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Philosopher

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Denis Diderot

1713–1784 · Enlightenment · Enlightenment

Denis Diderot, born in 1713, died in 1784, co-edited the Encyclopédie and wrote dialogues that refuse a single moral voice. He was curious, anti-clerical, and hard to reduce to an epigram. The letter to Falconet of 1766 compares posterity, for the philosopher, to the other world for the religious person: a horizon that makes present work intelligible.

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That English sentence compresses a correspondence, and the compression is marked. An early book, Philosophical Thoughts, praises strong passion against flat moralism. The French of the passions sentence is secure, and the English on this page is a close translation. Rameau's Nephew, a dialogue not published in his lifetime, is wilder and much less usable as a card.

He is an Enlightenment writer at full heat, and the heat includes unfinished arguments about sculpture, atheism, and what can motivate a person who does not expect another life. Short safe quotations are fewer than his importance. This library would rather say so than invent lines.

Three lines are in the file. The passions sentence is a close translation of a secure French pensée. Pensée XXXI of the Philosophical Thoughts is included as a translation. The posterity line remains a compression of the Falconet letter. Further short sentences were not invented. The dialogues are the work.

Start here

Rameau's Nephew, in a translation that keeps the dialogue form

It shows why he resists the epigram. The posterity letter can follow, as a correspondence rather than a proverb.

Quotations

“Posterity is for the philosopher what the other world is for the religious person.”

Denis Diderot · Enlightenment

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Paraphrase or translation
Meaning & application
“What has never been called into question has not been proved. What has not been examined without prejudice has never been well examined. Scepticism is therefore the first step towards the truth.”

Denis Diderot · Enlightenment

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Paraphrase or translation
Meaning & application

Key ideas

  • The Encyclopédie

    Knowledge is a collective public work, and the encyclopedia is a political object as well as a reference book.

  • Posterity

    Later generations can do, for a philosopher, some of the motivating work an afterlife does for a believer.

  • Dialogue

    His best moral writing stages more than one voice, so a single extracted sentence is a poor portrait.

Major works

  • Encyclopédie (1751–1772)

    Co-edited with d'Alembert. The project is the work, more than any one article.

  • Letter to Falconet (1766)

    The posterity correspondence. The English proverb is a compression.

  • Rameau's Nephew (written c. 1761–1774, published later)

    A dialogue. Poor material for a quotation card and essential to his reputation.

Influences

Influenced

Common misreadings

  • A compressed letter is a verbatim maxim.
  • He is only Voltaire's ally, with no separate voice in the dialogues.

Famous lines Denis Diderot never said

None of the lines this library files for Denis Diderot is marked Questionable or Misattributed. That is only a fact about these cards. It is not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.

FAQ

What is the best book to start with?

Rameau's Nephew, in a translation that keeps the dialogue form It shows why he resists the epigram. The posterity letter can follow, as a correspondence rather than a proverb.

What is the most famous quote?

This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Denis Diderot that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “Posterity is for the philosopher what the other world is for the religious person.” (Letter to Étienne-Maurice Falconet, 15 February 1766, paraphrased, Paraphrase or translation).

What is the most misquoted line?

None of the lines this library files for Denis Diderot is marked Misattributed or Questionable. That is a fact about these cards, not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.

What is one key idea, in a sentence?

The Encyclopédie: Knowledge is a collective public work, and the encyclopedia is a political object as well as a reference book.