Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784) French

"The good of the people must be the great purpose of government.  By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end.  And the greatest good of the people is liberty.  It is to the state what health is to the individual."  (from L'Encyclopédie)


In Wikipedia, New World Encyclopedia, Literary Essays on Denis Diderot, Diderot Quotes


Denis Diderot was a philosopher, playwright, novelist, and art critic who is most remembered as the primary editor for the 25 years he spent as the chief editor and a contributor to the Encyclopédie.  In the arts, he was influential in his expounding on the meaning of paintings through Friedrich Melchior Grimm's newsletter La Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique.  He introduced a new form of drama in French theater; the serious genre of domestic, bourgeois real life, between comedy and tragedy.  Like some of his philosophical works, his two most famous novels, Jacques the Fatalist and Rameau's Nephew were written late in his life and not published until after his death in 1784.

Diderot was an atheist/materialist who advocated for republican government and universal education.


Biography

Denis Diderot was born in Langres, Champagne. His father was a cutler.   In 1732, he earned a masters degree in philosophy at a Jesuit college.   Diderot then briefly studied law, but when he decided to become a writer in 1734, his father disowned him for not entering one of the learned professions.  He lived a bohemian existence for the next decade.  He befriended philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1742.  

In 1743, he further alienated his father by marrying Antoinette Champion (1710–1796), a devout Roman Catholic of low social standing.  Diderot had multiple affairs during his life, including one with proto-feminist Madeleine de Puisieux. His letters to another mistress, Sophie Volland are known for their candor and are regarded to be "among the literary treasures of the eighteenth century."

Between 1751 and 1772 Diderot was the primary editor of the Encyclopédie during which time he experienced harassment and censorship by the authorities, and also abandonment by his close friends. (see separate lecture)

Diderot's broad and rigorous work did not bring him wealth.  He secured none of the posts that were occasionally given to needy men of letters nor could he obtain the bare official recognition of merit that was implied by being chosen a member of the Académie française.  He sold his extensive library to Empress Catherine II of Russia to pay for his only daughter's dowry.  She then requested that the philosopher retain the books in Paris until she required them, and act as her librarian with a yearly salary.  Between October 1773 and March 1774, the sick Diderot spent a few months at the empress's court in Saint Petersburg.

Diderot died of pulmonary thrombosis in Paris on 31 July 1784, and was buried in the city's Église Saint-Roch.  His heirs sent his vast library to Catherine II, who had it deposited at the National Library of Russia.  He has been denied burial in the Panthéon with other French notables on several occasions.


Important philosophical works

Although he wrote several earlier books, it was Diderot's 1749 Letter on the Blind (Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient) that marked him as a mature philosopher.  

"This powerful essay... revolves around a remarkable deathbed scene in which a dying blind philosopher, Saunderson, rejects the arguments of a deist clergyman who endeavours to win him round to a belief in a providential God during his last hours. Saunderson's arguments are those of a neo-Spinozist Naturalist and fatalist, using a sophisticated notion of the self-generation and natural evolution of species without Creation or supernatural intervention.  The notion of "thinking matter" is upheld and the "argument from design" discarded (following La Mettrie) as hollow and unconvincing."   Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment  (2002)


The work appeared anonymously in Paris in June 1749, and was vigorously suppressed by the authorities.  Diderot, who had been under police surveillance since 1747, was swiftly identified as the author, had his manuscripts confiscated, and was imprisoned for some months, under a lettre de cachet, on the outskirts of Paris, in the dungeons at Vincennes where he was visited almost daily by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, at the time his closest and most assiduous ally.  On November 3, 1749, Diderot was released after three months of incarceration after admitting that Letter on the Blind was a "debauchery of the mind."

Le Rêve de d'Alembert  (D'Alembert's Dream)  (1769, pub. 1782)


Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville  (1772)

A fictionalized account of conversations between Europeans and natives of Tahiti on Louis Antoine de Bougainville's real 1763 scientific voyage around the world.  Diderot uses the discussions to challenge European colonization practices and European social mores, especially monogamous marriage which he says is in conflict with natural desires and praised Tahitians for the equality between the sexes.  


Observations sur le Nakaz   (1774)  (Diderot's commentaries on Nakaz (Instruction) 1766, Catherine the Great's Reform Proposals for Russia) 


Abbott Guillaume-Thomas Raynal  (1713 - 1796) -  Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, more commonly referred to as Histoire des deux Indes ("History of the two Indias")  (1st ed. 1770, 2nd ed. 177   , 3rd ed. 1781)


Diderot's Political Ideas on Democracy 


Argument against Thomas Hobbes' social contract theory:


Hobbes had claimed that man was intrinsically self centered and only interested in his own survival.  Therefore, in the "state of nature" he was in eternal combat against other humans fighting for their survival.  To end this constant warfare, men agreed to give up their rights to self-protection to an absolute monarch who would keep the peace. 

Diderot argued that in the state of nature, while man did have an interest in his own life, he also had empathy for others.  If man was reasonable enough to form a government for mutual self-protection, they did not a strong monarch to control them; they were reasonable enough to govern themselves.  



The General Will:

EVERYTHING you conceive, everything you contemplate, will be good, great, elevated, sublime, if it accords with the general and common interest. There is no quality essential to your species apart from that which you demand from all your fellow men to ensure your happiness and theirs . . . . [D]o not ever lose sight of it, or else you will find that your comprehension of the notions of goodness, justice, humanity and virtue grow dim. Say to yourself often, “I am a man, and I have no other truly inalienable natural rights except those of humanity.”

But, you will ask, in what does this general will reside?  Where can I consult it? ...  [The answer is:  in the principles of prescribed law of all civilized nations, in the social practices of savage and barbarous peoples; in the tacit agreements obtaining amongst the enemies of mankind; and even in those two emotions — indignation and resentment — which nature has extended as far as animals to compensate for social laws and public retributions. --Denis Diderot, “Droit Naturel” article in the Encyclopédie


Response to Catherine the Great's Reform Proposals for Russia


In his response to Catherine's reform proposals, Diderot stated his basic principles of government; that it was based on the consent of the people, that of limited government, and exclusion of the priesthood from government.

Diderot argued against imposing changes on Russia too quickly.  He believed that each society must modernize at its own "natural" pace.  He urged a national, secular education system, so change, especially economic change from serfdom to free industry, would take place from "below" rather than be forced on the people from "above."

While Catherine maintained an absolute ruler was necessary for a country of Russia's size, Diderot also advocated an intermediary Parliament to curtail her power.  While Catherine laid out the duties of the people, Diderot balanced that with some rights for the people, including the end of privilege and freedom of the press. 


"There is no true sovereign except the nation; there can be no true legislature except the people.  It is rarely that people sincerely submit to laws imposed on them.  But they will love the laws, respect, obey and protect them, if they themselves are the authors of them.  The laws are not the arbitrary of one person, but the wishes of a number of men who have consulted each other about their happiness and security.  The laws are useless if they do not apply equally to everyone; they are made in vain of there is a single member of society who can infringe upon them with impunity...."