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Life
He spent twenty years editing the Encyclopedie, the great project of the Enlightenment. He also wrote some of the strangest and most honest prose of the century.
The most uncompromising materialist of the age, who hosted Europe's boldest minds and denied that anything exists but matter in motion.
Connection
Denis Diderot the coterie holbachique Baron d'Holbach — Holbach's salon was the working center of the radical Enlightenment and Diderot its most constant presence; the two collaborated so closely that the authorship of some passages is still unsettled.
Ideas
Words
“Scepticism is the first step towards truth.”
“All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.”
“If we go back to the beginnings, we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods.”
Key Moments
1713 CE
Born in Langres
1751 CE
The Encyclopedia
c. 1761 CE
Rameau's Nephew
1784 CE
Death in Paris
1723 CE
Born in the Palatinate
c. 1750 CE
The Thursday Dinners
1770 CE
The System of Nature
1772 CE
Good Sense
Works
Encyclopedie: Preliminary Discourse
Rameau's Nephew
The System of Nature