Denis Diderot and the Banned Encyclopedia

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Picture a scene, right? It's the late 18th century, and this aging, pretty financially struggling philosopher travels all the way from Paris to the freezing cold of St. Petersburg.

SPEAKER_2 (0:12)

Quite the trip back then.

SPEAKER_1 (0:13)

Oh, definitely. So he sits down with Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, who is arguably the most powerful woman in the world at this point, and they start debating.

But this philosopher gets so incredibly carried away in his arguments that he repeatedly slaps the empress' thighs to make his points.

SPEAKER_2 (0:31)

Just casually slapping the empress.

SPEAKER_1 (0:33)

Right. It gets to the point where her thighs are literally bruised black and blue. She actually has to quietly instruct her staff to place a table between them just to protect herself from this incredibly enthusiastic physical debate style.

SPEAKER_2 (0:46)

It is just an amazing image to start with. I mean, the absolute monarch of this vast Russian empire having to build a literal furniture barricade to defend herself from this highly animated French intellectual.

SPEAKER_1 (1:01)

It's wild. Welcome to this deep dive into the life of that very intellectual, Denis Diderot. We are so glad you are joining us today because our mission with this one is to figure out how a rebellious son of a knife maker, a guy who lived in absolute poverty for years, ended up creating a massive encyclopedia that completely shook the foundations of the French monarchy.

SPEAKER_2 (1:24)

Yeah, and not just that.

SPEAKER_1 (1:25)

Right, we're going to explore how he formulated theories of evolution like a full century before Charles Darwin and why he spent decades secretly writing these absolute masterpieces that he knew perfectly well couldn't be published while he was alive. Okay, let's unpack this. Set the stage for us.

What world is Diderot actually operating in?

SPEAKER_2 (1:44)

Well, to really understand Diderot, we have to look at the broader context of the Enlightenment in France, because this was an era defined by a massive, like a fundamental shift in how people thought about truth. Prior to this, truth was handed down from above, from the king or from the church.

The Enlightenment was this period of intense questioning of those traditional authorities. And Diderot was right at the center of what was known as the Republic of Letters.

SPEAKER_1 (2:11)

Wait, the Republic of Letters. I feel like I've heard that term before, but what exactly was it? Was it a formal organization or something?

SPEAKER_2 (2:19)

No, not at all. It was more of an invisible international community of intellectuals, writers and philosophers. Across Europe and America, really.

SPEAKER_1 (2:27)

Okay, got it.

SPEAKER_2 (2:28)

Yeah, they communicate it through letters and pamphlets and books. And they shared this core belief that human reason, rather than divine revelation, should be the primary source of authority.

SPEAKER_1 (2:38)

Right.

SPEAKER_2 (2:39)

But even among these radical thinkers, Diderot was an absolute intellectual daredevil.

He wasn't just satisfied with writing philosophy. He wanted to completely transform how humanity organizes, categorizes, and accesses information itself.

SPEAKER_1 (2:55)

And his path to becoming that daredevil was anything but smooth. I mean, he was born in the town of Langres and his father was a master cutler, basically a knife maker.

SPEAKER_2 (3:05)

Yeah, a respectable trade.

SPEAKER_1 (3:06)

Exactly. His family expected him to follow a respectable path, entering the Jesuit clergy or maybe the law. But Diderot, he abandons both of those options. He decides he wants to live this totally Bohemian existence as a writer in Paris.

SPEAKER_2 (3:21)

Which obviously goes over terribly.

SPEAKER_1 (3:23)

Oh, yeah. It infuriates his father to the point of just completely disowning him.

And then to make matters worse for his family dynamic, he marries Antoinette Champion.

SPEAKER_2 (3:32)

Right. The marriage.

SPEAKER_1 (3:33)

Yeah. She was a poor older devoutly Catholic woman who didn't even have a dowry. So he is completely alienated from his family.

SPEAKER_2 (3:40)

He really was completely cut off.

And because of that, his financial struggles were just severe. I mean, he was scraping by, taking these random odd writing jobs, tutoring, basically doing whatever he could to survive in the Parisian underground.

SPEAKER_1 (3:55)

Which honestly leads to one of my favorite origin stories for a literary career ever. So Diderot has this mistress, Madeleine de Poussey.

SPEAKER_2 (4:04)

Right.

SPEAKER_1 (4:05)

And she's making financial demands on him.

He complains to her that, you know, writing a novel is a trivial, easy thing to do. So she essentially double dares him to write one just to pay her bills.

SPEAKER_2 (4:16)

And he actually does it.

SPEAKER_1 (4:17)

He does. He sits down and writes The Indiscreet Jewels, which is this scandalous body novel about a sultan with a magic ring.