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Diderot, philosophie, matérialisme

La théorie de la connaissance dans la Lettre sur les aveugles

Gerhardt Stenger

Abstracts

The materialistic theory of knowledge in the Lettre sur les aveugles
In the Lettre sur les aveugles, Diderot adopts, essentially, Berkeley’s theory of vision and moves the question of the origin of knowledge to a different terrain ; he is not interested only in knowing how we acquire ideas but above all in how far they teach us about reality. Our sensations do not reproduce outside objects inside us but send us more or less abstract signs which reproduce objects ; these are touchable points for blind people and visible coloured points for the sighted. So human knowledge is the product of an interpretation of these signs, and objective reality is ultimately unknowable. The Lettre sur les aveugles, which is a true Critique of blind reason, warns philosophers and scientists against giving too much credence to the visual spectacle of objects. Mechanism of the classical age excluded the time factor and thus the very idea of evolution. To understand that nature is permanently evolving and that the present order of the universe is only momentary, we must go back to the origin of the universe where eyes are of no help. The clear-sighted philosopher should not be contented with visible phenomena but should pay attention to hidden relationships and secret analogies between phenomena. The model of a clear-sighted scientist is the blind Saunderson.

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References

Electronic reference

Gerhardt Stenger, “La théorie de la connaissance dans la Lettre sur les aveugles”Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie [Online], 26 | avril 1999, Online since 04 August 2007, connection on 28 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rde/1151; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rde.1151

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Gerhardt Stenger

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