64 Facts About Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot was a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment.

Denis Diderot lived a bohemian existence for the next decade.

In 1751 Denis Diderot co-created the Encyclopedie with Jean le Rond d'Alembert.

Denis Diderot was increasingly despondent about the Encyclopedie by the end of his involvement in it and felt that the entire project might have been a waste.

Denis Diderot struggled financially throughout most of his career and received very little official recognition of his merit, including being passed over for membership in the Academie Francaise.

Denis Diderot's fortunes improved significantly in 1766, when Empress Catherine the Great, who had heard of his financial troubles, generously bought his 3,000-volume personal library, amassed during his work on the Encyclopedie, for 15,000 livres, and offered him in addition a thousand more livres per year to serve as its custodian while he lived.

Denis Diderot received 50 years' "salary" up front from her, and stayed five months at her court in Saint Petersburg in 1773 and 1774, sharing discussions and writing essays on various topics for her several times a week.

Denis Diderot's parents were Didier Diderot, a cutler, maitre coutelier, and Angelique Vigneron.

Denis Diderot greatly admired his sister Denise, sometimes referring to her as "a female Socrates".

Denis Diderot began his formal education at a Jesuit college in Langres.

Denis Diderot abandoned the idea of entering the clergy in 1735 and, instead, decided to study at the Paris Law Faculty.

Denis Diderot senior considered the match inappropriate, given Champion's low social standing, poor education, fatherless status, and lack of a dowry.

Denis Diderot bore Diderot one surviving child, a girl, named Angelique, after both Diderot's dead mother and his sister.

Denis Diderot is assumed to have been the inspiration for his novel about a nun, La Religieuse, in which he depicts a woman who is forced to enter a convent, where she suffers at the hands of her fellow nuns.

Denis Diderot was unfaithful to his wife, and had affairs with Anne-Gabrielle Babuty, Madeleine de Puisieux, Sophie Volland, and Mme de Maux, to whom he wrote numerous surviving letters and who eventually left him for a younger man.

In 1746, Denis Diderot wrote his first original work: the Philosophical Thoughts.

At the time Denis Diderot wrote this book he was a deist.

In 1747, Denis Diderot wrote The Skeptic's Walk in which a deist, an atheist, and a pantheist have a dialogue on the nature of divinity.

In 1748, Denis Diderot needed to raise money on short notice.

Denis Diderot's wife had born him a child, and his mistress Madeleine de Puisieux was making financial demands of him.

Denis Diderot kept writing on science in a desultory way all his life.

Denis Diderot saw minerals and species as part of a spectrum, and he was fascinated with hermaphroditism.

Denis Diderot's celebrated Letter on the Blind introduced him to the world as an original thinker.

Denis Diderot, who had been under police surveillance since 1747, was swiftly identified as the author, had his manuscripts confiscated, and he was imprisoned for some months, under a lettre de cachet, on the outskirts of Paris, in the dungeons at Vincennes where he was visited almost daily by Rousseau, at the time his closest and most assiduous ally.

Denis Diderot had been permitted to retain one book that he had in his possession at the time of his arrest, Paradise Lost, which he read during his incarceration.

Denis Diderot wrote notes and annotations on the book, using a toothpick as a pen, and ink that he made by scraping slate from the walls and mixing it with wine.

Denis Diderot persuaded Le Breton to publish a new work, which would consolidate ideas and knowledge from the Republic of Letters.

Denis Diderot emphasized the abundance of knowledge within each subject area.

Denis Diderot's work was mired in controversy from the beginning; the project was suspended by the courts in 1752.

Denis Diderot was detained and his house was searched for manuscripts for subsequent articles: but the search proved fruitless as no manuscripts could be found.

Denis Diderot returned to his efforts only to be constantly embroiled in controversy.

Denis Diderot wanted the Encyclopedie to give all the knowledge of the world to the people of France.

Denis Diderot was left to finish the task as best he could.

Denis Diderot wrote approximately 7,000 articles, some very slight, but many of them laborious, comprehensive, and long.

Denis Diderot damaged his eyesight correcting proofs and editing the manuscripts of less scrupulous contributors.

Denis Diderot spent his days at workshops, mastering manufacturing processes, and his nights writing what he had learned during the day.

Denis Diderot was incessantly harassed by threats of police raids.

Denis Diderot's writing ranges from a graceful trifle like the Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre up to the heady D'Alembert's Dream, a philosophical dialogue in which he plunges into the depths of the controversy as to the ultimate constitution of matter and the meaning of life.

Denis Diderot eventually finds companionship with the Mother Superior, Sister de Moni, who pities Suzanne's anguish.

Denis Diderot's novel was not aimed at condemning Christianity as such but at criticizing cloistered religious life.

In Denis Diderot's telling, some critics have claimed, the Church is depicted as fostering a hierarchical society, exemplified in the power dynamic between the Mother Superior and the girls in the convent, forced as they are against their will to take the vows and endure what is to them the intolerable life of the convent.

Some broaden their interpretation to suggest that Denis Diderot was out to expose more general victimization of women by the Catholic Church, that forced them to accept the fate imposed upon them by a hierarchical society.

Denis Diderot reported on the Salons between 1759 and 1771 and again in 1775 and 1781.

Denis Diderot had appended an Essai sur la peinture to his report on the 1765 Salon in which he expressed his views on artistic beauty.

Denis Diderot appreciated Greuze's sentimentality, and more particularly Greuze's portrayals of his wife who had once been Denis Diderot's mistress.

In 1758, Denis Diderot introduced the concept of the fourth wall, the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box set in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play.

Denis Diderot wrote Paradoxe sur le comedien, written between 1770 and 1778 but first published after his death in 1830, which is a dramatic essay elucidating a theory of acting in which it is argued that great actors do not experience the emotions they are displaying.

Denis Diderot even paid him 50 years salary in advance.

When returning, Denis Diderot asked the Empress for 1,500 rubles as reimbursement for his trip.

Denis Diderot gave him 3,000 rubles, an expensive ring, and an officer to escort him back to Paris.

Denis Diderot wrote a eulogy in her honor upon reaching Paris.

In 1766, when Catherine heard that Denis Diderot had not received his annual fee for editing the Encyclopedie, she arranged for him to receive a massive sum of 50,000 livres as an advance for his services as her librarian.

Denis Diderot wrote that Catherine was certainly despotic, due to circumstances and training, but was not inherently tyrannical.

Ultimately, Denis Diderot decided not to send these notes to Catherine; however, they were delivered to her with his other papers after he died.

Denis Diderot opposed mysticism and occultism, which were highly prevalent in France at the time he wrote, and believed religious truth claims must fall under the domain of reason, not mystical experience or esoteric secrets.

However, Denis Diderot showed some interest in the work of Paracelsus.

Denis Diderot was "a philosopher in whom all the contradictions of the time struggle with one another".

In conceiving the Encyclopedie, Denis Diderot had thought of the work as a fight on behalf of posterity and had expressed confidence that posterity would be grateful for his effort.

Denis Diderot's heirs sent his vast library to Catherine II, who had it deposited at the National Library of Russia.

Denis Diderot has several times been denied burial in the Pantheon with other French notables.

Denis Diderot's remains were unearthed by grave robbers in 1793, leaving his corpse on the church's floor.

Denis Diderot's remains were then presumably transferred to a mass grave by the authorities.

Denis Diderot treat questions of philosophy, art, or literature, and by his wealth of expression, fluency, and inspired appearance, hold our attention for a long stretch of time.

On 6 October 2013, a museum of the Enlightenment focusing on Diderot's contributions to the movement, the Maison des Lumieres Denis Diderot, was inaugurated in Langres.