Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot, 1713-1784, French critic and
philosopher.
Diderot is best known for his work from 1745 to 1772 on the monumental
Encyclopédie, one of the seminal works of
Enlightenment thought. He and his fellow Encyclopedists were
notorious, like David Hume, for their
radical and often atheistical thought: Diderot in particular was
a strict materialist and disbelieved in the idea of a divine plan
for the universe, thoughts he develops in his Lettre sur les
aveugles (1750)
and his Pensées sur l'interpretation (1754). His most famous
work, the satire Le neveu de Rameau, was published
posthumously in 1805.
