Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature and Other Philosophical Works - Hardcover

Diderot, Denis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1903083060 ISBN 13: 9781903083062

Publisher: Clinamen Press Ltd., 2000

Synopsis

Diderot (1713-1784) was, alongside Voltaire, the most prolific, talented, and famous of the Enlightenment figures known as the Philosophes. This is the first English language edition of Pensees sur l’Interpretation de la Nature and two other complementary works forming a trio that allows readers a holisitic appraisal of Diderot’s far reaching philosophy.

About this title

From the Back Cover

'Great abstraction casts only a sombre gleam.'

Presented here for the first time in English, Diderot's Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature offers an indispensable insight into his views on the state of the natural sciences in the mid-eighteenth century. It is an injunction to philosophers to abandon the metaphysical and mathematical abstractions which had taken hold since the time of Descartes, and further to ground enquiryin 'experience' and physical experimentation. In a semi-programmatic outline for the advance of science, Diderot calls for a 'league' of co-operation between speculative and empirical philosophers. At the same time he instances contemporary problems to which his methodology might apply, such as the study of the properties of electricity. The text shows Diderot at his most plainly persuasive.

Included in this edition are two complementary philosophical works, the "Letter on the Blind" and "D'Alembert's Dream," annotated and with an introduction by David Adams of Manchester University.

About the Author

Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784) was one of the most active and original of the famous group of men of letters in France in the middle of the 18th century. Born at Langres in 1713, he was educated by the Jesuits, like most of those who afterwards became the bitterest enemies of Catholicism; and, when his education was at an end he vexed his brave and worthy father's heart by turning away from respectable callings, like law or medicine and throwing himself into the vagabond life of a bookseller's hack in Paris. An imprudent marriage (1743) did not better his position. His wife was a devout Catholic, bur her piety did not restrain a narrow and fretful temper, and Diderot's domestic life was irregular and unhappy.

Diderot's earliest writings were of little importance. Soon however he began producing translations of works which would shape his later career. He earned 100 crowns by translating Stanyan's History of Greece; with two colleagues he produced a translation of James's Dictionary of Medicine; and about the same date (1745) he published a free rendering of Shaftesbury's Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit, with some original notes of his own.

Turning his hand to philosophy of his own, between the morning of Good Friday and the evening of Easter Monday he wrote the Philosophic Thoughts (1746), and he presently added to this a short complimentary essay "On the Sufficiency of Natural Religion." In 1747 he wrote the "Sceptic's Walk," a rather poor allegory - pointing first to the extravagances of Catholicism; second, to the vanity of the pleasures of that world which is the rival of the church; and third, to the desperate and unfathomable uncertainty of the philosophy which professes to be so high above both church and world. This echoes the later passages he contributed to d'Holbach's System of Nature.

Diderot's next piece was that which first introduced him to the world as an original thinker, his famous "Letter on the Blind" (1749). The immediate object of this short but pithy writing was to show the dependence of men's ideas on their five senses, and in a second piece, published afterwards, Diderot considered the case of a similar deprivation in the deaf and dumb. If the "Letter on the Blind" introduced Diderot into the worshipful company of the philosophers, it also introduced him to the penalties of philosophy. His speculation was too hardy for the authorities, and he was thrown into the prison of Vincennes. There he remained for three months; then he was released, to enter upon the gigantic undertaking of his life.

A bookseller had applied to him with a project for the translation into French of Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia. Diderot accepted the proposal, but with Diderot at the helm the scheme became transformed. Instead of a reproduction of Chambers, he persuaded the bookseller to enter upon a new work, which should collect under one roof all the active writers, all the new ideas, all the new knowledge, that there were. His enthusiasm infected the publishers; they collected a sufficient capital for a vaster enterprise than they had at first planned. D'Alembert became Diderot's colleague and in 1751 the first volume of twenty appeared, the last would not appear for over twenty years.

There is a truly impressive list of Diderot's miscellaneous pieces, from an infinitely graceful trifle like "Regrets on My Old Dressing Gown" up to "d'Alembert's Dream," where he plunges into the depths of the controversy as to the ultimate constitution of matter and the meaning of life. It is a mistake to set down Diderot for a coherent and systematic materialist. We ought to look upon him "as a philosopher in whom all the contradictions of the time struggle with one another" (Rosenkranz).

All accounts agree that Diderot was seen at his best in conversation. "He who only knows Diderot through his writings," says Marmontel, "does not know him at all. When he grew animated in talk, and allowed his thoughts to flow in all their abundance, then he became truly ravishing. In his writings he had not the art of ensemble; the first operation which orders and places everything was too slow and too painful to him." Diderot himself was conscious of the want of literary merit in his written pieces. When he heard one day that a collected edition of his works was in the press at Amsterdam he greeted the news with "peals of laughter" so well did he know the haste and the little heed with which those works had been dashed off.

Diderot died in the month of July 1784, six years after Voltaire and Rousseau, one year after his old colleague d'Alembert, and five years before d'Holbach, his host and intimate for a lifetime.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clinamen Press Ltd.
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1903083060
• ISBN 13: 9781903083062
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 200