The Nephew of Branch

the Nephew of Branch or the Satire second is a philosophical conversation imagined and written by Denis Diderot between Him (Jean-François Rameau, nephew of the celebrates musician) and Me .

The recurrent themes of the discussion are the education of the children, the genius, the money… The conversation with broken sticks evokes or scratches that and there characters of the time, the such Dramaturge Palissot, Bertin and its mistress Miss Hus, the actress Miss Clairon.

In the prolog which precedes maintenance, Me presents Him like an original, eccentric and extravagant, full with contradictions, “ composed height and of lowness, good sense and insanity ”. Indeed provocative, preaches the flight, the crime to Him, and raises gold - that he adores - with the row of religion. Me seem to have a didactic role; it is sometimes the nephew who manages to impose a perhaps immoral but cynical vision of the truth.

In fact, although realities, the two characters are allegorical here and the dialog is especially that of Diderot with itself in connection with the life and of morals.

Diderot wonders about the role and the capacities of the philosopher. This one seems a foreigner in the world in which he lives which defends the genius, the reason, the virtue and honesty, sources of a happiness higher than the pleasure of the directions. The nephew of Branch exposes a vision materialist of the life. The men, to satisfy their needs, subject themselves and move away from the values defended by the philosopher and philosophy would be unrealistic. However, the life of the nephew appears empty and unproductive, useless and vain. It does not have anything fact where the philosopher works for the good of humanity.

History of work

The drafting was undoubtedly spread out between 1762 and 1773 but one knows few things of the circumstances which governed the creation of this work that Diderot hid carefully. Two reasons are possible with this dissimulation:

the satirical dimension of the work: enemies of the philosophical party are quoted and turned in derision. The experiment of the prison and the clandestine edition of the Encyclopédie could encourage Diderot with discretion.
Diderot thought that this work was not very conventional, too much out of its time and wanted to entrust it only to the posterity.

To the death of Diderot, the manuscript probably leaves in Russia. Fifteen or twenty years after, a Russian, who read and appreciated the book, adores it and the fact of discovering with Schiller which shows it with Goethe. This last will publish the German book in towards 1805: thus this text was initially published in German. Later, of the French will read the Nephew of Branch in Germany and will translate it in their language into 1821, but without that replacing the original. In 1891, George Monval will find by chance, by buying a pile of partitions in a Parisian secondhand bookseller, the manuscript original autograph of Diderot among other papers of the family of Angelica of Vandeul, the girl of Denis Diderot. It is the text of this manuscript which is, since, in all the recent editions.

Philosophical readings

Shortly after its German publication, Hegel comments on the Nephew of Branch in his Phénoménologie of the spirit .

In its thesis History of the madness at the traditional age (p. 431 sq. in the edition Such), Michel Foucault also comments on this work.

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