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Diderot: Man and Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
Extract
Principal editor of the great Encyclopedia, novelist and prose writer of genius, contributor to the development of scientific thought and method, to the theory of the bourgeois drama and to the practice of art criticism, Diderot perhaps embodies the rich variety of the Enlightenment spirit more than any other man. His only real rival is surely Voltaire. Rousseau, whose influence was greater than Diderot's, would not thank us for classing him among the philosophes. The more profound philosophers - a Hume or a Kant - not only lack his range, but are less unquestionably ‘Enlightenment men’.
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References
NOTES
1 For details of recent research see La Correspondance de Grimm et de Meister (Colloque de Sarrebruck), ed. Bray, , Schlobach, and Varloot, (Paris, 1976).Google Scholar
2 For details see the edition by Fabre, Jean (Geneva, 1950), pp. xiii–xiv.Google Scholar
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4 See May, G.'s ‘L'Angoisse de l'échec et la genèse du Neveu de Rameau’ in Diderot Studies (Geneva, 1949), III, p. 287.Google Scholar
5 Most of those which follow have been fully discussed by Dieckmann, Herbert, Cinq legons sur Diderot (Geneva-Paris, 1959), pp. 19 ff.Google Scholar
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9 Engels makes this point in Anti-Dühring (ed. Dutt, , London, 1934), p. 26 Google Scholar. On the attitude of Russian Marxists see Miller, Arnold, ‘The Annexation of a Philosophe: Diderot in Soviet Criticism’ in Diderot Studies, XV Google Scholar. Miller notes (p. 32) that Diderot was Marx's favourite prose writer.
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14 Though in the same year, in a letter to Voltaire, (Correspondance, I, p. 78)Google Scholar he can still affirm his belief in God.
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20 Collins, Anthony's A philosophical enquiry concerning Human Liberty (1717)Google Scholar led many philosophes, including Diderot and Voltaire, towards determinism.
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22 The work was never completed, but the Contrat social embodies many of his findings.
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37 Two letters from Diderot to Sophie Volland in 1763 describe d'Holbach's reactions. Diderot's meetings with Wilkes two years earlier may have already been leading him in the same direction.
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47 Oeuvres philosophiques, p. 369 Google Scholar. I am indebted to Rachel Eltis for drawing my attention to the relevance of this quotation.
48 Oeuvres philosophiques, p. 443.Google Scholar
49 Strugnell comments: ‘The social values which flow from Diderot's materialist ethics are daunting in the extreme. Everywhere the individual is reduced to total subservience to the collectivity’ (op. cit. p. 42). The problems raised by the Supplément are acutely analysed in the edition by Dieckmann, Herbert (Geneva-Paris, 1955).Google Scholar
50 Supplément, ed. Dieckmann, p. 64.Google Scholar
51 Correspondance, XIII, p. 26.Google Scholar
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54 Crocker, L. G., ‘ Jacques le fataliste, an “Experience morale”’, Diderot Studies, III, pp. 73–99.Google Scholar
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56 Ed. Fabre, , p. 72.Google Scholar
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59 Oeuvres philosophiques, pp. 257 ff.Google Scholar See also Correspondance, V, p. 142.Google Scholar
60 Oeuvres completes, II, p. 302.Google Scholar
61 Ibid. p. 289.
62 Ibid. pp. 318 and 300. The significance and modernity of Diderot's view is brought out by Alexander, I. W., ‘Philosophy of Organism and Philosophy of Consciousness in Diderot's Speculative Thought’ in Studies in Romance Philology and French Literature presented to John Orr (Manchester, 1953).Google Scholar
63 Oeuvres completes, II, pp. 343–5.Google Scholar
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65 Oeuvres politiques, pp. 61 ff.Google Scholar
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74 See Aux Insurgents d'Amérique (Oeuvres politiques, pp. 489 ff.Google Scholar
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76 Oeuvres complètes, IV, pp. 15–16.
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79 Ibid. p. xxxvi.
80 Oeuvres complètes, III Google Scholar. See especially pp. III, 164 and 263.