Quotation
Last reviewed:
“Only great passions can elevate the soul to great things.”
Denis Diderot · Enlightenment · Enlightenment · 1746
What does it mean?
Greatness of soul is not produced by caution alone, and strong feeling is the heat that makes a large action possible. The usual reading connects the sentence to the early Philosophical Thoughts, which are impatient with a flat moralism. A rival reading hears a blank cheque for any intense mood, but a passion that cannot say what good it serves is not yet the elevation the line is praising. The French is secure, and this English is a close translation rather than his own English wording.
Did Denis Diderot really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. French: "Il n'y a que les passions, et les grandes passions, qui puissent élever l'âme aux grandes choses." The English is a close translation.
Where it comes from
Pensées philosophiques (1746), I
Approximate date: 1746.
How to use it
Distinguish a great passion from a loud mood in a campaign meeting in Brighton: one of them can say what it is trying to enlarge, and the other can only say how strongly it feels. If the good cannot be named, the sentence does not supply an excuse. A strong feeling still needs a good it can name before it is a reason to spend other people's time.
A mindset reading
The French is secure, and the English is a close translation. Early Diderot does praise strong passion against cold virtue. That theme can be studied in work whose French is secure, and this card is one of those.
Understand the philosophy
The early Philosophical Thoughts are still theistic in a deist key and already impatient with moralism that has no heat. The key term is passion, a strong affective drive he treats as the condition of great action rather than as a disturbance of it. The later dialogue Rameau's Nephew is wilder and less usable as a card. The French of this pensee is secure, and the English is a close translation.
- mind
- virtue
- self
FAQ
What does it mean?
Greatness of soul is not produced by caution alone, and strong feeling is the heat that makes a large action possible. The usual reading connects the sentence to the early Philosophical Thoughts, which are impatient with a flat moralism. A rival reading hears a blank cheque for any intense mood, but a passion that cannot say what good it serves is not yet the elevation the line is praising. The French is secure, and this English is a close translation rather than his own English wording.
Did Denis Diderot really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. French: "Il n'y a que les passions, et les grandes passions, qui puissent élever l'âme aux grandes choses." The English is a close translation.
Which work is it in?
Pensées philosophiques (1746), I Approximate date: 1746.