Conversations between truth and power

Denis Diderot (1713–84) is the least commemorated of the philosophes. Calls for his remains to be moved to the Panthéon on the tricentenary of his birth in 2013 were ignored. He has not taken his place alongside Rousseau and Voltaire in the Parisian vaults of fame, even though he was no less radical or progressive. Instead, his name has been given to a metro stop in the 12th arrondissement: Reuilly-Diderot. Even here, he comes second, tacked on by a hyphen, one of history’s and philosophy’s also-rans.

The injustice done to Diderot can partly be explained by the fact that he was a collaborative writer and thinker. He devoted decades of his life to editing the Enlightenment’s Encyclopédie, a gargantuan attempt to compile ‘all the knowledge in the world’, comparable to Pliny the Elder’s Natural History and Francis Bacon’s Great Instauration. Between 1751 and 1765, 17 volumes of text and 11 volumes of illustrations were published.