56 Diderot’s Dilettantism

An Undogmatic Mind without Prophetic Gestures

Denis Diderot (1713–​1784), the son of a cutler from Langres in Champagne, was one of those representatives of the century they call the century of “Enlight- enment” and, along with d’Alembert, editor of the Encyclopédie, a work with aspirations to comprise all of human culture. … In this country Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau, men less “modern” than Diderot, are better known than Diderot. Yet Diderot’s mind —​ agile, im- pertinent, industrious, playful, pragmatic, versatile —​ seems rather more ac- cessible to us than even the Confessions of Jean-Jacques​ Rousseau. The fact is that Diderot was more or less smothered by his fame as editor of his Encyclo- pedia, which showcases but one one-fifth​ of his talents. Yet he was nothing like your typical educator of the rationalist persuasion; he was that, too, but more so, and principally, one of last of the great dilettantes. Here I have in mind a kind of universal spirit, an optimistic temperament capable of casting an eye over a wide range of phenomena in an unbiased, original, and creative fashion. This bonhomie, one of his most conspicuous character traits, equipped Diderot to avoid the embitterment and the utopias into which Rousseau was to lapse and to speak about the most profound things in life with crystal clear probity. This trenchant psychologist and indefatigable collector of facts resembles Julien Benda in that his life was not tragic — ​even though he served time for his ideas —​ and never put on woe-​is-​me airs. Plunging into Diderot’s works (almost any page of his best works will do) inevitably leaves one enchanted by the natural joie de vivre of his universal dilettantism. Murk and mystery are complete strangers here, although he was a man easily moved to tears, and a good friend to boot. His sensibility is ever intelligent and withal that of an “ordinary” person, without prophetic gestures, in many ways even an irreverent bourgeois, fond of conversing and socializing, though not one to mince words. (You’re familiar with the anecdote about his visit to the court of Empress Catherine II of Russia where, in the heat of the conversation, he familiarly tapped her knee, prompting the empress to call for a small table to serve as a barrier.) For all the paradoxes in his work, the fact remains that his personality resonated with spontaneity and simplicity. These qualities made him well-nigh​ impervious to big words and bombastic slogans. Diderot is always arguing with himself, not only in such dialogues as Le neveu

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004426627_058 190 part 6 de Rameau (a masterful conversation between the “philosopher” and his dou- ble who could care less about philosophical niceties), Entretien d’Alembert et Diderot, Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, and Paradoxe sur le comédien, and more. The dialogue is his path to harmony and well-being,​ for it is the in- terplay of argument and counter-​argument that frees up thinking. This is how this dilettante creates the impression of a man without a system and without a party although, polemicist that he was, he was constantly mixed up with sys- tems and not at all shy about choosing sides.

Diderot as Mentor and Writer for Pleasure

Diderot can only be an educator for those not wedded to abstractions. For all that, he had mentor qualities in spades, but he would not speak with any more pedagogical ponderousness than might be accommodated in the plasticity of his language, which explains why he did not leave a closed system à la Hegel or Thomas Aquinas, nor even a set of social and pedagogical norms like his con- temporary Rousseau. Diderot remained a dilettante in the best meaning of the word, and those who go on to read him instead of lingering at his reputation will be amazed at the riches his writings, seemingly so effortlessly produced, have in store for them. Diderot wrote for his pleasure, again employed in the best meaning of the word. He left numerous writings that only came to light years later, his best works among them. It was Goethe —​ in many respects a kindred spirit by virtue of his dilettantism —​ who first brought out Le neveu de Rameau, in a German translation in 1821, from an unidentified handwriting, so that, according to a conversation with Eckermann, he was suspected of having written the dialogue himself. It was not until 1891 that Neveu appeared in the original text. The need to express himself in writing was as profound as his relative unconcern about the fate of his writings. A mind so undogmatic as to contradict itself from one moment to the next without really trying to; or, as himself puts it: “dogmatic for something in the morning, and in the evening dogmatic against something.” Diderot’s undog- matic nature expresses itself foremost in the agility of his thinking, draw- ing sharp boundaries only to end up underscoring the relative nature of all boundaries. “Every animal is more or less a human; every mineral more or less a plant, every plant more or less an animal. There is nothing clearly defined in nature.”1 This statement Diderot puts in the mouth of the dreamer Alembert

1 Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew and D’Alembert’s Dream. Translated with an introduction by Leonard Tancock (New York: Penguin Books, 1966), 181.