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'''Denis Diderot''' (1713-1784) was a French [[philosophe]] and leader of the [[Enlightenment]]. He contributed to literature, speculated on [[free will]] and attachment to material things.
'''Denis Diderot''' (1713-1784) was a French [[philosophe]] and leader of the [[Enlightenment]]. He contributed to literature, speculated on [[free will]] and attachment to material things.
he is best known for editing a great multivolume French language [[encyclopedia]] of scientific and social knowledge known as "[[Encyclopédie]]".
he is best known for editing a great multivolume French language [[encyclopedia]] of scientific and social knowledge known as "[[Encyclopédie]]". He worked on it from 1748 to 1772.
Diderot held a completely materialistic view of the universe, and believed all human behavior is determined by hereditary. He therefore warned his fellow philosophers against an overemphasis on mathematics and against the blind optimism that sees in the growth of physical knowledge an automatic social and human progress. He rejected the [[Idea of Progress]].
Diderot's most famous work, ''Le Neveu de Rameau'' (''Rameau's Nephew,'' 1805), was published posthumously. A satire of Diderot's society and era, the work was the first bourgeois drama and exemplified Diderot's theory that art must embody a moral point of view.
==Further reading==
==Further reading==
* Blum, Carol. ''Diderot: The Virtue of a Philosopher'' (1974)
* Crocker, Lester G. ''Diderot's Chaotic Order: Approach to a Synthesis'' (1974)
* Fellows, Otis E. ''Diderot,'' (1989)
* France, Peter. ''Diderot'' (1983)
* Mason, John H. ''The Irresistible Diderot'' (1982)
* Wilson, Arthur McCandless. ''Diderot'' (1972), the standard biography
* Wilson, Arthur McCandless. ''Diderot'' (1972), the standard biography
===Primary sources===
===Primary sources===