CONTRIBUTI / 2 / Matteo Marcheschi /
The aim of this essay is to show how the narrative philosophy of Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste et son maître is grounded in the conception of temporality as linear and irreversible. It was 1755 Lisbon earthquake to give birth this conception. The argumentation will be divided in three main parts: at first, I will consider the reception the Portuguese events in a narrative form, sub specie tragœdia, by highlighting the semantic polyvalence of the term “catastrophe”; secondly, I will discuss the conception of temporality in Diderot’s works, starting from a passage of Le rêve de d’Alembert; finally, I will address the idea of knowledge that Diderot proposed in Jacques le fataliste by relating it to Lisbon earthquake.
