Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely
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4.8 • 8 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Best Book of the Year – Kirkus Reviews
A spirited biography of the prophetic and sympathetic philosopher who helped build the foundations of the modern world.
Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world’s first comprehensive Encyclopédie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity–for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality. One of Diderot’s most attentive readers during his lifetime was Catherine the Great, who not only supported him financially, but invited him to St. Petersburg to talk about the possibility of democratizing the Russian empire.
In this thematically organized biography, Andrew S. Curran vividly describes Diderot’s tormented relationship with Rousseau, his curious correspondence with Voltaire, his passionate affairs, and his often iconoclastic stands on art, theater, morality, politics, and religion. But what this book brings out most brilliantly is how the writer's personal turmoil was an essential part of his genius and his ability to flout taboos, dogma, and convention.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Curran (Sublime Disorders: Physical Monstrosity in Diderot's Universe) returns to the subject of Denis Diderot (1713 1784) in this marvelous account of the philosophe's life and work. But this is much more than a biography, as Curran renders in vivid detail the social and intellectual life of 18th-century France. Curran discusses Diderot's education by the Jesuits and initial intention of becoming a priest, the publication of his first influential text, Pens es philosophiques, his resulting imprisonment (which Curran sees as a formative experience), and his decades-long labor on his masterpiece, the Encyclop die. This last is typical of Curran's thorough approach: readers learn about the financial and political aspects of publishing such an expansive work (such as its printer's prized status as one of six designated "printers of the king"); its proto-hypertext cross-referencing tool, the "System of Human Knowledge," often deployed satirically, such as by connecting "cannibalism" and "communion"; and its political impact, which included a diplomatic incident between France and Switzerland. Equally fascinating are Curran's summaries of Diderot's remarkable contributions as art critic, playwright, and sexologist, the last represented by his outlandish novel Les bijoux indiscrets, which features talking vaginas. Readers will be left with a new appreciation for Diderot, of his wide-ranging thought, and of his life as an expression of intense intellectual freedom.
