Part 5

Diderot experts Caroline Warman and Kate Tunstall join forces to introduce his most extraordinary work, "D'Alembert's Dream".

Denis Diderot's publications range from his monumental Encyclopedie to his erotic novella, Indiscreet Jewels, but perhaps his most extraordinary work is D'Alembert's Dream. It starts with Diderot's fellow encyclopedist, D'Alembert, challenging him to explain human life without making any reference to God or the soul or anything that isn't purely physical. Caroline Warman and Kate Tunstall, both Diderot experts at the University of Oxford, take on the Dream in a dialogue of their own and playfully challenge the listener to grapple with this quintessentially Enlightenment subject themselves.