Diderot, Denis(1713–1784)
Denis Diderot, the French encyclopedist, philosopher, satirist, dramatist, novelist, and literary and art critic, was the most versatile thinker of his times and a key figure in the advancement of Enlightenment philosophy.
Life
Born in Langres, son of a master cutler, Diderot was a brilliant student in the local Jesuit schools. He was sent to college in Paris and received his master's degree at the age of nineteen. Afterward, he refused to adopt a regular profession and, when his allowance was cut off, lived for many years in poverty and obscurity. His great ambition was to acquire knowledge. In this he was eminently successful, for he emerged from this period of self-education with an excellent command of mathematics and considerable proficiency in the Greek, Italian, and English languages. He first came into public notice as a translator of English works—a history of Greece, the earl of Shaftesbury's Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit (1745), and Robert James's Medicinal Dictionary (1746–1748). He was secretly married in 1743; and his wife bore him a number of children, all of whom died in childhood except a daughter, Angélique, who lived to perpetuate the memory of her distinguished father.
In 1746 he published his first original work, the bold and controversial Pensées philosophiques.
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