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Denis Diderot (1713–1784) was a leading philosophe and the chief editor of the great monument of the French Enlightenment, L’Encyclopedie. A man of letters of extraordinary breadth—philosopher, novelist, dramatist, polemicist, critic, translator, and prolific correspondent—he was perhaps most famous for his vigorous criticism of the Catholic Church and France’s ancien régime.

Diderot was born in Langres, France, and he received a Jesuit education. He refused to join the clergy, however, and turned instead to his own philosophical and literary studies. In 1741 Diderot formed a close friendship with French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which would last for over fifteen years until they broke with one another in a quarrel. Diderot first gained public notice as a translator of English books, especially his 1745 translation of Lord Shaftesbury’s Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit. His first original work, Pensées philosophiques (1746), an anonymous collection of aphorisms that owed a good deal to Shaftesbury’s ideas, was burned by the Parliament of Paris for its anti-Christian rhetoric. His Letter on the Blind (1749), another important work of his early career, espoused a materialist philosophy and questioned the existence of God, which led to his imprisonment for three months at Vincennes in 1749.

The chief occupation of Diderot’s life was his editorship of the enormously influential L’Encyclopedie from 1745 to 1772. He initially undertook this project as coeditor with Jean le Rond d’Alembert, a prominent mathematician, but d’Alembert resigned in 1758 due to pressure from the authorities. Diderot saw the project through to completion on his own, evading censors and contributing several hundred articles, especially on philosophy, politics, and the industrial arts. He also procured contributions from the most famous writers of eighteenth-century France, including Rousseau, FrancoisMarie Voltaire, and Charles-Louis Montesquieu. The work, which ultimately included seventeen volumes of text and eleven more of illustrations, aimed to collect and disseminate the achievements of human learning in all fields, practical and theoretical. It served as a crucial means of promoting progressive ideas; criticizing the injustices of France’s legal and clerical institutions; and supporting secularism, religious toleration, limited government, commerce, the advancement of science and technology, and the freedom of inquiry and expression.

Diderot’s editorship of L’Encyclopedie did not prevent him from composing several works of his own during these years, including a number of satirical but weighty dialogues such as Rameau’s Nephew (1762), D’Alembert’s Dream (1769), and Jacques the Fatalist (1773), all of which remained unpublished until after his death. His Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage (1771) extolled the religious and sexual freedom found in Tahiti and is often read as an indictment of slavery and colonialism, as are his contributions to Guillaume-Thomas (the Abbé) Raynal’s History of the Two Indies (1772). None of Diderot’s works brought him much monetary profit, and hence he frequently faced financial difficulties until 1765, when he began to receive generous financial support from Catherine II of Russia. In 1773–1774 he traveled to St. Petersburg to thank her personally and to plan the creation of a Russian university, but he returned to France rather disillusioned with the possibilities of “enlightened despotism.” Diderot’s perennially poor health continued to deteriorate over the next decade, and he died in Paris, widely acknowledged as one of the pivotal thinkers of the Enlightenment.

Bibliography:

Diderot, Denis. Political Writings, edited and translated by John Hope Mason and Robert Wokler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Rameau’s Nephew and Other Works, edited and translated by Jacques Barzun and Ralph H. Bowen. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 2001.
France, Peter. Diderot. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985.
Mason, John Hope. The Irresistible Diderot. London: Quartet Books, 1982.
Wilson, Arthur M. Diderot. Oxford Oxford University Press, 1972.