Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784) was a French philosopher and writer. Born in Langres, Champagne, France in 1713, he was a prominent figure in what became known as the Enlightenment, and was the editor-in-chief of the famous Encyclopédie.

Early works

Diderot's earliest included a translation of Stanyan's History of Greece (1743); with two colleagues he produced a translation of James's Dictionary of Medicine http://www.harpers.org/AMajesticLiteraryFossil.html (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 bawdy stories, the Les bijoux indiscrets (1748); in later years he repented of this work. In 1746 he wrote the Pensées philosophiques (1746), and he presently added to this a short complementary essay on the sufficiency of natural religion.

Related Topics:
Stanyan - James - Shaftesbury - Les bijoux indiscrets - Natural religion

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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.

Related Topics:
Allegory - Catholicism

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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 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.

Related Topics:
Five senses - Intellect - Deaf - Mute - Aesthetics - Relativism - God - Variation - Natural selection

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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.

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