Selected Writings by Denis Diderot. New York. 1938. International Publishers. Translated from the French by Jean Stewart and Jonathan Kemp. 358 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - The present volume fulfills a long-felt need for an adequate English Translation of Diderot's sparkling dialogues, and other writings dealing particularly with his philosophy of natural science. Editor of the Encyclopédie and one of the leading thinkers who helped to prepare the way for the Great French Revolution, Diderot was also one of the most important materialist philosophers before Marx. A study of his writings is therefore important for an understanding of dialectical materialism; and the selections from his works included in this volume have been made with this purpose in mind. The genuinely progressive role of Diderot was stressed by the founders of scientific socialism. Engels wrote of him: ‘If ever anybody dedicated his whole life to the 'enthusiasm for truth and justice’ - using this phrase in the good sense - it was Diderot.’
Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, born at Langres in eastern France, the son of a master-cutler. He was originally destined for the Church, but rebelled and persuaded his father to allow him to complete his education in Paris. For most of his twenties and early thirties, Diderot remained nominally a law student, but in fact led a rather precarious and Bohemian existence. He read extensively during this period, and this is reflected in his early works such as the Pensées philosophiques (1746) and the Lettre sur les aveugles (1749) which show a keen interest in contemporary philosophical issues. During the early 1740s Diderot met three contemporaries of great future significance for himself and for the age: d’Alembert, Condillac and J. J. Rousseau. In 1747 Diderot embarked on the most important task of his life, the editorship of the Encyclopédie, whose publication he oversaw until its completion in 1773. Diderot’s boldest philosophical and scientific speculations are brilliantly summarized in a trilogy of dialogues collectively known as Le Réve de d’Alembert (1769). With Le Neveu de Rameau, begun in 1761, and Jacques le Fataliste, written between approximately 1755 and 1784, Diderot produced his greatest works of prose fiction, works which are highly original and daring, both in their form and in their content. Towards the end of his life, by now one of the most famous French writers, Diderot visited Saint Petersburg at the invitation of one of his most powerful admirers, the empress Catherine the Great, to whom he had promised his extensive library in return for her financial assistance. He died in 1784.
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