Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely Quotes

“From Bacon, Diderot learned that science need not bow down before a Bible-based view of the world; it should be based on induction and experimentation, and, ideally, used to further humankind’s mastery of nature. Locke delivered two related concepts. The first was a theory of mind that rejected the long-standing belief that humans were born with innate ideas (and, therefore, with an inborn understanding of the divine). In Locke’s view, the mind is a blank slate at birth, and our understanding of the exterior world comes about solely through sensation and reflection. This entirely nonspiritual view of cognition set up a second critical lesson. Since, according to the English philosopher, true knowledge is limited to what we can learn through our senses, anyone involved in seeking out nature’s secrets must rely on observation and experiment — on a so-called empirical approach — and avoid building huge systems based on fantasy.”
― Andrew S. Curran, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

“The forty-seven-year-old Diderot had been an ideal model for Garand, having been confined to a chair after running into a shin-level metal bar while chasing swans around the château’s fountain.”
― Andrew S. Curran, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

“Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum (So great the evils to which men are driven by religion).”
― Andrew S. Curran, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

“Goethe and Madame de Staël, neither of whom ever met the philosophe, knew that, by reputation, no one’s conversation ever surpassed Diderot’s in liveliness, strength, wit, variety, and grace.”
― Andrew S. Curran, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

“the role of the philosophe is to “trample underfoot prejudice, tradition, antiquity, shared covenants, authority — in a word, everything that controls the mind of the common herd.”13”
― Andrew S. Curran, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

“But his friends also dubbed him le philosophe because he had become the greatest advocate for the emancipatory power of philosophy.”
― Andrew S. Curran, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

“Karl Marx, who borrowed deeply from Diderot’s musings on class struggle, listed the writer as his favorite author.”
― Andrew S. Curran, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

“Diderot’s effusive art criticism inspired Stendhal, Balzac, and Baudelaire. Émile Zola credited Diderot’s “vivisections” of society as the foundation of the naturalism that characterized his and Balzac’s novels.8 Social theorists, too, were spellbound by Diderot’s prescient thought.”
― Andrew S. Curran, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely