In addition to asserting that the American colonies had the absolute moral and political right to unshackle themselves from their oppressive mother country, he provided an enthusiastic summary of the political foundations and ideology of the new nation, not only translating portions of Thomas Paine’s 1776 Common Sense and summarizing the main points of the Declaration of Independence, but analyzing the new country’s Articles of Confederation as well.56 It is no exaggeration that Diderot was the single most important French interpreter of the remarkable political experiment taking place on the
...more
