Diderot, Denis

From New World Encyclopedia
m
(19 intermediate revisions by 9 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
[[Image:DiderotVanLoo.jpg|thumb|right|''Portrait of Diderot'' by [[Louis-Michel van Loo]], 1767]]
+
{{ebapproved}}{{Paid}}{{Approved}}{{Images OK}}{{Submitted}}{{copyedited}}{{2Copyedited}}
 
+
{{epname|Diderot, Denis}}
'''Denis Diderot''' ([[October 5]], [[1713]] – [[July 31]], [[1784]]) was a [[France|French]] [[philosopher]] and [[writer]]. He was a prominent figure in what became known as the [[The Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]], and was the editor-in-chief of the famous ''[[Encyclopédie]]''.
+
[[Image:ENC 1-NA5 600px.jpeg|right|200px|Cover of the Encyclopédie.]]
 
 
Diderot also contributed to [[literature]], notably with his work ''[[Jacques le fataliste et son maître]]'', which, in emulation of [[Laurence Sterne]], challenged conventions regarding [[novel]]s and their structure and content, while also examining [[philosophy|philosophical]] ideas relating to [[free will]]. He is also known as the author of the essay ''Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown'', upon which many an [[essay|article]] and [[sermon]] about [[consumer]] desire have been based.
 
  
==Life==
+
'''Denis Diderot''' (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784) was a [[France|French]] [[philosopher]] and [[writer]], a prominent figure in what became known as the [[The Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]], and the editor-in-chief of the famous, ''Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.''  During his career, Diderot moved from [[Roman Cathlic Church|Roman Catholicism]] to [[deism]], [[atheism]], and finally, philosophic [[materialism]]. He did not develop a particular system of philosophy, but his original views on a wide variety of subjects influenced many modern thinkers and writers. He promoted the optimistic belief that all knowledge could be acquired through scientific experimentation and the exercise of reason, and championed the value and uniqueness of the individual. He explored the idea that different individuals should be judged by different moral standards according to their circumstances. Diderot also suggested that education should be tailored to the abilities and interests of the individual student, and that students should learn to experiment and do research rather than simply acquiring knowledge.
Diderot was born at in [[Langres]], [[Champagne, France]].
 
  
He was educated by the [[Jesuits]], and became a bookseller in [[Paris]]. In 1743 he married [[Antoinette Champion]], a devout [[Roman Catholic]]. He had affairs with the writer [[Madame Puisieux]] and with [[Sophie Volland]], to whom he was constant for the rest of her life. His letters to her are among the most graphic of all the pictures that we have of the daily life of the philosophic circle in Paris.
+
The ''Encyclopédie,'' conceived as a compendium of all available knowledge, challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and of the aristocratic government, both of whom tried to suppress it. The seventeen volumes of print and eleven volumes of engravings were completed in 1772, and remain as a monument of the Enlightenment.
 +
{{toc}}
 +
Diderot also contributed to [[literature]] by challenging conventions of structure and content with works such as ''Jacques le fataliste et son maître,'' ''Le Neveu de Rameau'' ''(Rameau's Nephew)'', and ''Règrets sur ma vieille robe de chamber.'' He announced the principles of a new drama, the serious, domestic, [[bourgeois]] drama of real life, in contrast to the stilted conventions of the classic French stage. As an art critic, he favored spontaneity and naturalism, and introduced a theory of ideas expressed by color.
  
===Early works===
+
== Life ==
{{French literature (small)}}
+
Diderot was born at in Langres, Champagne, France, in 1713, the son of a well-known cutler. Originally intending to become a priest, he studied with the [[Jesuits]] at Langres and was tonsured in 1726. He studied in Paris from 1729 to 1732, and received the degree of master of arts at the University of Paris in 1732. He then became an articled clerk in the law offices of Clément de Ris, but continued to pursue the study of languages, literature, philosophy, and mathematics. He abandoned an early ambition to become an actor, and from 1734 to 1744, seems to have made his living by working for a publisher, teaching, and writing sermons for missionaries. He frequently visited the coffee houses, particularly the Procope, where he befriended [[Jean Jacques Rousseau]] in 1741. In 1743, he married Antoinette Champion, a linen draper’s daughter, in secrecy because her father did not approve. The couple’s sole surviving child, Angelique, was born in 1753. Diderot educated her carefully, and she later wrote a short biography of her father and classified his manuscripts. Diderot had an affair with the writer Madame Madeleine de Puisieux, whose best work, ''Les caractères'' (1750-51), was published during their liaison. He also had an affair with Sophie Volland, from 1755 until her death in 1784, and his letters to her provide a vivid insight into the society of intellectuals such as [[Louise d'Epinay]], [[F.M. Grimm]], the [[Baron d'Holbach]], and Ferdinando Galiani. Among his friends Diderot counted Rousseau (with whom the friendship ended after a quarrel in 1757), [[Hume]], [[Helvetius]], Abbé Raynal, Lawrence Sterne, Marmontel, and Sedaine.  
Diderot's earliest works included a translation of [[Temple Stanyan|Stanyan]]'s ''History of Greece'' (1743); with two colleagues, [[François-Vincent Toussaint]] and [[Marc-Antoine Eidous]], he produced a translation of [[Dr. James of London|James]]'s ''Dictionary of Medicine'' [http://www.harpers.org/AMajesticLiteraryFossil.html] (1746–1748) and about the same date he published a free rendering of [[Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury|Shaftesbury]]'s ''Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit'' (1745), with some original notes of his own. He composed a volume of bawdy stories, ''[[Les bijoux indiscrets]]'' (1748); in later years he repented of this work. In 1746 he wrote the ''Pensées philosophiques'', and he presently added to this a short complementary essay on the sufficiency of [[natural religion]].
 
  
In 1747 he wrote the ''Promenade du sceptique'', an [[allegory]] pointing first to the extravagances of [[Catholicism]]; second, to the vanity of the pleasures of that world which is the rival of the church; and third, to the desperate and unfathomable uncertainty of the philosophy which professes to be so high above both church and world.
+
After his marriage, Diderot began to translate English works into French. In 1750, the bookseller André Le Breton approached him about producing a French translation of the ''Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences'' of Ephraim Chambers, a Scottish globe-maker. Diderot persuaded Le Breton to expand the project into a collection, written by all the active writers, of all the new ideas and all the new knowledge which was then circulating among the intellectuals of the Republic of Letters. His enthusiasm inspired the publishers, who amassed capital to fund the larger project, and applied for permission from the government. [[Jean le Rond d'Alembert]] was persuaded to become Diderot's colleague. Other participants in the enterprise were [[Voltaire]]; Chevalier de Jaucourt, a tireless researcher; and Marmontel. In 1750, an elaborate prospectus announced the project to the public, and the first volume appeared in 1751. By 1757, the number of subscribers had grown from 2,000 to 4,000. The last of the letterpress was issued in 1765, but it was 1772 before the subscribers received the final volumes of the ''Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.'' The finished Encyclopédie consisted of seventeen volumes and eleven books of engravings.  
 
 
Diderot's next piece was what first introduced him to the world as an original thinker, his famous ''Lettre sur les aveugles'' (1749). The immediate object of this short work was to show the dependence of men's ideas on their [[five senses]]. It considers the case of the [[intellect]] deprived of the aid of one of the senses; and in a second piece, published afterwards, Diderot considered the case of a similar deprivation in the [[deaf]] and [[speech disorder|mute]]. The ''Lettre sur les sourds et muets'', however, is substantially a digressive examination of some points in [[aesthetics]]. The philosophic significance of the two essays is in the advance they make towards the principle of [[relativism]]. But what interested the militant philosophers of that day was an episodic application of the principle of relativism to the concept of [[God]]. What makes the ''Lettre sur les aveugles'' interesting is its presentation, in a distinct though undigested form, of the theory of [[variation]] and [[natural selection]]. It is worth noticing, too, as an illustration of the comprehensive freedom with which Diderot felt his way round any subject that he approached, that in this theoretic essay he suggests the possibility of teaching the blind to read through the sense of touch.
 
 
 
His speculation in the ''Lettre sur les aveugles'' was too hardy for the authorities, and he was thrown into the prison of [[Vincennes]]. Here he remained for three months; then he was released, to enter upon the gigantic undertaking of his life.
 
 
 
===Encyclopédie===
 
[[Image:ENC 1-NA5 600px.jpeg|right|200px|Cover of the Encyclopédie.]]
 
''Main article: [[Encyclopédie]]''
 
  
The bookseller and printer [[André Le Breton]] had applied to Diderot with a project for the publication of a translation into French of [[Ephraim Chambers]]'s ''[[Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences]]'', undertaken in the first instance by the Englishman [[John Mills (encyclopedist)|John Mills]], and the German, [[Gottfried Sellius]]. Diderot accepted the proposal, but in his busy and pregnant intelligence the scheme became transformed. Instead of a mere reproduction of the ''Cyclopaedia'', he persuaded Le Breton to enter upon a new work, which should collect under one roof all the active writers, all the new ideas, all the new knowledge, that were then moving the cultivated class of the [[Republic of Letters]] to its depths, but still were comparatively ineffectual by reason of their dispersion.
+
For twenty years, Diderot worked incessantly to produce the ''Encyclopédie,'' suffering harassing persecution, and the desertion of several of his good friends. The [[ecclesiastical]] party detested the ''Encyclopédie'' because it gave a voice to materialistic and atheistic philosophers. The French aristocracy felt threatened by the promotion of concepts such as [[religious tolerance]], [[freedom of thought]], and the value of science and industry, and the assertion that the well-being of the common people ought to be the main purpose of a government. A belief arose that the ''Encyclopédie'' was the work of an organized band of conspirators against society, whose dangerous ideas were now being openly published. In 1759, the ''Encyclopédie'' was formally suppressed by the government, and it became necessary to continue the work clandestinely. The publisher was jailed, then released, and his license was revoked. The threat of visits from the police was a constant harassment, but the censor, de Malesherbes, believed in freedom of the press and warned them of impending raids, so that the manuscripts could be hidden.  
  
His enthusiasm infected the publishers; they collected a sufficient capital for a vaster enterprise than they had at first planned; [[Jean le Rond d'Alembert]] was persuaded to become Diderot's colleague; the requisite permission was procured from the government; in 1750 an elaborate prospectus announced the project to a delighted public; and in 1751 the first volume was given to the world. The last of the letterpress was issued in 1765, but it was 1772 before the subscribers received the final volumes of the ''Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers''.
+
D'Alembert withdrew from the enterprise and other powerful colleagues, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, among them, declined to contribute further to a book which had acquired such a bad reputation. Diderot continued to work alone, to complete the ''Encyclopédie'' as best he could. He wrote several hundred articles, many of which were laborious and comprehensive. He wore out his eyesight in correcting proofs, and in editing the manuscripts of less competent contributors. He spent his days in industrial workshops, mastering the processes of manufacturing, and his nights in reproducing on paper what he had learned during the day.  
  
These twenty years were to Diderot years not merely of incessant drudgery, but of harassing persecution, and of injury from the desertion of friends. The [[ecclesiastical]] party detested the ''Encyclopédie'', in which they saw a rising stronghold for their philosophic enemies. By 1757 they could endure the sight no longer. The subscribers had grown from 2,000 to 4,000, and this was a right measure of the growth of the work in popular influence and power. The ''Encyclopédie'' was threatening to the governing [[social class]]es of France ([[aristocracy]]) because it takes for granted the justice of [[religious tolerance]], [[freedom of thought]] and the value of [[science]] and [[industry]]. It asserts the [[democratic]] doctrine that it is the common people in a nation whose lot ought to be the main concern of the nation's government.  
+
At the last moment, when his immense work was complete, Diderot discovered that after he had signed and submitted the final proofs, the publisher, fearing the displeasure of the government, had removed all the passages that he considered too controversial. The manuscript to which Diderot had devoted twenty years was irreparably altered. (A collection of the altered passages was found and published in Russia in 1988.)
 +
<blockquote>
 +
The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people  is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual (from ''L'Encyclopédie'').
 +
</blockquote>
 +
While editing the ''Encyclopédie'' (1745-1772), Diderot wrote most of his own important works. He never became wealthy from his efforts. In 1765, in order to provide a dowry for his daughter, he put his library up for sale. Catherine II of Russia heard of this and purchased the library, leaving the books in his possession until they were needed and paying Diderot an annual salary to act as librarian and to add to the collection. During 1773 and 1774, Diderot made a difficult journey to Russia to visit Catherine II and help plan the establishment of a Russian university.
  
There was a contemporary belief that the ''Encyclopédie'' was the work of an organized band of conspirators against society, and that the dangerous ideas they held were now made truly formidable by their open publication. In 1759 the ''Encyclopédie'' was formally suppressed. The decree, however, did not arrest the continuance of the work, which went on, but with its difficulties increased by the necessity of being clandestine.
+
Diderot died of [[emphysema]] and [[dropsy]] in Paris, on July 31, 1784, and was buried in the city's Eglise Saint-Roch. Catherine II deposited his vast library at the Russian National Library.
  
D'Alembert withdrew from the enterprise and other powerful colleagues, [[Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune]], among them, declined to contribute further to a book which had acquired an evil fame. Diderot was left to bring the task to an end as best he could. He wrote several hundred articles, some of them very slight, but many of them most laborious, comprehensive, and ample. He wore out his eyesight in correcting [[proofreading|proof]]s, and in bringing the [[manuscript]] of less competent contributors into decent shape. He spent his days in the workshops, mastering the processes of manufacturing, and his nights in reproducing on paper what he had learnt during the day. And he was incessantly harassed all the time by alarms of a descent from the [[police]].  
+
== Thought and works ==
 +
Diderot was not a coherent and systematic thinker, but rather "a philosopher in whom all the contradictions of the time struggle with one another" (Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz). He was a representative of the intellectual changes that were taking place during the [[French Enlightenment]]. During his writing career, Diderot moved from being a devout [[Roman Catholicism|Roman Catholic]] to [[deism]] and finally to [[atheism]] and philosophical [[materialism]]. He experienced a reaction to the morality imposed by the Roman Catholic Church, believing that religious dogmas interfered with the natural, organic development of human passions, and contributed many of the most declamatory pages of the ''Système de la nature,'' an atheistic work by his friend Paul Henri Thiry, [[baron d'Holbach]]. He proclaimed that Christianity was morally harmful for those who believed in it, and a threat to societies which had not yet been introduced to it. Diderot believed that the moral improvement of humanity would directly result in the progress of civilization. He also explored the connection between biology and human culture, and between culture and morality, laying the groundwork for new developments in the social sciences.  
  
At the last moment, when his immense work was just drawing to an end, he encountered one last and crowning mortification: he discovered that the bookseller, fearing the displeasure of the government, had struck out from the proof sheets, after they had left Diderot's hands, all passages that he chose to think too dangerous. The monument to which Diderot had given the labour of twenty long and oppressive years was irreparably mutilated and defaced.
+
Diderot espoused the scientific materialism of the Enlightenment. He had translated some of the writings of [[John Locke]], and agreed with his emphasis on observation and experimentation over abstract speculation. During previous centuries, intellectuals had used [[empiricism]] and reason to seek [[metaphysics|metaphysical]] truth; during the Enlightenment they sought scientific knowledge of the physical universe. Diderot was confident that all things could be understood by using reason to interpret data supplied through the senses. In one of his earliest philosophical works, ''Lettre sur les aveugles,'' he offered an explanation of how phenomena could be accounted for in terms of the motion of matter, and nothing else.
  
===Other works===
+
The Enlightenment celebrated the value and uniqueness of the individual; Diderot wholeheartedly embraced this concept in every aspect of his work. He criticized the church for imposing its moral standards on everyone, and the secular education system for assuming that every individual was equally receptive to learning. He theorized that education should develop the curiosity and passionate interests of a student rather than simply instill knowledge. His dramatic works, in contrast to the formal, stilted plays of classic French drama, explored the characters and personalities of individuals and families in ordinary situations of domestic life. He delighted in curious puzzles of right and wrong, and in devising a conflict between the generalities of [[ethics]] and the conditions of an ingeniously contrived practical dilemma. Diderot attempted to educate his audience while showing sympathy for his protagonists. One of his best-known works, ''Le Neveu de Rameau,'' explores the conflict between a mind of genius and the restrictions of conventional morality. In his writing, Diderot promoted the idea that all human beings had equal value and the right to certain freedoms.  
[[Image:Greuze, Portrait of Diderot.jpg|thumb|200px|Portrait by [[Jean-Baptiste Greuze]], 1766.]]
 
  
Although the ''Encyclopédie'' was Diderot's monumental work, he was the author of many pieces that sowed nearly every field of intellectual interest with new and fruitful ideas. He wrote sentimental [[play]]s, ''Le Fils naturel'' (1757) and ''Le Père de famille'' (1758), accompanying them with essays on [[dramatic poetry]], including especially the ''Paradoxe sur le comédien'', in which he announced the principles of a new [[drama]], the serious, domestic, [[bourgeois]] drama of real life, in opposition to the stilted conventions of the classic French stage.
+
=== Early works ===
 +
Diderot's earliest works included a translation of Temple Stanyan's ''History of Greece'' (1743); with two colleagues, François-Vincent Toussaint and Marc-Antoine Eidous, he produced a translation of James's ''Dictionary of Medicine'' (1746-1748) and about the same date he published a free rendering of [[Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury|Shaftesbury]]'s ''Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit'' (1745), with some original notes of his own. He composed a volume of erotic stories, ''Les bijoux indiscrets'' (1748), which he later regretted publishing. His ''Pensées philosophiques'' (1746), a collection of aphorisms (many inspired by Shaftesbury) with a short complementary essay on the sufficiency of [[natural religion]], was burned by the [[Parliament of Paris]] for its anti-Christian ideas.
  
His [[art criticism]] was also highly influential. His ''Essai sur la peinture'' was described by [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], who thought it worth translating, as "a magnificent work, which speaks even more helpfully to the poet than to the painter, though to the painter too it is as a blazing torch."
+
In 1747, he wrote the ''Promenade du sceptique,'' an [[allegory]] pointing out the extravagances of [[Catholicism]]; the vanity of the pleasures of the secular world; and the desperate and unfathomable uncertainty of the philosophy of [[skepticism]], which disdains the values of both the church and the secular world.
  
Diderot's most intimate friend was the [[philologist]] [[Friedrich Melchior Grimm]]. Grimm wrote newsletters to various high personages in [[Germany]], reporting what was going on in the world of art and literature in Paris, then the intellectual capital of [[Europe]]. Diderot helped Grimm between 1759 and 1779, by writing for him an account of the annual exhibitions of paintings in the [[Paris Salon]]. These reports are highly readable pieces of art criticism. According to [[Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve]], they initiated the French into a new sentiment, and introduced people to the mystery and purport of colour by ideas. "Before Diderot," [[Anne Louise Germaine de Staël]] wrote, "I had never seen anything in pictures except dull and lifeless colours; it was his imagination that gave them relief and life, and it is almost a new sense for which I am indebted to his genius."
+
Diderot's next piece, ''Lettre sur les aveugles'' (1749), introduced him to the world as an original thinker. The immediate object of this short work was to show the dependence of humanity's ideas on their [[five senses]], by considering the case of the [[intellect]] deprived of the aid of the sense of sight. The work also suggested a theory of the progression of biological development through a series of stages, which bears some resemblance to the [[theory of natural selection]]; and the possibility of teaching the blind to read through the sense of touch. A second piece, the ''Lettre sur les sourds et muets,'' considering the case of a similar sense deprivation in the [[deaf]] and [[speech disorder|mute]], examined several points of [[aesthetics]]. The ''Lettre sur les aveugles''  applied the principle of [[relativism]] to the concept of [[God]], and was considered so radical that Diderot was seized and thrown into the prison of Vincennes for three months.
  
[[Jean-Baptiste Greuze]] was Diderot's favourite among contemporary artists. Greuze's most characteristic pictures were the rendering in colour of the same sentiment of domestic virtue and the [[pathos]] of common life, which Diderot had attempted to represent upon the stage. For Diderot was above all things interested in the life of men, not the abstract life of the race, but the incidents of individual character, the fortunes of a particular family, the relations of real and concrete motives in this or that special case. He delighted with the enthusiasm of a born [[casuist]] in curious puzzles of right and wrong, and in devising a conflict between the generalities of [[ethics]] and the conditions of an ingeniously contrived practical dilemma. Diderot's interest expressed itself in [[didactic]] and sympathetic form.
+
=== Encyclopédie ===
 +
The ''Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers'' is considered one of the monuments of the Enlightenment. As editor-in-chief, Diderot contributed hundreds of articles, many of them on [[social philosophy|social]] and religious philosophy. The ''Encyclopédie'' was intended to be a compendium of all theoretical knowledge available to humankind, as well as a practical reference for workmen of all trades. Diderot visited workshops and factories, taking notes on all types of manufacturing practices and eliciting trade secrets, and collaborating with an artist to produce detailed illustrations. As a consequence, the ''Encyclopédie'' remains a valuable historical record of the economic practices of the eighteenth century.
  
In two, however, of the most remarkable of all his pieces, this interest is not sympathetic, but ironic. ''Jacques le fataliste'' (written in 1773, but not published until 1796) is in manner an imitation of ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman|Tristram Shandy]]'' and ''The Sentimental Journey''. His dialogue ''Le Neveu de [[Jean-Philippe Rameau|Rameau]]'' (Rameau's Nephew) is a "farce-tragedy" reminiscent of the ''Satires'' of [[Horace]]. A favorite classical author of Diderot's, Horace's words ''Vertumnis quotquot sunt natis iniquis'' are quoted at the top of the ''Nephew''. Diderot's intention in writing the dialogue has been a matter of dispute; whether it was designed to be merely a [[satire]] on contemporary manners, or a reduction of the theory of [[self-interest]] to an absurdity, or the application of [[irony]] to the ethics of ordinary convention, or a mere setting for a discussion about [[music]], or a vigorous dramatic sketch of a parasite and a human original. Whatever its intent, it is a remarkable conversation, emblematic of an era of that held the arts of conversation in the highest esteem. The writing and publication history of the ''Nephew'' is likewise a bit mysterious. Diderot never saw the work through to publication during his lifetime, but there is every indication it was of continual interest to him. Though the original draft was written in 1761, he made additions to it year after year until his death twenty-three years later. Goethe's translation (1805) was the first introduction of ''Le Neveu de Rameau'' to the European public. After executing it, he gave back the original French manuscript to [[Friedrich Schiller]], from whom he had it. No authentic French copy of it appeared until the writer had been dead forty years (1823).  
+
The ''Encyclopédie'' became a mouthpiece for radical Enlightenment thinkers. It challenged the traditional authority of the Roman Catholic Church and undermined the political establishment by promoting religious tolerance, freedom of thought, and the value of science and industry. Numerous attempts were made to suppress its production, and subscribers were obliged to travel outside of Paris in order to collect the final ten volumes.
  
Diderot's miscellaneous pieces range from a graceful trifle like the ''Règrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre'' up to ''Le rêve de D'Alembert'', where he plunges into the depths of the controversy as to the ultimate constitution of [[matter]] and the [[meaning of life]]. Diderot was not a coherent and systematic thinker, but rather "a philosopher in whom all the contradictions of the time struggle with one another" ([[Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz|Rosenkranz]]). He did not develop a system of [[materialism]], but he contributed many of the most declamatory pages of the ''Système de la nature'' of his friend [[Paul Henri Thiry]], [[baron d'Holbach]], styled by some "the very Bible of [[atheism]]".  
+
=== Art, drama, and literature ===
 +
Although the ''Encyclopédie'' was Diderot's monumental work, he was the author of new ideas in many areas of intellectual interest. He wrote sentimental [[play]]s, ''Le Fils naturel'' (1757) and ''Le Père de famille'' (1758), accompanying them with essays on dramatic poetry, including the ''Paradoxe sur le comédien,'' in which he announced the principles of a new [[drama]], the serious, domestic, [[bourgeois]] drama of real life, in opposition to the stilted conventions of the classic French stage.
  
Varied and incessant as was Diderot's mental activity, it was not of a kind to bring him riches. He secured none of the posts that were occasionally given to needy men of letters; he could not even obtain that bare official recognition of merit which was implied by being chosen a member of the [[Académie française]]. When the time came for him to provide a [[dowry]] for his daughter, he saw no alternative than to sell his library. When [[Catherine II of Russia]] heard of his straits, she commissioned an agent in Paris to buy the library, and then requested the philosopher to retain the books in Paris until she required them, and to constitute himself her librarian, with a yearly salary. In 1773 and 1774 Diderot spent some months at the empress's court at [[St Petersburg]].
+
Diderot was also an art critic. His ''Essai sur la peinture'' was described by [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]], who thought it worth translating, as a magnificent work, which speaks even more helpfully to the poet than to the painter, though to the painter too it is as a blazing torch." Diderot's most intimate friend, the [[philologist]] [[Friedrich Melchior Grimm]], wrote newsletters for aristocrats in Germany, reporting what was going on in the world of art and literature in Paris, then the intellectual capital of Europe. Between 1759 and 1779, Diderot helped Grimm by writing accounts of the annual exhibitions of paintings in the Paris Salon. According to Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, these pieces of art criticism initiated a new attitude towards art in France, and introduced people to the mystery and purport of color by ideas. "Before Diderot," Anne Louise Germaine de Staël wrote, "I had never seen anything in pictures except dull and lifeless colors; it was his imagination that gave them relief and life, and it is almost a new sense for which I am indebted to his genius.Diderot's favorite among contemporary artists was Jean-Baptiste Greuze, whose paintings rendered scenes of domestic virtue and the pathos of common life: "It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none" (Paradoxe sur le comédien).  
  
He died of [[emphysema]] and [[dropsy]] in [[Paris]] on [[July 31]], [[1784]], and was buried in the city's [[Eglise Saint-Roch]]. His heirs sold his vast library to Catherine II, who had it deposited at the [[Russian National Library]].
+
Two of Diderot’s most remarkable pieces are ''Jacques le fataliste'' (written in 1773, but not published until 1796) and the dialog ''Le Neveu de Rameau'' (''Rameau's Nephew''). ''Jacques le fataliste et son maître'' is a humorous, ironic story of fate and individual choice. Diderot wrote the original draft of ''Le Neveu de Rameau'' in 1761, and continued to make alterations to it until his death twenty-three years later. Goethe's German translation (1805) was the first publication of ''Le Neveu de Rameau'' in Europe; the first French publication did not appear until 1823. Other works include ''Règrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre'' ''(Regrets on Parting with My Old Bathrobe)'' and  ''Le rêve de D'Alembert,'' which deals with the constitution of matter and the meaning of life.  
  
==See also==
+
Several of Diderot’s books were confiscated because of their radical content, and did not appear in print until after his death, during the [[French Revolution]]. ''La religieuse,'' the story of a young girl who entered a nunnery and was corrupted by her Superior, was published in 1796. It was originally written by Diderot and Grimm as an attempt to lure their acquaintance, the Marquis de Croismare, to Paris by playing on his interest in the case of a nun who had refused to give up her vows. Diderot sent letters in her name to the marquis, as if she had escaped her convent and was looking for his help, and from these letters he composed the book. ''Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville,'' which contains an indictment of [[slavery]] and [[colonialism]], was not published until 1796.
*[[Encyclopedia]]
 
*[[Encyclopedist]]
 
*[[Liberalism]]
 
*[[Contributions to liberal theory]]
 
*[[Atheism]]
 
*[[University of Paris VII: Denis Diderot]]
 
  
==Bibliography==
+
=== Works by Diderot===
* ''Essai sur le mérite et la vertu'', written by [[Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury|Shaftesbury]] French translation and annotation by Diderot (1745)
+
* ''Essai sur le mérite et la vertu,'' written by [[Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury|Shaftesbury]] French translation and annotation by Diderot (1745)
* ''[[Pensées philosophiques]]'', essay (1746)
+
* ''Pensées philosophiques,'' essay (1746)
 
* ''La promenade du sceptique'' (1747)
 
* ''La promenade du sceptique'' (1747)
* ''[[Les bijoux indiscrets]]'', novel (1748)
+
* ''Les bijoux indiscrets,'' novel (1748)
* ''[[Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient]]'' (1749)
+
* ''Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient'' (1749)
* L'''[[Encyclopédie]],'' (1750-1765)
+
* L'''Encyclopédie,'' (1750-1765)
 
* ''Lettre sur les sourds et muets'' (1751)
 
* ''Lettre sur les sourds et muets'' (1751)
* ''[[Pensées sur l'interprétation de la nature]]'', essai (1751)
+
* ''Pensées sur l'interprétation de la nature,'' essay (1751)
 
* ''Le fils naturel'' (1757)
 
* ''Le fils naturel'' (1757)
 
* ''Entretien sur le fils naturel'' (1757)
 
* ''Entretien sur le fils naturel'' (1757)
* ''Salons'', critique d'art (1759-1781)
+
* ''Salons,'' critique d'art (1759-1781)
* ''[[La Religieuse]]'', Roman (1760)
+
* ''La Religieuse,'' Roman (1760)
* ''[[Le neveu de Rameau]]'', dialogue (1761?)
+
* ''Le neveu de Rameau,'' dialogue (1761?)
 
* ''Lettre sur le commerce de la librairie (1763)
 
* ''Lettre sur le commerce de la librairie (1763)
 
* ''Mystification ou l’histoire des portraits'' (1768)
 
* ''Mystification ou l’histoire des portraits'' (1768)
 
* ''Entretien entre D'Alembert et Diderot'' (1769)
 
* ''Entretien entre D'Alembert et Diderot'' (1769)
* ''[[Le rêve de D'Alembert]]'', dialogue (1769)
+
* ''Le rêve de D'Alembert,'' dialogue (1769)
 
* ''Suite de l'entretien entre D'Alembert et Diderot'' (1769)
 
* ''Suite de l'entretien entre D'Alembert et Diderot'' (1769)
* ''[[Paradoxe sur le comédien]]'' (1769?)
+
* ''Paradoxe sur le comédien'' (c. 1769)
 
* ''Apologie de l'abbé Galiani'' (1770)
 
* ''Apologie de l'abbé Galiani'' (1770)
* ''Principes philosophiques sur la matière et le mouvement'', essai (1770)
+
* ''Principes philosophiques sur la matière et le mouvement,'' essay (1770)
 
* ''Entretien d'un père avec ses enfants'' (1771)
 
* ''Entretien d'un père avec ses enfants'' (1771)
* ''[[Jacques le fataliste et son maître]]'', novel (1771-1778)
+
* ''Jacques le fataliste et son maître,'' novel (1771-1778)
* ''[[Supplément au voyage de Bougainville]]'' (1772)
+
* ''Supplément au voyage de Bougainville'' (1772)
* ''Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes'', in collaboration with [[Raynal]] (1772-1781)
+
* ''Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes,'' in collaboration with Raynal (1772-1781)
 
* ''Voyage en Hollande'' (1773)
 
* ''Voyage en Hollande'' (1773)
 
* ''Eléments de physiologie'' (1773-1774)
 
* ''Eléments de physiologie'' (1773-1774)
 
* ''Réfutation d'Helvétius'' (1774)
 
* ''Réfutation d'Helvétius'' (1774)
* ''Observations sur le [[Nakaz]]'' (1774)
+
* ''Observations sur le Nakaz'' (1774)
 
* ''Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron'' (1778)
 
* ''Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron'' (1778)
 
* ''Lettre apologétique de l'abbé Raynal à Monsieur Grimm'' (1781)
 
* ''Lettre apologétique de l'abbé Raynal à Monsieur Grimm'' (1781)
Line 99: Line 90:
  
 
==References==
 
==References==
 +
*Bremner, G. ''Order and Change: The Pattern of Diderot’s Thought''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
 +
*Chabut, Marie-helene. ''Denis Diderot.'' Rodopi Bv Editions, 1998.
 +
*Diderot, Denis. ''Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry, Vol. 1'' Dover Publications, 1993.
 +
*—, David Coward, trans. ''Jacques the Fatalist''. Oxford University Press, 1999.
 +
*—, John Hope Mason, Robert Wokler, Raymond Geuss, and Quentin Skinner, eds. ''Diderot: Political Writings''. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
 +
*—, Lorna Sandler, trans. ''Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature and Other Philosophical Works''. Clinamen Press Ltd., 2000
 +
*—, Leonard Tancock, trans. ''Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream.'' Penguin Classics, 1976.
 
*{{1911}}
 
*{{1911}}
  
 
== External links ==
 
== External links ==
{{wikiquote}}
+
All links retrieved July 26, 2022.
{{commons|Denis Diderot}}
 
* {{gutenberg author| id=Denis+Diderot | name=Denis Diderot}}
 
*[http://gallica.bnf.fr/scripts/catalog.php?Mod=i&Titre=&FondsTout=on&FondsTxt=on&FondsImp=on&FondsPer=on&FondsImg=on&FondsAud=on&FondsMan=on&Auteur=diderot&Sujet=&RPT= Diderot's listing at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (in French)]
 
* [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15098/15098-h/15098-h.htm The Project Gutenberg eBook of Diderot] by [[John Morley]]
 
* [http://dromo.info/diderotbio.htm Short biography]
 
  
 +
*[http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/d#a2071 Works by Denis Diderot, Project Gutenberg].
 +
* [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15098/15098-h/15098-h.htm The Project Gutenberg eBook of Diderot] by John Morley.
 +
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetics-18th-french/ Eighteenth century French Aesthetics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy].
 +
===General philosophy sources===
 +
*[http://plato.stanford.edu/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy].
 +
*[http://www.iep.utm.edu/ The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy].
 +
*[http://www.bu.edu/wcp/PaidArch.html Paideia Project Online].
 +
*[http://www.gutenberg.org/ Project Gutenberg].
  
[[Category:1713 births|Diderot, Denis]]
+
[[Category:philosophers]]
[[Category:1784 deaths|Diderot, Denis]]
+
[[Category:writers and poets]]
[[Category:18th century philosophers|Diderot, Denis]]
+
[[category:literature]]
[[Category:Atheist philosophers|Diderot, Denis]]
+
[[category:art]]
[[Category:Deaths from emphysema|Diderot, Denis]]
 
[[Category:Encyclopedists|Diderot, Denis]]
 
[[Category:Enlightenment philosophers|Diderot, Denis]]
 
[[Category:French art critics|Diderot, Denis]]
 
[[Category:French atheists|Diderot, Denis]]
 
[[Category:French essayists|Diderot, Denis]]
 
[[Category:French literary critics|Diderot, Denis]]
 
[[Category:French philosophers|Diderot, Denis]]
 
 
[[Category:Philosophy and religion]]
 
[[Category:Philosophy and religion]]
 +
[[category:art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
  
 
{{Credit|67535601}}
 
{{Credit|67535601}}

Revision as of 00:48, 27 July 2022

Cover of the Encyclopédie.

Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784) was a French philosopher and writer, a prominent figure in what became known as the Enlightenment, and the editor-in-chief of the famous, Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. During his career, Diderot moved from Roman Catholicism to deism, atheism, and finally, philosophic materialism. He did not develop a particular system of philosophy, but his original views on a wide variety of subjects influenced many modern thinkers and writers. He promoted the optimistic belief that all knowledge could be acquired through scientific experimentation and the exercise of reason, and championed the value and uniqueness of the individual. He explored the idea that different individuals should be judged by different moral standards according to their circumstances. Diderot also suggested that education should be tailored to the abilities and interests of the individual student, and that students should learn to experiment and do research rather than simply acquiring knowledge.

The Encyclopédie, conceived as a compendium of all available knowledge, challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and of the aristocratic government, both of whom tried to suppress it. The seventeen volumes of print and eleven volumes of engravings were completed in 1772, and remain as a monument of the Enlightenment.

Diderot also contributed to literature by challenging conventions of structure and content with works such as Jacques le fataliste et son maître, Le Neveu de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew), and Règrets sur ma vieille robe de chamber. He announced the principles of a new drama, the serious, domestic, bourgeois drama of real life, in contrast to the stilted conventions of the classic French stage. As an art critic, he favored spontaneity and naturalism, and introduced a theory of ideas expressed by color.

Life

Diderot was born at in Langres, Champagne, France, in 1713, the son of a well-known cutler. Originally intending to become a priest, he studied with the Jesuits at Langres and was tonsured in 1726. He studied in Paris from 1729 to 1732, and received the degree of master of arts at the University of Paris in 1732. He then became an articled clerk in the law offices of Clément de Ris, but continued to pursue the study of languages, literature, philosophy, and mathematics. He abandoned an early ambition to become an actor, and from 1734 to 1744, seems to have made his living by working for a publisher, teaching, and writing sermons for missionaries. He frequently visited the coffee houses, particularly the Procope, where he befriended Jean Jacques Rousseau in 1741. In 1743, he married Antoinette Champion, a linen draper’s daughter, in secrecy because her father did not approve. The couple’s sole surviving child, Angelique, was born in 1753. Diderot educated her carefully, and she later wrote a short biography of her father and classified his manuscripts. Diderot had an affair with the writer Madame Madeleine de Puisieux, whose best work, Les caractères (1750-51), was published during their liaison. He also had an affair with Sophie Volland, from 1755 until her death in 1784, and his letters to her provide a vivid insight into the society of intellectuals such as Louise d'Epinay, F.M. Grimm, the Baron d'Holbach, and Ferdinando Galiani. Among his friends Diderot counted Rousseau (with whom the friendship ended after a quarrel in 1757), Hume, Helvetius, Abbé Raynal, Lawrence Sterne, Marmontel, and Sedaine.

After his marriage, Diderot began to translate English works into French. In 1750, the bookseller André Le Breton approached him about producing a French translation of the Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences of Ephraim Chambers, a Scottish globe-maker. Diderot persuaded Le Breton to expand the project into a collection, written by all the active writers, of all the new ideas and all the new knowledge which was then circulating among the intellectuals of the Republic of Letters. His enthusiasm inspired the publishers, who amassed capital to fund the larger project, and applied for permission from the government. Jean le Rond d'Alembert was persuaded to become Diderot's colleague. Other participants in the enterprise were Voltaire; Chevalier de Jaucourt, a tireless researcher; and Marmontel. In 1750, an elaborate prospectus announced the project to the public, and the first volume appeared in 1751. By 1757, the number of subscribers had grown from 2,000 to 4,000. The last of the letterpress was issued in 1765, but it was 1772 before the subscribers received the final volumes of the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. The finished Encyclopédie consisted of seventeen volumes and eleven books of engravings.

For twenty years, Diderot worked incessantly to produce the Encyclopédie, suffering harassing persecution, and the desertion of several of his good friends. The ecclesiastical party detested the Encyclopédie because it gave a voice to materialistic and atheistic philosophers. The French aristocracy felt threatened by the promotion of concepts such as religious tolerance, freedom of thought, and the value of science and industry, and the assertion that the well-being of the common people ought to be the main purpose of a government. A belief arose that the Encyclopédie was the work of an organized band of conspirators against society, whose dangerous ideas were now being openly published. In 1759, the Encyclopédie was formally suppressed by the government, and it became necessary to continue the work clandestinely. The publisher was jailed, then released, and his license was revoked. The threat of visits from the police was a constant harassment, but the censor, de Malesherbes, believed in freedom of the press and warned them of impending raids, so that the manuscripts could be hidden.

D'Alembert withdrew from the enterprise and other powerful colleagues, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, among them, declined to contribute further to a book which had acquired such a bad reputation. Diderot continued to work alone, to complete the Encyclopédie as best he could. He wrote several hundred articles, many of which were laborious and comprehensive. He wore out his eyesight in correcting proofs, and in editing the manuscripts of less competent contributors. He spent his days in industrial workshops, mastering the processes of manufacturing, and his nights in reproducing on paper what he had learned during the day.

At the last moment, when his immense work was complete, Diderot discovered that after he had signed and submitted the final proofs, the publisher, fearing the displeasure of the government, had removed all the passages that he considered too controversial. The manuscript to which Diderot had devoted twenty years was irreparably altered. (A collection of the altered passages was found and published in Russia in 1988.)

The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual (from L'Encyclopédie).

While editing the Encyclopédie (1745-1772), Diderot wrote most of his own important works. He never became wealthy from his efforts. In 1765, in order to provide a dowry for his daughter, he put his library up for sale. Catherine II of Russia heard of this and purchased the library, leaving the books in his possession until they were needed and paying Diderot an annual salary to act as librarian and to add to the collection. During 1773 and 1774, Diderot made a difficult journey to Russia to visit Catherine II and help plan the establishment of a Russian university.

Diderot died of emphysema and dropsy in Paris, on July 31, 1784, and was buried in the city's Eglise Saint-Roch. Catherine II deposited his vast library at the Russian National Library.

Thought and works

Diderot was not a coherent and systematic thinker, but rather "a philosopher in whom all the contradictions of the time struggle with one another" (Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz). He was a representative of the intellectual changes that were taking place during the French Enlightenment. During his writing career, Diderot moved from being a devout Roman Catholic to deism and finally to atheism and philosophical materialism. He experienced a reaction to the morality imposed by the Roman Catholic Church, believing that religious dogmas interfered with the natural, organic development of human passions, and contributed many of the most declamatory pages of the Système de la nature, an atheistic work by his friend Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'Holbach. He proclaimed that Christianity was morally harmful for those who believed in it, and a threat to societies which had not yet been introduced to it. Diderot believed that the moral improvement of humanity would directly result in the progress of civilization. He also explored the connection between biology and human culture, and between culture and morality, laying the groundwork for new developments in the social sciences.

Diderot espoused the scientific materialism of the Enlightenment. He had translated some of the writings of John Locke, and agreed with his emphasis on observation and experimentation over abstract speculation. During previous centuries, intellectuals had used empiricism and reason to seek metaphysical truth; during the Enlightenment they sought scientific knowledge of the physical universe. Diderot was confident that all things could be understood by using reason to interpret data supplied through the senses. In one of his earliest philosophical works, Lettre sur les aveugles, he offered an explanation of how phenomena could be accounted for in terms of the motion of matter, and nothing else.

The Enlightenment celebrated the value and uniqueness of the individual; Diderot wholeheartedly embraced this concept in every aspect of his work. He criticized the church for imposing its moral standards on everyone, and the secular education system for assuming that every individual was equally receptive to learning. He theorized that education should develop the curiosity and passionate interests of a student rather than simply instill knowledge. His dramatic works, in contrast to the formal, stilted plays of classic French drama, explored the characters and personalities of individuals and families in ordinary situations of domestic life. He delighted in curious puzzles of right and wrong, and in devising a conflict between the generalities of ethics and the conditions of an ingeniously contrived practical dilemma. Diderot attempted to educate his audience while showing sympathy for his protagonists. One of his best-known works, Le Neveu de Rameau, explores the conflict between a mind of genius and the restrictions of conventional morality. In his writing, Diderot promoted the idea that all human beings had equal value and the right to certain freedoms.

Early works

Diderot's earliest works included a translation of Temple Stanyan's History of Greece (1743); with two colleagues, François-Vincent Toussaint and Marc-Antoine Eidous, he produced a translation of James's Dictionary of Medicine (1746-1748) and about the same date he published a free rendering of Shaftesbury's Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit (1745), with some original notes of his own. He composed a volume of erotic stories, Les bijoux indiscrets (1748), which he later regretted publishing. His Pensées philosophiques (1746), a collection of aphorisms (many inspired by Shaftesbury) with a short complementary essay on the sufficiency of natural religion, was burned by the Parliament of Paris for its anti-Christian ideas.

In 1747, he wrote the Promenade du sceptique, an allegory pointing out the extravagances of Catholicism; the vanity of the pleasures of the secular world; and the desperate and unfathomable uncertainty of the philosophy of skepticism, which disdains the values of both the church and the secular world.

Diderot's next piece, Lettre sur les aveugles (1749), introduced him to the world as an original thinker. The immediate object of this short work was to show the dependence of humanity's ideas on their five senses, by considering the case of the intellect deprived of the aid of the sense of sight. The work also suggested a theory of the progression of biological development through a series of stages, which bears some resemblance to the theory of natural selection; and the possibility of teaching the blind to read through the sense of touch. A second piece, the Lettre sur les sourds et muets, considering the case of a similar sense deprivation in the deaf and mute, examined several points of aesthetics. The Lettre sur les aveugles applied the principle of relativism to the concept of God, and was considered so radical that Diderot was seized and thrown into the prison of Vincennes for three months.

Encyclopédie

The Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers is considered one of the monuments of the Enlightenment. As editor-in-chief, Diderot contributed hundreds of articles, many of them on social and religious philosophy. The Encyclopédie was intended to be a compendium of all theoretical knowledge available to humankind, as well as a practical reference for workmen of all trades. Diderot visited workshops and factories, taking notes on all types of manufacturing practices and eliciting trade secrets, and collaborating with an artist to produce detailed illustrations. As a consequence, the Encyclopédie remains a valuable historical record of the economic practices of the eighteenth century.

The Encyclopédie became a mouthpiece for radical Enlightenment thinkers. It challenged the traditional authority of the Roman Catholic Church and undermined the political establishment by promoting religious tolerance, freedom of thought, and the value of science and industry. Numerous attempts were made to suppress its production, and subscribers were obliged to travel outside of Paris in order to collect the final ten volumes.

Art, drama, and literature

Although the Encyclopédie was Diderot's monumental work, he was the author of new ideas in many areas of intellectual interest. He wrote sentimental plays, Le Fils naturel (1757) and Le Père de famille (1758), accompanying them with essays on dramatic poetry, including the Paradoxe sur le comédien, in which he announced the principles of a new drama, the serious, domestic, bourgeois drama of real life, in opposition to the stilted conventions of the classic French stage.

Diderot was also an art critic. His Essai sur la peinture was described by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who thought it worth translating, as a magnificent work, which speaks even more helpfully to the poet than to the painter, though to the painter too it is as a blazing torch." Diderot's most intimate friend, the philologist Friedrich Melchior Grimm, wrote newsletters for aristocrats in Germany, reporting what was going on in the world of art and literature in Paris, then the intellectual capital of Europe. Between 1759 and 1779, Diderot helped Grimm by writing accounts of the annual exhibitions of paintings in the Paris Salon. According to Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, these pieces of art criticism initiated a new attitude towards art in France, and introduced people to the mystery and purport of color by ideas. "Before Diderot," Anne Louise Germaine de Staël wrote, "I had never seen anything in pictures except dull and lifeless colors; it was his imagination that gave them relief and life, and it is almost a new sense for which I am indebted to his genius." Diderot's favorite among contemporary artists was Jean-Baptiste Greuze, whose paintings rendered scenes of domestic virtue and the pathos of common life: "It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none" (Paradoxe sur le comédien).

Two of Diderot’s most remarkable pieces are Jacques le fataliste (written in 1773, but not published until 1796) and the dialog Le Neveu de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew). Jacques le fataliste et son maître is a humorous, ironic story of fate and individual choice. Diderot wrote the original draft of Le Neveu de Rameau in 1761, and continued to make alterations to it until his death twenty-three years later. Goethe's German translation (1805) was the first publication of Le Neveu de Rameau in Europe; the first French publication did not appear until 1823. Other works include Règrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre (Regrets on Parting with My Old Bathrobe) and Le rêve de D'Alembert, which deals with the constitution of matter and the meaning of life.

Several of Diderot’s books were confiscated because of their radical content, and did not appear in print until after his death, during the French Revolution. La religieuse, the story of a young girl who entered a nunnery and was corrupted by her Superior, was published in 1796. It was originally written by Diderot and Grimm as an attempt to lure their acquaintance, the Marquis de Croismare, to Paris by playing on his interest in the case of a nun who had refused to give up her vows. Diderot sent letters in her name to the marquis, as if she had escaped her convent and was looking for his help, and from these letters he composed the book. Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville, which contains an indictment of slavery and colonialism, was not published until 1796.

Works by Diderot

  • Essai sur le mérite et la vertu, written by Shaftesbury French translation and annotation by Diderot (1745)
  • Pensées philosophiques, essay (1746)
  • La promenade du sceptique (1747)
  • Les bijoux indiscrets, novel (1748)
  • Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient (1749)
  • L'Encyclopédie, (1750-1765)
  • Lettre sur les sourds et muets (1751)
  • Pensées sur l'interprétation de la nature, essay (1751)
  • Le fils naturel (1757)
  • Entretien sur le fils naturel (1757)
  • Salons, critique d'art (1759-1781)
  • La Religieuse, Roman (1760)
  • Le neveu de Rameau, dialogue (1761?)
  • Lettre sur le commerce de la librairie (1763)
  • Mystification ou l’histoire des portraits (1768)
  • Entretien entre D'Alembert et Diderot (1769)
  • Le rêve de D'Alembert, dialogue (1769)
  • Suite de l'entretien entre D'Alembert et Diderot (1769)
  • Paradoxe sur le comédien (c. 1769)
  • Apologie de l'abbé Galiani (1770)
  • Principes philosophiques sur la matière et le mouvement, essay (1770)
  • Entretien d'un père avec ses enfants (1771)
  • Jacques le fataliste et son maître, novel (1771-1778)
  • Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (1772)
  • Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes, in collaboration with Raynal (1772-1781)
  • Voyage en Hollande (1773)
  • Eléments de physiologie (1773-1774)
  • Réfutation d'Helvétius (1774)
  • Observations sur le Nakaz (1774)
  • Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron (1778)
  • Lettre apologétique de l'abbé Raynal à Monsieur Grimm (1781)
  • Aux insurgents d'Amérique (1782)
  • Salons

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Bremner, G. Order and Change: The Pattern of Diderot’s Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
  • Chabut, Marie-helene. Denis Diderot. Rodopi Bv Editions, 1998.
  • Diderot, Denis. Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry, Vol. 1 Dover Publications, 1993.
  • —, David Coward, trans. Jacques the Fatalist. Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • —, John Hope Mason, Robert Wokler, Raymond Geuss, and Quentin Skinner, eds. Diderot: Political Writings. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  • —, Lorna Sandler, trans. Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature and Other Philosophical Works. Clinamen Press Ltd., 2000
  • —, Leonard Tancock, trans. Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream. Penguin Classics, 1976.
  • This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

All links retrieved July 26, 2022.

General philosophy sources

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.