Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

by Andrew S. Curran

Indeed, during the hours that he spent slipping in and out of the crowds at the Louvre, he took great pleasure in listening in to the “verdicts of old men,” “the thoughts of children,” “the judgments of men of letters,” “the opinions of sophisticates,” and “the views of the people.”10 These varied perspectives, he wrote, infused his own thinking on art. If he undoubtedly believed that a discriminating palate was a real and measurable thing — a capacity to sense the “true and the good, along with the circumstances rendering it beautiful” — he was also convinced that anyone could acquire an appreciation of beauty and art through “reiterated experience,” by investing the time to understand “nature or the art that copies it.”11 He, of course, was the living proof: the son of a provincial cutler who became the century’s most noteworthy art critic.