Sabrina Mara Sossa

The research project presented seeks to comprehend the deployment of an theory of sensations in Denis Diderot, specially in the book Letter on the Blind, demonstrating in what whay his experimentalist philosophy uses the multiplicity of literary forms to express its proposals, while relating to important philosophical systems, such as the legacy of the empirism in the nineteenth century french philosophy. In that sense, it is therefore proposed to analyze the question of the senses in diderotian texts, as well as its roll in the work The indiscreet jewels, and also its refinement in the Letter on the deaf-mutes, that develops the esthetic question more precisely. Therefore, the propposal takes place in two essencial steps, namely, to identify the function of the senses in the theory of knowledge that sustains itself from this physiologist theory as an principle of theorical organization, and in what way this theory of sensations elaborates an draft of the future diderotian materialism. For this purpose, it will be utilized the discourse analysis and the repeated reeding of the elementary bibliography, with the objective of contribuite to the study of this philosopher’s work.