In the months before he died, Diderot had prepared for what he hoped would be a postmortem afterglow. Writing for future generations, as he had revealed in the Encyclopédie article “Immortality,” had been the single biggest motivating factor in his highly policed and self-censored career: “We hear in ourselves the tribute that [posterity] will one day offer in our honor, and we sacrifice ourselves. We sacrifice our life, we really cease to exist in order to live on in their
