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Denis Diderot
(French:
[dəni didʁo]
) (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784) was a
French
philosopher,
art critic
, and writer. He was a prominent person during the
Enlightenment
and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the
Encyclopédie
along with
Jean le Rond d'Alembert
.
Diderot also contributed to literature, notably with
Jacques le fataliste et son maître
(
Jacques the Fatalist and his Master
), which emulated
Laurence Sterne
in challenging conventions regarding novels and their structure and content, while also examining philosophical ideas about
free will
. Diderot is also known as the author of the dialogue,
Le Neveu de Rameau
(
Rameau's Nephew
), upon which many articles and sermons about consumer desire have been based.
Life and death</SPAN>
Denis Diderot was born in
Langres
,
Champagne
, and began his formal education at the
jesuitic
Collège jésuite
in Langres.
His parents were
Didier Diderot
(1675–1759) a
cutler
,
maître coutelier
and his wife Angélique Vigneron (1677–1748). Three of five siblings survived to adulthood, Denise Diderot (1715–1797) and their youngest brother Pierre-Didier Diderot (1722–1787), and finally their sister Angélique Diderot (1720–1749).
In 1732 he earned a master of arts degree in philosophy. Then he entered the
Collège d'Harcourt
in Paris. He abandoned the idea of entering the clergy and decided instead to study law.
-
His study of law was short-lived however and in 1734 Diderot decided to become a writer
.
-
Because of his refusal to enter one of the learned professions, he was disowned by his father, and for the next ten years he lived a bohemian existence.
In 1742 he befriended
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
. Then in 1743 he further alienated his father by marrying
Antoinette Champion
(1710–1796), a devout Roman Catholic. The match was considered inappropriate due to Champion's low social status, poor education, fatherless status and lack of a dowry.
-
She was about three years older than Diderot
.
-
The marriage, in October 1743 produced one surviving child, a girl. Her name was Angélique, after both Diderot's dead mother and sister
.
-
The death of his sister, a nun, from overwork in the convent may have affected Diderot's opinion of religion. She is assumed to have been the inspiration for his novel about a nun,
La Religieuse
, in which he depicts a woman who is forced to enter a monastery where she suffers at the hands of the other nuns in the community
.
Diderot had affairs with the writer
Madeleine de Puisieux
and with
Sophie Volland
(1716-1784). His letters to Sophie Volland contain some of the most vivid of all the insights that we have of the daily life of the philosophic circle of Paris during this time period.
Though his work was broad and rigorous, it did not bring Diderot riches. He secured none of the posts that were occasionally given to needy men of letters; he could not even obtain the bare official recognition of merit which was implied by being chosen a member of the
Académie française
. When the time came for him to provide a
dowry
for his daughter, he saw no alternative than to sell his library. When
Catherine II of Russia
heard of his financial troubles she commissioned an agent in Paris to buy the library. She then requested that the philosopher retain the books in Paris until she required them, and act as her librarian with a yearly salary. From 1773 for two years Diderot spent some months at the empress's court in
Saint Petersburg
.
Diderot died of gastrointestinal problems in Paris on July 31, 1784, and was buried in the city's
Église Saint-Roch
. His heirs sent his vast library to Catherine II, who had it deposited at the
National Library of Russia
.
Early works</SPAN>
Diderot's earliest works included a translation of
Temple Stanyan
's
History of Greece
(1743); with two colleagues,
François-Vincent Toussaint
and
Marc-Antoine Eidous
, he produced a translation of
Robert James
's
Medicinal Dictionary
[1]
(1746–1748); at about the same time he published a free rendering of
Shaftesbury
's
Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit
(1745), with some original notes of his own. In 1746 he wrote his first original work: the
Pensées philosophiques
,
[2]
and he added to this a short complementary essay on the sufficiency of
natural religion
. He then composed a volume of bawdy stories
Les bijoux indiscrets
(1748); in later years he repented this work. In 1747 he wrote the
Promenade du sceptique
, an
allegory
pointing first at the extravagances of Catholicism; second, at the vanity of the pleasures of the world which is the rival of the church; and third, at the desperate and unfathomable uncertainty of the philosophy which professes to be so high above both church and world.
Diderot's celebrated
Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient
("Letter on the Blind") (1749), introduced him to the world as a daringly original thinker. The subject is a discussion of the interrelation between man's reason and the
knowledge
acquired through perception (the
five senses
). The title, "Letter on the Blind For the Use of Those Who See", also evoked some ironic doubt about who exactly were "the blind" under discussion. In the essay a blind English mathematician named Saunderson argues that since knowledge derives from the senses, then mathematics is the only form of knowledge that both he and a sighted person can agree about. It is suggested that the blind could be taught to read through their sense of touch (a later essay,
Lettre sur les sourds et muets
, considered the case of a similar deprivation in the
deaf
and
mute
). What makes the
Lettre sur les aveugles
so remarkable, however, is its distinct, if undeveloped, presentation of the theory of
variation
and
natural selection
.
[3]
This powerful essay ... revolves around a remarkable deathbed scene in which a dying blind philosopher, Saunderson, rejects the arguments of a
providential
God during his last hours. Saunderson's arguments are those of a Neo-
Spinozist
,
Naturalist
, and
Fatalist
, using a sophisticated notion of the
self-generation
and natural evolution of species without Creation or supernatural intervention. The notion of
"thinking matter"
is upheld and the "
argument from design
" discarded ... as hollow and unconvincing. The work appeared anonymously ... and was vigorously suppressed by the authorities. Diderot, who had been under police surveillance since 1747, was swiftly identified as the author ... and was imprisoned for some months at
Vincennes
, where he was visited almost daily by
Rousseau
, at the time his closest and most assiduous ally.
[4]
After signing a letter of submission and promising never to write anything prejudicial against the religion again (with the result that his most controversial works were henceforth published only after his death), Diderot was released from the dungeons of the
Vincennes
fortress after three months. In collaboration with
d'Alembert
, he subsequently embarked on his greatest project, The
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers
.
==
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