Abstract

In November 1768 Kazimierz Adam Czartoryski visited Diderot in his house. Mrs Geoffrin gave him a smart dressing-gown to make Diderot look noble. According to an aesthetic theory that a part of a picture must harmonize with every other to form a whole, Diderot was obliged to change the modest design of his house to make it match the dressing-gown. He soon claimed that his old dressing-gown was his complaisant friend whereas the new one a despotic master. As a result of this event, Diderot engages in philosophical deliberation about the dialectics of a master and a slave and fetishizing the household articles. The deliberation is included in his philosophical miniature which was written after Czartoryski’s visit: „Les regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre”. In this work Diderot criticizes luxury and a lust for riches: „poverty gives freedom, wealth restricts”. Wealth is a courtesan, Lais, who must be possessed before it possesses you