Diderot and the Encyclopaedists by John Morley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Good introduction to Diderot. You get an idea that he was a first class “man of letters” although there isn’t much in the way of writing that he has left behind. The biggest accomplishment, in a way, was the first encyclopedia of knowledge.
I don’t know too much about literature of this time period, but Morley seems fairly knowledgeable about the time, the struggles and Diderot’s influence. He survived but didn’t become wealthy. Was more interested in finding facts about the world, and in that sense, was a scientist more than a philosopher, although science as we know it today didn’t exist in the 1700s.
I am mostly impressed with Diderot’s character, as Morley also admires him. Interesting glimpse into the past. Diderot’s insistence on calibrating understanding to the level of one’s surroundings — his letter on what it must be like to be deaf or mute was in some ways, a crude but first look at beginning to understand the end of the Classical period. That logic presentation does not take a standard form for everyone, that one’s experiences change one’s reasoning axoims. The first stabs at theorization with shifting basis.
Comments (0)