Digging Up Diderot

The second Diderot emerged in the centuries following his death in 1784, with the discovery and publication of his major philosophical works, his most enduring fiction and other writings. It may be a long time before Diderot’s complicated legacy is fully understood, which makes Andrew S. Curran’s new biography, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely,[1] a timely exercise, especially helpful for those of us not steeped in philosophy. Work on the great Encyclopédie was already beginning—a monumental intellectual construction that would involve dozens of authors, including Americans Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush, several editors, several publishers in more than one country, delays, censorings, hatchet jobs, betrayals and salvations—and friends came to Diderot’s aid, seeing to it that he had access to books and was not held in the worst dungeons.

Source: hudsonreview.com