Denis Diderot
2003
Art Critic · Philosopher · Author
Denis Diderot was a French author and philosopher with a fundamental drive for knowledge. His intellectual pursuits led him to assert that all people deserve the right to acquire knowledge, as it is within our nature to learn through experimentation and reasoning.
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
In 1732, Diderot earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of Paris, going on to study law, languages, literature, mathematics, and philosophy. His love of languages led him to work as a literary translator, and he was commissioned to create a French translation of Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia. However, Diderot didn’t want to just translate the document; he wanted to revolutionize it.
Diderot assembled a large team of experts to assist him and his co-editor, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, with the French Encyclopédie, nicknaming it the “rational dictionary.” These experts lent their knowledge and efforts to bringing common sense and freethinking to every art and science, writing comprehensively about every topic imaginable.
Didero’s own works reflected his knowledge and intrinsic skepticism, especially when it came to Christianity and God. As he pondered the origins of life without religion, he wrote of complex systems that reflected early evolutionary theories. When his works were condemned by the French government and burned, Diderot simply wrote more, leading to his eventual imprisonment.
Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.
Diderot’s studies also included sociology and politics, his writings criticizing the French government and advocating for democracy. He wrote in L’Encyclopédie, “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.”
He also wrote about politics in one of his letters to Catherine the Great, cautioning against capitalism. “In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. […] In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don’t have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.”
Denis Diderot was a freethinker who contributed to all areas of art, philosophy, human nature, and science. While his works were controversial for the time, they reflected true knowledge learned from scientific observation and freethought.
Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.