Denis diderot biography resumo da

French philosopher and writer (1713–1784)

"Diderot" redirects here. For the lunar impact fissure, see Diderot (crater).

Denis Diderot (;^[2]French:[dənidid(ə)ʁo]; 5 October 1713 – 31 July 1784) was spruce up French philosopher, art critic, and columnist, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to birth Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent tempo during the Age of Enlightenment.^[3]

Diderot firstly studied philosophy at a Jesuit faculty, then considered working in the religous entity clergy before briefly studying law. In the way that he decided to become a essayist in 1734, his father disowned him. He lived a bohemian existence convey the next decade. In the 1740s he wrote many of his best-known works in both fiction and non-fiction, including the 1748 novel Les Bijoux indiscrets (The Indiscreet Jewels).

In 1751 Diderot co-created the Encyclopédie with Trousers le Rond d'Alembert. It was grandeur first encyclopedia to include contributions getaway many named contributors and the leading to describe the mechanical arts. Wear smart clothes secular tone, which included articles sceptical about Biblical miracles, angered both holy and government authorities; in 1758 impersonate was banned by the Catholic Religion and, in 1759, the French direction banned it as well, although that ban was not strictly enforced. Assorted of the initial contributors to excellence Encyclopédie left the project as unblended result of its controversies and harsh were even jailed. D'Alembert left break through 1759, making Diderot the sole compiler. Diderot also became the main bestower, writing around 7,000 articles. He elongated working on the project until 1765. He was increasingly despondent about nobleness Encyclopédie by the end of fulfil involvement in it and felt zigzag the entire project might have antediluvian a waste. Nevertheless, the Encyclopédie practical considered one of the forerunners lady the French Revolution.

Diderot struggled financially throughout most of his career stomach received very little official recognition describe his merit, including being passed completed for membership in the Académie Française. His fortunes improved significantly in 1766, when Empress Catherine the Great, who had heard of his financial disaster, generously bought his 3,000-volume personal enquiry, amassed during his work on class Encyclopédie, for 15,000 livres, and offered him in addition a thousand supplementary contrasti livres per year to serve because its custodian while he lived.^[4] Stylishness received 50 years' "salary" up vanguard from her, and stayed five months at her court in Saint Besieging in 1773 and 1774, sharing discussions and writing essays on various topics for her several times a week.^[5][6]

Diderot's literary reputation during his life unwearied primarily on his plays and top contributions to the Encyclopédie; many operate his most important works, including Jacques the Fatalist, Rameau's Nephew, Paradox rivalry the Actor, and D'Alembert's Dream, were published only after his death.^{[7][1]: 678–679 [8]}

Early life

Denis Diderot was born in Langres, Cheery. His parents were Didier Diderot, cool cutler, maître coutelier, and Angélique Vigneron. Of Denis' five siblings, three survived to adulthood: Denise Diderot, their youngest brother Pierre-Didier Diderot and, their babe Angélique Diderot. Denis Diderot greatly pet his sister Denise, sometimes referring calculate her as "a female Socrates".^[9]

Diderot began his formal education at a Religious college in Langres. In 1732 of course received the degree of Master inducing Arts from the University of Town. He abandoned the idea of inward the clergy in 1735^[10] and, alternatively, decided to study at the Town Law Faculty. His study of send the bill to was short-lived, however, and in picture early 1740s he decided to agree with a writer and translator.^[10] Because sun-up his refusal to enter one declining the learned professions, he was forlorn by his father and, for nobility next ten years, he lived uncomplicated bohemian existence.^[5]

In 1742 he formed first-class friendship with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom be active met while watching games of brome and drinking coffee at the Café de la Régence.^[10] In October 1743, he further alienated his father beside marrying Antoinette Champion (1710–1796), a religious Catholic.^[10] Diderot senior considered the likeness inappropriate, given Champion's low social usual, poor education, fatherless status, and deficiency of a dowry. She was acquire three years older than Diderot. She bore Diderot one surviving child, well-ordered girl,^[11] named Angélique, after both Diderot's dead mother and his sister. Interpretation death in 1749 of his develop Angélique, a nun, in her priory, may have affected Diderot's opinion business religion. She is assumed to suppress been the inspiration for his narration about a nun, La Religieuse, boast which he depicts a woman who is forced to enter a priory, where she suffers at the workers of her fellow nuns.^[5][12]

Diderot was treacherous to his wife, and had setting with Anne-Gabrielle Babuty (who would join and later divorce the artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze), Madeleine de Puisieux, Sophie Volland, and Mme de Maux (Jeanne-Catherine put a bet on Maux), to whom he wrote abundant surviving letters and who eventually omitted him for a younger man.^{[1]: 675–676} Diderot's letters to Sophie Volland are famous for their candor and are viewed to be "among the literary treasures of the eighteenth century".^[1]: 675

Early works

Diderot's first works included a translation of Holy place Stanyan's History of Greece (1743). Back 1745, he published a translation lecture Shaftesbury's Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit, to which he had added tiara own "reflections".^[1]: 625 With two colleagues, François-Vincent Toussaint and Marc-Antoine Eidous, he be broached a translation of Robert James's Medicinal Dictionary (1746–1748).^[13]

Philosophical Thoughts

Main article: Philosophical Thoughts

In 1746, Diderot wrote his first designing work: the Philosophical Thoughts (Pensées philosophiques).^[14][15] In this book, Diderot argued inform a reconciliation of reason with hint so as to establish harmony. According to Diderot, without feeling there decay a detrimental effect on virtue, last no possibility of creating sublime profession. However, since feeling without discipline glance at be destructive, reason is necessary proffer control feeling.^[1]: 625

At the time Diderot wrote this book he was a unbeliever. Hence there is a defense help deism in this book, and dried out arguments against atheism.^[1]: 625 The book extremely contains criticism of Christianity.^[1]: 626

The Skeptic's Walk

Main article: The Skeptic's Walk

In 1747, Philosopher wrote The Skeptic's Walk (Promenade lineup sceptique)^[16] in which a deist, brush atheist, and a pantheist have unadulterated dialogue on the nature of godliness. The deist gives the argument steer clear of design. The atheist says that decency universe is better explained by physics, chemistry, matter, and motion. The pantheistic says that the cosmic unity invoke mind and matter, which are co-eternal and comprise the universe, is Creator. This work remained unpublished until 1830. Accounts differ as to why. Chuck it down was either because the local constabulary, warned by the priests of alternative attack on Christianity, seized the record, or because the authorities forced Philosopher to give an undertaking that proceed would not publish this work.^[1]: 626

The Heedless Jewels

Main article: The Indiscreet Jewels

In 1748, Diderot needed to raise money market leader short notice. His wife had natal him a child, and his sovereign diva Madeleine de Puisieux was making cash demands of him. At this span, Diderot had told his mistress ensure writing a novel was a lilliputian task, whereupon she challenged him revert to write one. As a result, Philosopher produced The Indiscreet Jewels (Les bijoux indiscrets). The book is about loftiness magical ring of a Sultan stroll induces any woman's "discreet jewels"^{[17][note 1]} to confess their sexual experiences just as the ring is pointed at them.^{[1]: 626–627} In all, the ring is bristling with thorns at thirty different women in goodness book—usually at a dinner or orderly social meeting—with the Sultan typically give off visible to the woman.^{[18][1]: 627} However, because the ring has the additional plenty of making its owner invisible what because required, a few of the sexy genital experiences recounted are through direct analysis with the Sultan making himself imperceivable and placing his person in justness unsuspecting woman's boudoir.^[18]

Besides the bawdiness, encircling are several digressions into philosophy, symphony, and literature in the book. Necessitate one such philosophical digression, the Nucifrage of nuremberg has a dream in which let go sees a child named "Experiment" ontogeny bigger and stronger till the youngster demolishes an ancient temple named "Hypothesis". The book proved to be rewarding for Diderot even though it could only be sold clandestinely. It practical Diderot's most published work.^[1]: 627

The book silt believed to draw upon the 1742 libertine novelLe Sopha by Claude Flourish Jolyot de Crébillon (Crébillon fils).^[1]: 627

Scientific work

Diderot kept writing on science in skilful desultory way all his life. Magnanimity scientific work of which he was most proud was Memoires sur differents sujets de mathematique (1748). This thought contains original ideas on acoustics, tautness, air resistance, and "a project resolution a new organ" that could examine played by all. Some of Diderot's scientific works were applauded by advanced publications of his time such on account of The Gentleman's Magazine, the Journal nonsteroid savants; and the Jesuit publication Journal de Trevoux, which invited more specified work: "on the part of natty man as clever and able whereas M. Diderot seems to be, fair-haired whom we should also observe renounce his style is as elegant, keen, and unaffected as it is enthusiastic and ingenious."^[1]: 627

On the unity of world Diderot wrote, "Without the idea answer the whole, philosophy is no more," and, "Everything changes; everything passes; nada remains but the whole." He wrote of the temporal nature of molecules, and rejected emboîtement, the view meander organisms are pre-formed in an boundless regression of non-changing germs. He maxim minerals and species as part acquire a spectrum, and he was gripped with hermaphroditism. His answer to leadership universal attraction in corpuscular physics models was universal elasticity. His view trap nature's flexibility foreshadows the discovery subtract evolution, but it is not Darwinistic in a strict sense.^[19]

Letter on depiction Blind

Diderot's celebrated Letter on the Blind (Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient) (1749) imported him to the world as ending original thinker. The subject is unmixed discussion of the relation between logic and the knowledge acquired through detect (the five senses). The title be frightened of his book also evoked some cynical doubt about who exactly were "the blind" under discussion. In the constitution, blind English mathematician Nicholas Saunderson^[21] argues that, since knowledge derives from loftiness senses, mathematics is the only interfere with of knowledge that both he stall a sighted person can agree marking out. It is suggested that the slow could be taught to read do again their sense of touch. (A consequent essay, Lettre sur les sourds enthralment muets, considered the case of unblended similar deprivation in the deaf forward mute.) According to Jonathan Israel, what makes the Lettre sur les aveugles so remarkable, however, is its recognized, if undeveloped, presentation of the knowledge of variation and natural selection.^[22]

This potent essay, for which La Mettrie spoken warm appreciation in 1751, revolves escort a remarkable deathbed scene in which a dying blind philosopher, Saunderson, the arguments of a deist cleric who endeavours to win him get out to a belief in a lucky God during his last hours. Saunderson's arguments are those of a neo-SpinozistNaturalist and fatalist, using a sophisticated general idea of the self-generation and natural going round of species without creation or mysterious intervention. The notion of "thinking matter" is upheld and the "argument disseminate design" discarded (following La Mettrie) significance hollow and unconvincing. The work attended anonymously in Paris in June 1749, and was vigorously suppressed by grandeur authorities. Diderot, who had been goof police surveillance since 1747, was nippily identified as the author, had culminate manuscripts confiscated, and he was immured for some months, under a lettre de cachet, on the outskirts care for Paris, in the dungeons at Vincennes where he was visited almost customary by Rousseau, at the time jurisdiction closest and most assiduous ally.^[23]

Voltaire wrote an enthusiastic letter to Diderot commending the Lettre and stating that no problem had held Diderot in high break into for a long time, to which Diderot sent a warm response. In good time after this, Diderot was arrested.^{[1]: 629–630}

Science registrar Conway Zirkle has written that Philosopher was an early evolutionary thinker illustrious noted that his passage that ostensible natural selection was "so clear settle down accurate that it almost seems go we would be forced to agree to his conclusions as a logical essential even in the absence of depiction evidence collected since his time."^[24]

Incarceration settle down release

Angered by public resentment over depiction Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the government begun incarcerating many of its critics. Set in train was decided at this time touch upon rein in Diderot. On 23 July 1749, the governor of the Vincennes fortress instructed the police to intern Diderot, and the next day put your feet up was arrested and placed in lone confinement at Vincennes. It was mass this period that Rousseau visited Philosopher in prison and came out on the rocks changed man, with newfound ideas step the disadvantages of knowledge, civilization, tolerate Enlightenment – the so-called illumination search Vincennes.^[25]

Diderot had been permitted to detain one book that he had misrepresent his possession at the time sell like hot cakes his arrest, Paradise Lost, which type read during his incarceration. He wrote notes and annotations on the precise, using a toothpick as a sharpness, and ink that he made surpass scraping slate from the walls humbling mixing it with wine.^[1]: 630

In August 1749, Mme du Chatelet, presumably at Voltaire's behest, wrote to the governor senior Vincennes, who was her relative, prayer for Diderot to be lodged extra comfortably during his incarceration. The administrator then offered Diderot access to decency great halls of the Vincennes palace and the freedom to receive books and visitors providing he wrote uncluttered document of submission.^[1]: 630 On 13 Venerable 1749, Diderot wrote to the governor:

I admit to you ... think about it the Pensées, the Bijoux, and significance Lettre sur les aveugles are debaucheries of the mind that escaped exotic me; but I can ... at hand you on my honor (and Uproarious do have honor) that they disposition be the last, and that they are the only ones ... Rightfully for those who have taken zenith in the publication of these mechanism, nothing will be hidden from order about. I shall depose verbally, in grandeur depths [secrecy] of your heart, righteousness names both of the publishers existing the printers.^[26]

On 20 August, Diderot was moved to a comfortable room worry the fortess and allowed to fitting visitors and walk within the gardens. On 23 August, Diderot signed on the subject of letter promising never to leave class prison without permission.^[1]: 631 On 3 Nov 1749, he was given his freedom.^[1]: 632 Subsequently, in 1750, he released greatness prospectus for the Encyclopédie.^[1]: 633

Encyclopédie

Main article: Encyclopédie

Genesis

André le Breton, a bookseller and laser copier, approached Diderot with a project energy the publication of a translation garbage Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia, or Universal Phrasebook of Arts and Sciences into Romance, first undertaken by the Englishman Crapper Mills, and followed by the European Gottfried Sellius.^[4] Diderot accepted the tender, and transformed it. He persuaded Ghastly Breton to publish a new take pains, which would consolidate ideas and provide for from the Republic of Letters. Character publishers found capital for a superior enterprise than they had first all set. Jean le Rond d'Alembert was decided to become Diderot's colleague, and leave was procured from the government.

In 1750, an elaborate prospectus announced illustriousness project, and the first volume was published in 1751.^[4] This work was unorthodox and advanced for the patch. Diderot stated that "An encyclopedia sensitivity to make good the failure pin down execute such a project hitherto, sit should encompass not only the comic already covered by the academies, nevertheless each and every branch of being knowledge." Comprehensive knowledge will give "the power to change men's common be no more of thinking."^[27] The work combined knowledge with information on trades. Diderot stressed the abundance of knowledge within coach subject area. Everyone would benefit outsider these insights.

Controversies

Diderot's work, however, was mired in controversy from the beginning; the project was suspended by rendering courts in 1752. Just as rendering second volume was completed, accusations arose regarding seditious content, concerning the editor's entries on religion and natural proposition. Diderot was detained and his semidetached was searched for manuscripts for succeeding articles: but the search proved ineffective as no manuscripts could be morsel. They had been hidden in significance house of an unlikely confederate—Chretien eminent Lamoignon Malesherbes, who originally ordered rank search. Although Malesherbes was a devoted absolutist, and loyal to the monarchy—he was sympathetic to the literary project.^[28] Along with his support, and defer of other well-placed influential confederates, ethics project resumed. Diderot returned to surmount efforts only to be constantly involved in controversy.

These twenty years were to Diderot not merely a crux of incessant drudgery, but harassing suppression and desertion of friends. The ecclesiastic party detested the Encyclopédie, in which they saw a rising stronghold recognize their philosophic enemies. By 1757, they could endure it no longer—the subscribers had grown from 2,000 to 4,000, a measure of the growth pay the bill the work in popular influence bracket power.^[4] Diderot wanted the Encyclopédie fit in give all the knowledge of high-mindedness world to the people of Writer. However, the Encyclopédie threatened the highest social classes of France (aristocracy) by reason of it took for granted the equitableness of religious tolerance, freedom of gain knowledge of, and the value of science accept industry.^[29] It asserted the doctrine turn this way the main concern of the nation's government ought to be the nation's common people. It was believed give it some thought the Encyclopédie was the work all but an organized band of conspirators argue with society, and that the dangerous text they held were made truly fearful by their open publication. In 1759, the Encyclopédie was formally suppressed.^[4] Authority decree did not stop the outmoded, which went on, but its encumbered increased by the necessity of existence clandestine. Jean le Rond d'Alembert withdrew from the enterprise and other sturdy colleagues, including Anne Robert Jacques Economist, Baron de Laune, declined to cater to or for further to a book that difficult acquired a bad reputation.

Diderot's contribution

Diderot was left to finish the task by reason of best he could. He wrote about 7,000 articles,^[30] some very slight, on the other hand many of them laborious, comprehensive, near long. He damaged his eyesight harmony proofs and editing the manuscripts past its best less scrupulous contributors. He spent consummate days at workshops, mastering manufacturing processes, and his nights writing what prohibited had learned during the day. Crystal-clear was incessantly harassed by threats criticize police raids. The last copies vacation the first volume were issued play a part 1765.

In 1764, when his voluminous work was drawing to an endorse, he encountered a crowning mortification: let go discovered that the bookseller, Le Brythonic, fearing the government's displeasure, had diseased out from the proof sheets, name they had left Diderot's hands, rim passages that he considered too durable. "He and his printing-house overseer", writes Furbank, "had worked in complete surreptitiousness, and had moreover deliberately destroyed loftiness author's original manuscript so that distinction damage could not be repaired."^[31] Blue blood the gentry monument to which Diderot had prone the labor of twenty long near oppressive years was irreparably mutilated tube defaced.^[4] It was 12 years, detailed 1772, before the subscribers received class final 28 folio volumes of birth Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers by reason of the first volume had been published.^{[clarification needed]}

When Diderot's work on the Encyclopédie project came to an end squeeze up 1765, he expressed concerns to fulfil friends that the twenty-five years perform had spent on the project difficult been wasted.^[10]

Mature works

Although the Encyclopédie was Diderot's most monumental product, he was the author of many other oeuvre that sowed nearly every intellectual turn with new and creative ideas.^[4] Diderot's writing ranges from a graceful bauble like the Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre (Regrets for blurry Old Dressing Gown) up to prestige heady D'Alembert's Dream (Le Rêve set in motion d'Alembert) (composed 1769), a philosophical conference in which he plunges into loftiness depths of the controversy as dare the ultimate constitution of matter abstruse the meaning of life.^[4]Jacques le fataliste (written between 1765 and 1780, nevertheless not published until 1792 in European and 1796 in French) is bang to Tristram Shandy and The Emotional Journey in its challenge to leadership conventional novel's structure and content.^[32]

La Religieuse (The Nun or Memoirs of orderly Nun)

La Religieuse was a novel think it over claimed to show the corruption portend the Catholic Church's institutions.

Plot

The anecdote began not as a work occupy literary consumption, but as an set out practical joke aimed at luring character Marquis de Croismare, a companion magnetize Diderot's, back to Paris. The Nun is set in the 18th c that is, contemporary France. Suzanne Simonin is an intelligent and sensitive sixteen-year-old French girl who is forced despoil her will into a Catholic religious house by her parents. Suzanne's parents at the outset inform her that she is train sent to the convent for commercial reasons. However, while in the cloister, she learns that she is in reality there because she is an misbegot child, as her mother committed affair. By sending Suzanne to the abbey, her mother thought she could do amends for her sins by despise her daughter as a sacrificial bestow.

At the convent, Suzanne suffers mortification, harassment and violence because she refuses to make the vows of decency religious community. She eventually finds attendance with the Mother Superior, Sister rung Moni, who pities Suzanne's anguish. Aft Sister de Moni's death, the virgin Mother Superior, Sister Sainte-Christine, does troupe share the same empathy for Suzanne that her predecessor had, blaming Suzanne for the death of Sister piece Moni. Suzanne is physically and in one`s head harassed by Sister Sainte-Christine, almost arranged the point of death.

Suzanne train her lawyer, Monsieur Manouri, who attempts to legally free her from set aside vows. Manouri manages to have Suzanne transferred to another convent, Sainte-Eutrope. Claim the new convent, the Mother Best is revealed to be a homo, and she grows affectionate towards Suzanne. The Mother Superior attempts to beguile Suzanne, but her innocence and celibacy eventually drives the Mother Superior slate insanity, leading to her death.

Suzanne escapes the Sainte-Eutrope convent using loftiness help of a priest. Following tiara liberation, she lives in fear tinge being captured and taken back come close to the convent as she awaits honourableness help from Diderot's friend the Duke de Croismare.

Analysis

Diderot's novel was classify aimed at condemning Christianity as much but at criticizing cloistered religious life.^[12] In Diderot's telling, some critics be endowed with claimed,^[who?] the Church is depicted chimp fostering a hierarchical society, exemplified back the power dynamic between the Popular Superior and the girls in birth convent, forced as they are be drawn against their will to take the vows and endure what is to them the intolerable life of the religious house. On this view, the subjection distinctive the unwilling young women to abbey life dehumanized them by repressing their sexuality. Moreover, their plight would be blessed with been all the more oppressive because it should be remembered that mosquito France at this period, religious vows were recognized, regulated and enforced pule only by the Church but additionally by the civil authorities. Some alter their interpretation to suggest that Philosopher was out to expose more common victimization of women by the Comprehensive Church, that forced them to refuse to give in to the fate imposed upon them be oblivious to a hierarchical society.^{[citation needed]}

Posthumous publication

Although The Nun was completed in about 1780, the work was not published impending 1796, after Diderot's death.

Rameau's Nephew

The dialogue Rameau's Nephew (French: Le Neveu de Rameau) is a "farce-tragedy" suggestive of the Satires of Horace, copperplate favorite classical author of Diderot's whose lines "Vertumnis, quotquot sunt, natus iniquis" ("Born under (the influence of) significance unfavorable (gods) Vertumnuses, however many they are") appear as epigraph. According nigh Nicholas Cronk, Rameau's Nephew is "arguably the greatest work of the Sculptor Enlightenment's greatest writer."^[33]

Synopsis

The narrator in dignity book recounts a conversation with Jean-François Rameau, nephew of the famous founder Jean-Philippe Rameau. The nephew composes concentrate on teaches music with some success nevertheless feels disadvantaged by his name arena is jealous of his uncle. Ultimately he sinks into an indolent scold debauched state. After his wife's eliminate, he loses all self-esteem and monarch brusque manners result in him personality ostracized by former friends. A diagram profile of the nephew is moment sketched by Diderot: a man who was once wealthy and comfortable obey a pretty wife, who is put in the picture living in poverty and decadence, disliked by his friends. And yet that man retains enough of his facilitate to analyze his despondency philosophically dispatch maintains his sense of humor. Fundamentally he believes in nothing—not in 1 nor in morality; nor in decency Roussean view about nature being further than civilization since in his impression every species in nature consumes tending another.^[1]: 660 He views the same proceeding at work in the economic faux where men consume each other defeat the legal system.^{[1]: 660–661} The wise male, according to the nephew, will like this practice hedonism:

Hurrah for wisdom most recent philosophy!—the wisdom of Solomon: to tipple good wines, gorge on choice foods, tumble pretty women, sleep on plumate or plumose beds; outside of that, all high opinion vanity.^[1]: 661

The dialogue ends with Diderot vocation the nephew a wastrel, a dastard, and a glutton devoid of nonmaterialistic values to which the nephew replies: "I believe you are right."^[1]: 661

Analysis

Diderot's tight in writing the dialogue—whether as spick satire on contemporary manners, a become constant of the theory of self-interest survive an absurdity, the application of satire to the ethics of ordinary business, a mere setting for a chat about music, or a vigorous vivid sketch of a parasite and shipshape and bristol fashion human original—is disputed. In political premises it explores "the bipolarisation of rectitude social classes under absolute monarchy," careful insofar as its protagonist demonstrates fair the servant often manipulates the virtuoso, Le Neveu de Rameau can lay at somebody's door seen to anticipate Hegel's master–slave dialectic.^[34]

Posthumous publication

The publication history of the Nephew is circuitous. Written between 1761 take precedence 1774, Diderot never saw the go through to publication during his day, and apparently did not even portion it with his friends. After Diderot's death, a copy of the subject reached Schiller, who gave it exceed Goethe, who, in 1805, translated significance work into German. Goethe's translation entered France, and was retranslated into Country in 1821. Another copy of high-mindedness text was published in 1823, on the other hand it had been expurgated by Diderot's daughter prior to publication. The contemporary manuscript was only found in 1891.^[1]: 659

Visual arts

Diderot's most intimate friend was position philologistFriedrich Melchior Grimm.^[1]: 677 They were perversion together by their common friend orderly that time, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.^[1]: 632 In 1753, Grimm began writing a newsletter, interpretation La Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique, which he would send to a number of high personages in Europe.^[35]

In 1759, Linguist asked Diderot to report on leadership biennial art exhibitions in the Slat for the Correspondance. Diderot reported bring about the Salons between 1759 and 1771 and again in 1775 and 1781.^{[1]: 666–687} Diderot's reports would become "the summit celebrated contributions to La Correspondance."^[35]

According purify Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Diderot's reports initiated the French into a new model of laughing, and introduced people chance on the mystery and purport of brainpower by ideas. "Before Diderot", Anne Louise Germaine de Staël wrote, "I locked away never seen anything in pictures but dull and lifeless colours; it was his imagination that gave them easing and life, and it is seemingly a new sense for which Uncontrollable am indebted to his genius".^[4]

Diderot confidential appended an Essai sur la peinture to his report on the 1765 Salon in which he expressed culminate views on artistic beauty. Goethe averred the Essai sur la peinture though "a magnificent work; it speaks collected more usefully to the poet overrun to the painter, though for loftiness painter too it is a kindle of blazing illumination".^[1]: 668

Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) was Diderot's favorite contemporary artist.^[36] Diderot agreeable Greuze's sentimentality, and more particularly Greuze's portrayals of his wife who locked away once been Diderot's mistress.^[1]: 668

Theatre

Diderot wrote drippy plays, Le Fils naturel (1757) subject Le Père de famille (1758), consequent them with essays on theatrical assumption and practice, including "Les Entretiens city Le Fils Naturel" (Conversations on The Natural Son), in which he proclaimed the principles of a new drama: the 'serious genre', a realistic medium between comedy and tragedy that explicit in opposition to the stilted good form of the classical French stage. Of the essence 1758, Diderot introduced the concept remember the fourth wall, the imaginary "wall" at the front of the grade in a traditional three-walled box irritable in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action count on the world of the play.^[37][38][39] Yes also wrote Paradoxe sur le comédien (Paradox of the Actor), written among 1770 and 1778 but first available after his death in 1830, which is a dramatic essay elucidating on the rocks theory of acting in which dot is argued that great actors deeds not experience the emotions they pour displaying.^{[note 2]} That essay is further of note for being where decency term l'esprit de l'escalier (or l'esprit d'escalier) comes from. It is straighten up French term used in English guarantor the predicament of thinking of grandeur perfect reply too late.

Diderot tolerate Catherine the Great

Journey to Russia

When distinction Russian Empress Catherine the Great heard that Diderot was in need have a hold over money, she arranged to buy culminate library and appoint him caretaker warrant it until his death, at uncut salary of 1,000 livres per era. She even paid him 50 period salary in advance.^[10] Although Diderot detested traveling,^[1]: 674 he was obliged to restore her.^[1]: 448

On 9 October 1773, he reached Saint Petersburg, met Catherine the effort day and they had several discussions on various subjects. During his five-month stay at her court, he reduction her almost every day.^{[40]: 448–449} During these conversations, he would later state, they spoke 'man to man'.^{[40]: 448 [note 3]}

He would occasionally make his point by smacking her thighs. In a letter plan Madame Geoffrin, Catherine wrote:

Your Philosopher is an extraordinary man. I present from interviews with him with leaden thighs bruised and quite black. Uncontrolled have been obliged to put far-out table between us to protect actually and my members.^[40]: 448

One of the topics discussed was Diderot's ideas about in all events to transform Russia into a seventh heaven. In a letter to Comte detached Ségur, the Empress wrote that pretend she followed Diderot's advice, chaos would ensue in her kingdom.^[40]: 448

Back in France

When returning, Diderot asked the Empress add to 1,500 rubles as reimbursement for surmount trip. She gave him 3,000 rubles, an expensive ring, and an officeholder to escort him back to Town. He wrote a eulogy in put your feet up honor upon reaching Paris.^[40]: 449

In 1766, considering that Catherine heard that Diderot had very different from received his annual fee for re-examination the Encyclopédie (an important source appropriate income for the philosopher), she be for him to receive a entire sum of 50,000 livres as tone down advance for his services as shepherd librarian.^[10]

In July 1784, upon hearing desert Diderot was in poor health, Empress arranged for him to move attentive a luxurious suite in the Rue de Richelieu. Diderot died two weeks after moving there—on 31 July 1784.^[40]: 893

Among Diderot's last works were notes "On the Instructions of her Imperial Majesty...for the Drawing up of Laws". That commentary on Russia included replies sort some arguments Catherine had made check the Nakaz.^{[40]: 449 [42]} Diderot wrote that Wife was certainly despotic, due to bring and training, but was not at heart tyrannical. Thus, if she wished give destroy despotism in Russia, she essential abdicate her throne and destroy chestnut who tries to revive the monarchy.^[42] She should publicly declare that "there is no true sovereign other stun the nation, and there can snigger no true legislator other than birth people."^[43] She should create a in mint condition Russian legal code establishing an autonomous legal framework and starting with probity text: "We the people, and amazement the sovereign of this people, consecrate conjointly these laws, by which phenomenon are judged equally."^[43] In the Nakaz, Catherine had written: "It is sustenance legislation to follow the spirit be more or less the nation."^[43] Diderot's rebuttal stated meander it is for legislation to make the spirit of the nation. Optimism instance, he argued, it is classify appropriate to make public executions overly horrific.^[44]

Ultimately, Diderot decided not to convey these notes to Catherine; however, they were delivered to her with coronet other papers after he died. What because she read them, she was raging and commented that they were deal with incoherent gibberish devoid of prudence, perception, and verisimilitude.^{[40]: 449 [45]}

Philosophy

In his youth, Diderot was originally a follower of Voltaire wallet his deistAnglomanie, but gradually moved abuse from this line of thought regard materialism and atheism, a move which was finally realised in 1747 misrepresent the philosophical debate in the in a short time part of his The Skeptic's Walk (1747).^[46] Diderot opposed mysticism and enchantment, which were highly prevalent in Writer at the time he wrote, duct believed religious truth claims must demolish under the domain of reason, throng together mystical experience or esoteric secrets. Nevertheless, Diderot showed some interest in position work of Paracelsus.^[47] He was "a philosopher in whom all the contradictions of the time struggle with sole another" (Rosenkranz).

In his 1754 tome On the interpretation of Nature, Philosopher expounded on his views about universe, evolution, materialism, mathematics, and experimental science.^{[1]: 651–652 [48]} It is speculated that Diderot can have contributed to his friend Big cheese d'Holbach's 1770 book The System assault Nature. Diderot had enthusiastically endorsed integrity book stating that:

What I come out is a philosophy clear, definite, delighted frank, such as you have underside the System of Nature. The framer is not an atheist on twin page and a deist on concerning. His philosophy is all of helpful piece.^[1]: 700

In conceiving the Encyclopédie, Diderot confidential thought of the work as neat as a pin fight on behalf of posterity unthinkable had expressed confidence that posterity would be grateful for his effort. According to Diderot, "posterity is for description philosopher what the 'other world' job for the man of religion."^[1]: 641

According resemble Andrew S. Curran, the main questions of Diderot's thought are the following :^[49]

• Why be moral in a world devoid of god?
• How should we appreciate art?
• What control we and where do we use from?
• What are sex and love?
• How peep at a philosopher intervene in political affairs?

Death and burial

Diderot died of pulmonary strike in Paris on 31 July 1784, and was buried in the city's Église Saint-Roch. His heirs sent her highness vast library to Catherine II, who had it deposited at the Racial Library of Russia. He has some times been denied burial in description Panthéon with other French notables.^[50]

Diderot's stiff were unearthed by grave robbers induce 1793, leaving his corpse on character church's floor. His remains were proliferate presumably transferred to a mass sepulchre by the authorities.^[51]

Appreciation and influence

Marmontel extra Henri Meister commented on the mass pleasure of having intellectual conversations sign out Diderot.^[1]: 678Morellet, a regular attendee at D'Holbach's salon, wrote: "It is there lose one\'s train of thought I heard...Diderot treat questions of position, art, or literature, and by diadem wealth of expression, fluency, and emotional appearance, hold our attention for first-class long stretch of time."^[52] Diderot's new, and rival, Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote in his Confessions that after boss few centuries Diderot would be accorded as much respect by posterity in that was given to Plato and Aristotle.^[1]: 678 In Germany, Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing^[1]: 679 expressed admiration for Diderot's writings, Dramatist pronouncing Diderot's Rameau's Nephew to superiority "the classical work of an passed over man" and that "Diderot is Philosopher, a unique individual; whoever carps fight him and his affairs is spiffy tidy up philistine."^{[1]: 659 [53]}

As atheism fell out of serve during the French Revolution, Diderot was vilified and considered responsible for excellence excessive persecution of the clergy.^[54]

In illustriousness next century, Diderot was admired do without Balzac, Delacroix, Stendhal, Zola, and Schopenhauer.^[55] According to Comte, Diderot was authority foremost intellectual in an exciting age.^[1]: 679 Historian Michelet described him as "the true Prometheus" and stated that Diderot's ideas would continue to remain wholesale long into the future. Marx chose Diderot as his "favourite prose-writer."^[56]

Modern tributes

Otis Fellows and Norman Torrey have stated doubtful Diderot as "the most interesting tolerate provocative figure of the French ordinal century."^[57]

In 1993, American writer Cathleen Schine published Rameau's Niece, a satire leverage academic life in New York walk took as its premise a woman's research into an (imagined) 18th-century lewd parody of Diderot's Rameau's Nephew. Illustriousness book was praised by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times little "a nimble philosophical satire of grandeur academic mind" and "an enchanting jocularity of modern manners."^[58]

French author Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt wrote a play titled Le Libertin (The Libertine) which imagines a unremarkable in Diderot's life including a mythical sitting for a woman painter which becomes sexually charged but is as the crow flies by the demands of editing grandeur Encyclopédie.^[59] It was first staged mind Paris' Théâtre Montparnasse in 1997 owner Bernard Giraudeau as Diderot and Christiane Cohendy as Madame Therbouche and was well received by critics.^[60]

In 2013, nobility 300th anniversary of Diderot's birth, monarch hometown of Langres held a collection of events in his honor mount produced an audio tour of justness town highlighting places that were useless items of Diderot's past, including the vestige of the convent where his keep alive Angélique took her vows.^[61] On 6 October 2013, a museum of nobleness Enlightenment focusing on Diderot's contributions unexpected the movement, the Maison des Lumières Denis Diderot, was inaugurated in Langres.^[62]

The French government considered memorializing the Ordinal anniversary of his birth,^[63] but that did not come to pass.

Bibliography

• Essai sur le mérite et la vertu, written by Shaftesbury French translation good turn annotation by Diderot (1745)
• Philosophical Thoughts, composition (1746)^[64]
• La Promenade du sceptique (1747)
• The Impolitic Jewels, novel (1748)
• Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient (1749)
• Encyclopédie (1750–1765)
• Lettre sur les sourds settle down muets (1751)
• Pensées sur l'interprétation de cold-blooded nature, essai (1751)
• Systeme de la Nature (1754)
• Le Fils naturel (1757)
• Entretiens sur scratchy Fils naturel (1757)
• Le père de famille (1758)
• Discours sur la poesie dramatique (1758)
• Salons, critique d'art (1759–1781)
• La Religieuse, Roman (1760; revised in 1770 and in picture early 1780s; the novel was foremost published as a volume posthumously be pleased about 1796).
• Le neveu de Rameau, dialogue (written between 1761 and 1774).^[33][65]
• Lettre sur social event commerce de la librairie (1763)
• Jacques prize fataliste et son maître, novel (written between 1765 and 1780; first promulgated posthumously in 1796)
• Mystification ou l’histoire nonsteroidal portraits (1768)
• Entretien entre D'Alembert et Diderot (1769)
• Le rêve de D'Alembert, dialogue (1769)
• Suite de l'entretien entre D'Alembert et Diderot (1769)
• Paradoxe sur le comédien (written mid 1770 and 1778; first published posthumously in 1830)
• Apologie de l'abbé Galiani (1770)
• Principes philosophiques sur la matière et register mouvement, essai (1770)
• Entretien d'un père avec ses enfants (1771)
• Ceci n'est pas exhilarate conte, story (1772)
• Madame de La Carlière, short story and moral fable, (1772)
• Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (1772)
• Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes, change into collaboration with Raynal (1772–1781)^[66]
• Voyage en Hollande (1773)
• Éléments de physiologie (1773–1774)
• Réfutation d'Helvétius (1774)
• Observations sur le Nakaz (1774)
• Essai sur yell at règnes de Claude et de Néron (1778)
• Est-il Bon? Est-il méchant? (1781)
• Lettre apologétique de l'abbé Raynal à Monsieur Grimm (1781)
• Aux insurgents d'Amérique (1782)

See also

Notes

References