Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784)
Denis Diderot was the most prominent of the French Encyclopedists. He was
educated by the Jesuits, and, refusing to enter one of the learned professions,
was turned adrift by his father and came to Paris, where he lived from hand to
mouth for a time. Gradually, however, he became recognized as one of the most
powerful writers of the day. His first independent work was the Essai sur le
merite et la vertu (1745). As one of the editors of the Dictionnaire de
medecine (6 vols., Paris, 1746), he gained valuable experience in
encyclopedic system. His Pensees philosophiques (The Hague, 1746), in
which he attacked both atheism and the received Christianity, was burned by
order of the Parliament of Paris. In the circle of the leaders of the
Enlightenment, Diderot's name became known especially by his Lettre sur les
aveugles (London, 1749), which supported Locke's theory of knowledge. He
attacked the conventional morality of the day, with the result (to which
possibly an allusion to the mistress of a minister contributed) that he was
imprisoned at Vincennes for three months. He was released by the influence of
Voltaire's friend Mme. du Chatelet, and thenceforth was in close relation with
the leaders of revolutionary thought. He had made very little pecuniary profit
out of the Encyclopedie, and Grimm appealed on his behalf to Catherine of
Russia, who in 1765 bought his library, allowing him the use of the books as
long as he lived, and assigning him a yearly salary which a little later she
paid him for fifty years in advance. In 1773 she summoned him to St. Petersburg
with Grimm to converse with him in person. On his return he lived until his
death in a house provided by her, in comparative retirement but in unceasing
labor on the undertakings of his party, writing (according to Grimm) two-thirds
of Raynal's famous Histoire philosophique, and contributing some of the
most rhetorical pages to Helvetius's De l'esprit and Holbach's Systeme
de la nature Systeme social, and Alorale universelle. His numerous
writings include the most varied forms of literary effort, from inept licentious
tales and comedies which pointed away from the stiff classical style of the
French drama and strongly influenced Lessing, to the most daring ethical and
metaphysical speculations. Like his famous contemporary Samuel Johnson, he is
said to have been more effective as a talker than as a writer; and his mental
qualifications were rather those of a stimulating force than of a reasoned
philosopher. His position gradually changed from theism to deism, then to
materialism, and finally rested in a pantheistic sensualism In Sainte-Beuve's
phrase, he was " the first great writer who belonged wholly and undividedly to
modern democratic society," and his attacks on the political system of France
were among the most potent causes of the Revolution.
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