Denis Diderot
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 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
- 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