Denis Diderot
All knowledge, including the knowledge of craftspeople, should be collected and open to everyone – and matter itself, suitably organised, can feel and think.
Placement
Editor of the Encyclopédie (1751–1772) and materialist: matter itself can feel and think; his dialogues “Rameau’s Nephew” and “D’Alembert’s Dream” stayed unpublished in his lifetime.
Key ideas
- Encyclopédie
- Sensitive matter
- Letter on the Blind
- Rameau’s Nephew
Influence
Influenced by 3
Francis Bacon
influenced by
Diderot credited Bacon in the Encyclopédie’s Prospectus (1750) and arranged its system of knowledge after Bacon’s division into memory, reason and imagination. D. Diderot, Prospectus de l’Encyclopédie (1750); Encyclopédie I (1751), Système figuré des connaissances humaines; SEP “Denis Diderot”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Francis Bacon › 1561–1626
John Locke
influenced by
Diderot’s Letter on the Blind (1749) took up Molyneux’s question from Locke’s Essay and asked, through the blind mathematician Saunderson, how ideas depend on the senses. D. Diderot, Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient (1749); SEP “Denis Diderot”; SEP “Molyneux’s Problem”
Evidence: AI draft
John Locke › 1632–1704
Shaftesbury
influenced by
Diderot’s first philosophical publication was a free translation of Shaftesbury’s Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit, with his own notes (Essai sur le mérite et la vertu, 1745). D. Diderot, Principes de la philosophie morale, ou Essai de M. S*** sur le mérite et la vertu (1745); SEP “Denis Diderot”
Evidence: AI draft
Shaftesbury › 1671–1713
Influenced 2
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
influenced
Visiting the imprisoned Diderot at Vincennes in 1749, Rousseau was encouraged by him to answer the Dijon prize question (Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, 1750). J.-J. Rousseau, Les Confessions (1782–89); Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750); SEP “Jean Jacques Rousseau”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Jean-Jacques Rousseau › 1712–1778
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
influenced
In the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) Hegel used Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew, known from Goethe’s translation (1805), as the image of the ‘disrupted’ consciousness of culture. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807), “Der sich entfremdete Geist; die Bildung”; D. Diderot, Rameaus Neffe, tr. J. W. Goethe (1805)
Evidence: AI draft
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel › 1770–1831
Criticism
Criticizes 1
George Berkeley
criticised
In the Letter on the Blind (1749) Diderot called Berkeley’s idealism the most absurd of all systems, yet the hardest to combat. D. Diderot, Lettre sur les aveugles (1749); SEP “Denis Diderot”
Evidence: AI draft
George Berkeley › 1685–1753
Works
- 1751Encyclopédie
Seventeen volumes of text and eleven of plates (1751–1772), edited by Diderot and, until 1758, d’Alembert: the knowledge of the age ordered by reason, including the crafts – banned in 1759 and finished anyway.
- c. 1762Rameau’s Nephew
A dialogue with a brilliant, shameless parasite who mocks the morality of his society; written c. 1761–1774, first published in Goethe’s German translation in 1805.
Position
The Encyclopédie, or Reasoned Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts, was meant to change the common way of thinking. Its articles, plates of workshops and cross-references gave the knowledge of artisans the same rank as that of scholars, and its system of knowledge followed Bacon’s division into memory, reason and imagination. Diderot himself wrote thousands of articles. Philosophically he moved from deism to an atheist materialism. The Letter on the Blind uses the case of the blind mathematician Saunderson to ask whether the order of nature proves a designer and discusses Molyneux’s problem from Locke. In D’Alembert’s Dream (1769) matter is sensitive, life and thought arise from its organisation, and species change over time. Rameau’s Nephew, a dialogue with a gifted and cynical parasite, leaves open who has the better of the argument; Hegel read it in Goethe’s translation and used it in the Phenomenology of Spirit as the image of a “disrupted” consciousness. In his Salons Diderot founded modern art criticism, and his anonymous contributions to the editions of 1774 and 1780 of Raynal’s History of the Two Indies attacked slavery and colonial rule.
Life & context
Denis Diderot was born in 1713 in Langres in Champagne, the son of a master cutler. He was taught by the Jesuits in Langres, took his master’s degree in Paris in 1732 and then gave up both the Church and the law, living for years on translations and hack writing. His Philosophical Thoughts (1746) were condemned by the Paris parlement, and after the Letter on the Blind (1749) he was held at Vincennes from July to November 1749. From 1747 he edited the Encyclopédie, from 1759 without d’Alembert, until the last plates appeared in 1772. Catherine II of Russia bought his library, left it in his keeping and paid him as its librarian; he visited her in St Petersburg in 1773–74. He died in Paris in 1784.
Further main works
- Philosophical Thoughts (1746)
- Letter on the Blind (1749)
- D’Alembert’s Dream (1769, published 1830)
- Contributions to Raynal’s History of the Two Indies (1774, 1780)
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