Status Updates From Diderot and the Art of Thin...

Readers today continue to be amazed by his willingness to give platform to the unthinkable &the uncomfortable, to question all received authorities & standard practices – be religious, political, or societal. As philosophers go Diderot is neither a Socrates nor a Descartes, nor did he ever claim to be. Yet his joyful and quest for truth make him the most compelling 18cent advocate of the art of thinking freely.

Diderot had nonetheless expired in a way that was perfectly compatible with his philosophy: without a priest, with humor, and while attempting to eke out one less bit of pleasure from life.

What kind of deity, Orou asks pointedly, would create moral edicts such as chastity and lifelong marriage that are simultaneously nonsensical, counterproductive, and impossible to follow? I find these precepts, contrary to nature, and contrary to reason. I think they are admirably calculated to increase the number of crimes and to give endless annoyances.

Dita Roux was under the impression that women had been poorly served by nature: in addition to the fact that it was far more difficult for them to achieve orgasm, they were settled with a monthly malaise and the peril of childbirth.

Despite dissatisfaction with results, he had unquestionably reached goals. He had set forth: serving humanity he had produced a revolution in the minds of his readers by giving them the tools, not only to think for themselves, but to stand up to the world‘s tyrant and oppressors, religious fanatics and bigots.

On Le Breton omitting touching articles,what Diderot did not realize in 1765 was that he had carried the idea of the enlightenment forward in a way that no person had done before not Voltaire not Rousseau.

The printer, fearing backlash, had excised the heart of the article from 800 words, including “it is a general observation that religion increasingly sinks into this credit as the prevalence of philosophy grows. People will conclude regarding philosophy or the truth of religion; but I can tell you that the more philosopher one finds in Constantinople, the less often people will be undertaking pilgrimage to Mecca.

Prades: like Locke, he had intimated that there was no such thing as innate ideas (including the notion of God) and that all knowledge came from sensation.

How satisfying it was to discover a philosophical system that not only a skeptic like him to feel virtuous, but did so by inviting him to listen to the pleasure seeking body that God had given him.

This was a revelation to Diderot: according to deists God gave us the tools necessary to believe in him, and to live a simple and moral life, but he had not given us organized religion; we had inflicted that problem on ourselves.

Not only did the English deists implicitly and explicitly invite attempts at a far more “scientific“ understanding of deity, but they invited people to forge a relationship with God, based on their capacity to think, not obey.

Perhaps the most critical insight that he had had by the time he left the Sarbonne was that reasonable people at the right to subject religion, the same scrutiny as any other human tradition or practice. Seen from this critical angle, catholic faith itself could be rationalized, improved, and perhaps even discarded.

Despite the fact that Ditero takes little responsibility for own actions, he nonetheless acknowledges the legitimacy of his own longing, and lifelong tendency to embrace existence, fully, completely, audaciously,with little regard for the potential consequences. It was this precise aspect of his temperament that would lead him to write series book challenging the religious foundations of the ancient regime itself.