Books/Writings
  • Philosophical Thoughts
    (Available New and Used)
  • An Essay on Blindness
    (Available New and Used)
  • Encyclopedia
    (Available New and Used)
Denis Diderot
1713 – 1784
French

Writer and philosopher. One of the founders and leading lights of the French Enlightenment, he wanted to "Ecrasez l'infame," by which he meant ignorance, superstition, and injustice. Diderot and his friends hoped that empirical knowledge, logic, and science would eventually free humans from the chains that bound them, chains often reinforced by conventional social institutions such as family, church, and state.

Contemporaries
1717–1783Jean d'Alembert
1754–1838Charles Talleyrand
1675–1755Louis Saint-Simon
1760–1825Claude Saint-Simon
1740–1814Marquis de Sade
1758–1794Maximilien Robespierre
1721–1764Jeanne Pompadour
1689–1755Charles Montesquieu
1743–1793Jean Marat
1638–1715Louis XIV
1715–1771Claude-Adrien Helvétius
1760–1797François-Noël Babeuf