Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was a French philosopher and leader of the Enlightenment. A polymath, he contributed in numerous disciplines, including philosophy, literature and art criticism. He speculated on free will and the 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 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. In his opinion, the aim to explain the universe by means of geometry was doomed to failure. Therefore, he founded his philosophy on experiment and the study of probabilities. He wrote several articles and supplements concerning gambling, mortality rates, and inoculation against smallpox for the 'Encyclopédie.' There he discreetly but firmly refuted d'Alembert's technical errors and personal positions on probability.

He wrote extensively on the theater; his understanding of the classical theater is characterized by audience-stage separation, orientation to the universal spectator, and stress on the aesthetics of the theater coming from the actors and the playwright.

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.

In 1772-74 Empress Catherine the Great of Russia brought him to St. Petersburg, where his ideas had enormous influence. In turn the experience in a strange land broadened his outlook as well.

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

Primary sources

• Diderot, Denis, ed. A Diderot Pictorial Encyclopedia of Trades and Industry, Vol. 1 (1993 reprint) excerpt and text search
• Diderot, Denis. Diderot: Political Writings ed. by John Hope Mason and Robert Wokler (1992) excerpt and text search, with introduction
• main works of Diderot in English translation