Jacques le fataliste: dialogism, antifinalism, spinozism, and the modern desire

Abstract

Jacques le fataliste, a novel by Diderot, raises some philosophical questions pertaining to formal structures that refer to a way of thinking by means of transgressions. The dialogism is intense and rapid and refers to the apparent omnipotence of the narrator which is actually limited (a paradox between infinite and finite ideas formally integrated in the novel). Likewise, the finalism (teleology) and the abstractionism, typical of the Eastern philosophy, are contested in the formal level of this narrative. The practice of scientific “demonstration,” or the couple cause-effect, is shaped as if it is attuned to the thought of Spinoza, for whom the body (concrete dimension) is inseparable from abstracts levels (philosophical and religious doctrines), mediated by language, a sliding moderator between the two levels. Therefore, we analyze the apparently banal acts of repetition of the characters – the snuffbox and the clock of the master and the canteen of Jacques – as elements of the subjective self-organization of the individual, approaching them to concepts from psychoanalysis (the symptom) and philosophy (the ritornello).