Hemlock is for suckers or The seductive freedom of The Rameau’s Nephew

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to take some provocations, the lucidity and the deadlocks of the demolishing critical conscience of He, the immoralist and cynical character of the dialogue Rameau’s Nephew, of Denis Diderot, highlighting two aspects from his philosophical radicality and, above all, ethical: 1) keeping in mind the current historical context of darkness and moral perplexity in the West, along with He, Rameau’s nephew, inquire once more I, his illuminist interlocutor, i.e., pretentiously enlightened and full of moral convictions and philosophical certainties, if it was worthwhile for Socrates, an important reference for the thought of the Lights when it concerns to the moral question, to have chosen his noble principles, even at the cost of hemlock, instead of the prejudices of life as it is, or rather, if the wise celebrated Greek had any benefit by having opted for ethics and knowledge, and not by indifference and ignorance, in a world increasingly determined by blind appetites to truth and virtue; 2) thinking about the nephew’s nihilist posture not only as a wisdom, as an art of living, as a survival technique in hyperindividualistic times, but also as a freedom paradigm despite of its practical consequences.