Making the cut: Medical, political, and textual bodies in seventeenth and eighteenth-century France. - Page 467 |
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universe is a whole complex of matter endowed with movement and sensibility. It is
always in flux. As we saw in Le Reve. Diderot argues, “Tout change, tout passe, il
n’y a que le tout qui reste. Le monde commence et finit sans cesse; il est a chaque
instant a son commencement et a sa fin” (82). Second, because the human race is an
assembly of bodies that themselves are fleeting constructions only loosely held
together and continually balancing between re-generation and degeneration, sickness
and health, stability and instability, medicine becomes for Diderot the philosophical
and political activity par excellence. Understood in this way, medicine is, as Roger
Lewinter writes in the preface to his version of Elements in Diderot’s Oeuvres
completes, the
art de ramener au «sens commun» ou a la raison—subordination au tout—un
sens particulier, un organe malade ou «insoumis», pour une raison ou un
dessein detecte et reduit—seduit—par un traitement approprie qui rend a
nouveau possible la vie commune de la cite, machine du corps, (r)etabli. La
medecine est exercice eminemment social.. . . (Diderot, Elements 647)
Medicine is socio-political inasmuch as it concerns itself with the individual body,
the social body, the species body, and the consequences of one on the other. It
attempts to maintain or (re-)establish a notion of the balanced body, where the health
of the individual body pertains directly to the health of the social body. Medicine at
once heals the sick organ, thereby bringing the individual body back to health and
also brings the unruly individual body of the citizen back to reason and therefore
back into the unity of the social body that needs balance in order to survive.
Furthermore, this medical-political art is one of seduction, where the organs of the
individual body and the individual citizens of the social body are moved to balance
457
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
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| Title | Making the cut: Medical, political, and textual bodies in seventeenth and eighteenth-century France. - Page 467 |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | universe is a whole complex of matter endowed with movement and sensibility. It is always in flux. As we saw in Le Reve. Diderot argues, “Tout change, tout passe, il n’y a que le tout qui reste. Le monde commence et finit sans cesse; il est a chaque instant a son commencement et a sa fin” (82). Second, because the human race is an assembly of bodies that themselves are fleeting constructions only loosely held together and continually balancing between re-generation and degeneration, sickness and health, stability and instability, medicine becomes for Diderot the philosophical and political activity par excellence. Understood in this way, medicine is, as Roger Lewinter writes in the preface to his version of Elements in Diderot’s Oeuvres completes, the art de ramener au «sens commun» ou a la raison—subordination au tout—un sens particulier, un organe malade ou «insoumis», pour une raison ou un dessein detecte et reduit—seduit—par un traitement approprie qui rend a nouveau possible la vie commune de la cite, machine du corps, (r)etabli. La medecine est exercice eminemment social.. . . (Diderot, Elements 647) Medicine is socio-political inasmuch as it concerns itself with the individual body, the social body, the species body, and the consequences of one on the other. It attempts to maintain or (re-)establish a notion of the balanced body, where the health of the individual body pertains directly to the health of the social body. Medicine at once heals the sick organ, thereby bringing the individual body back to health and also brings the unruly individual body of the citizen back to reason and therefore back into the unity of the social body that needs balance in order to survive. Furthermore, this medical-political art is one of seduction, where the organs of the individual body and the individual citizens of the social body are moved to balance 457 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. |
