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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