Denis Diderot

Biography

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer who was one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment. He is best known as the chief editor and contributor to the Encyclopédie (1751–1772), one of the most ambitious intellectual projects in Western history. But Diderot was also a brilliant and daring novelist, playwright, and philosopher whose works were often too radical to publish in his lifetime. His fiction, including Jacques the Fatalist, Rameau's Nephew, and The Indiscreet Jewels, pushed the boundaries of form and content, anticipating modernist techniques by over a century. Diderot's thought influenced the French Revolution and modern secular humanism.