mind. In this late work, Diderot delves playfully into the rela� onship between bodily sensa� on, emo� on and percep� on, and asks his readers what it means to be human in the absence of a soul. The Atheist’s Bible challenges prevailing scholarly views on Diderot’s Éléments, asser� ng its contemporary philosophical importance and promp� ng its readers to inspect more closely this li� le-known and li� le-studied work. This book is accompanied by a digital edi� on of Jacques-André Naigeon’s Mémoires historiques et philosophiques sur la vie et les ouvrages de Denis Diderot (1823), a work which, Warman argues, represents the fi rst publica� on of Diderot’s Éléments, long before its offi cial publica� on date of 1875. The Atheist’s Bible cons� tutes a major contribu� on to the fi eld of Diderot studies, and is of further interest to scholars and students of materialist natural philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment and beyond. Cover design by Cressida Bell, all rights reserved. book ebooke and OA edi� ons also available OPEN ACCESS OBP To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: htps://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/1150 Open Book Publishers is a non-proft independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. THE ATHEIST’S BIBLE The Atheist’s Bible Diderot’s Éléments de physiologie Caroline Warman https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2020 Caroline Warman This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Caroline Warman, The Atheist’s Bible: Diderot’s ‘Éléments de physiologie’. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0199 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit, https:// doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0199#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0199#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. ISBN Paperback: 9781783748969 ISBN Hardback: 9781783748976 ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783748983 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783748990 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783749003 ISBN XML: 9781783749010 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0199 Cover image and design by Cressida Bell, all rights reserved. Contents Dedication vii Preface ix PART ONE: The Éléments de physiologie Generally, Philosophically, and Physiologically 1. Introduction: The Curious Materialist 3 2. ‘Toutes les imperfections de l’inachèvement’: The 17 Mystification about the Manuscript Fragments 3. Material World and Embodied Mind 61 4. Diderot the Physiologist 137 PART TWO: The Éléments de physiologie, 1790–1823 5. 1790: Naigeon and the Adresse à l’Assemblée nationale 179 6. 1792: Naigeon’s Article on ‘Diderot’ in the Encyclopédie 207 méthodique: Philosophie ancienne et moderne 7. 1794: ‘Le citoyen Garron’, the Comité d’instruction 213 publique, and the Lost Manuscript of the Éléments de physiologie 8. 1794–95: Garat and the École normale 231 9. 1796–97: Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy at the Institut 271 national 10. 1798, 1802: Naigeon, the Œuvres de Diderot, and the 319 Censored Preface to Montaigne‘s Essais 11. 1820: Garat’s Mémoires historiques sur la vie de M. Suard, 335 sur ses écrits, et sur le XVIIIe siècle 12. 1823: Naigeon’s Mémoires historiques et philosophiques 355 sur la vie et les ouvrages de Denis Diderot vi The Atheist’s Bible 13. Conclusion 393 Acknowledgements 399 Bibliography 403 Index 421 For Leo and Viola Preface This book is about Denis Diderot’s late work, the Éléments de physiologie. It argues, against the prevailing view, that this treatise made a substantial contribution to materialist thought, offering ways of explaining a human being without recourse to the divine and also without reducing human complexity or doing away with awe and wonder. These ways were physiological. The prevailing view accepts that Diderot planned to do something like this, but considers that unfortunately he did not complete his project. I argue that he did, and I explain not only why I think this, but also what led to the prevailing view that he did not, and why that particular story is illuminating in itself. Another aspect of the prevailing view is that it is accepted that even in its unfinished form, this work would have been of importance and interest to readers of the time, if only it had circulated and been read instead of being hidden away in two copies in the inaccessible private archives of Diderot’s daughter and Catherine II of Russia, his patron. I argue that it did circulate, was read, and did have a decisive influence as early as the 1790s, and also that it was published, in an admittedly slightly odd form, in 1823. To help this rather argumentative study make its case, I offer a connected digital edition of this first publication, Jacques-André Naigeon’s Mémoires historiques et philosophiques sur la vie et les ouvrages de Denis Diderot, which can be accessed here: https://naigeons-diderot.mml.ox.ac.uk/index. htm. A quick word on the translations: every quoted text is followed by an English translation, with both languages equal on the page. This is to make it as accessible as possible to any interested reader, whether francophone or anglophone or somewhere in between. The translations x The Atheist’s Bible are drawn from published works where possible, but in the many cases where there is none, I keep the translated text as close to the original as possible (while hopefully still making sense), specifically to facilitate access to the French for those who wish to toggle between the two. PART ONE THE ÉLÉMENTS DE PHYSIOLOGIE GENERALLY, PHILOSOPHICALLY, AND PHYSIOLOGICALLY 1. Introduction: The Curious Materialist L’amour est plus difficile à expliquer que la faim: car le fruit n’éprouve pas le désir d’être mangé.1 Love is harder to explain than hunger, for a piece of fruit does not feel the desire to be eaten. Love is more difficult to explain than hunger, or so says the eighteenth- century philosophe and explainer of difficult things, Denis Diderot. How could we disagree? Hunger is probably a more fundamental physiological need than the complex set of feelings called love. Even if the comparison nudges us to see love in terms of another physiological need, lust and the drive to procreate, we would probably still agree that it is harder to explain than hunger. And that is where we suppose 1 Throughout this book, I will give page references to the three current critical editions, in order of publication, in part to facilitate ease of reference for readers with access to only one of them, and in part because the most recent edition massively expands our understanding of the sources Diderot used when composing this work, and is therefore immediately a crucial referent. First, Jean Mayer’s 1987 edition: Denis Diderot, Éléments de physiologie, ed. by Jean Mayer, vol. 17 (Paris: Hermann, 1987). This constitutes volume 17 of the ongoing Œuvres complètes of Diderot, known as DPV, after three of its founding editors, Herbert Dieckmann, Jacques Proust, and Jean Varloot. Second, Paolo Quintili’s stand-alone edition: Denis Diderot, Éléments de physiologie, ed. by Paolo Quintili (Paris: Champion, 2004). Third, Motoichi Terada’s edition: Denis Diderot, Éléments de physiologie, ed. by Motoichi Terada (Paris: Éditions Matériologiques, 2019). This makes available Terada’s immense work on Diderot’s sources, which very helpfully appeared as I was revising this manuscript. I will always signal when his indication of a source should be taken into account in our understanding of any given passage.