Editing Denis Diderot (section)

== Philosophy ==
[[File:Denis Diderot portrait.jpg|thumb|[[Dmitry Levitzky]], ''Denis Diderot'', 1773, [[Musée d'Art et d'Histoire (Geneva)|Musée d'Art et d'Histoire]], Geneva]]
In his youth, Diderot was originally a follower of [[Voltaire]] and his [[Deism|deist]] ''Anglomanie'', but gradually moved away from this line of thought towards [[materialism]] and [[atheism]], a move which was finally realised in 1747 in the philosophical debate in the second part of his ''[[The Skeptic's Walk]]'' (1747).<ref>Jonathan I. Israel, ''Enlightenment Contested'', Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 791, 818.</ref> Diderot opposed mysticism and occultism, which were highly prevalent in France at the time he wrote, and believed religious truth claims must fall under the domain of reason, not mystical experience or esoteric secrets. However, Diderot showed some interest in the work of [[Paracelsus]].<ref>{{Cite book | last = Josephson-Storm | first = Jason | title = The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences | location = Chicago | publisher = University of Chicago Press | date = 2017 |pages = 53–55 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=xZ5yDgAAQBAJ | isbn = 978-0226403366 }}</ref> He was "a philosopher in whom all the contradictions of the time struggle with one another" ([[Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkranz|Rosenkranz]]).{{sfn|Morley|1911}}

In his 1754 book ''[[On the interpretation of Nature]]'', Diderot expounded on his views about nature, evolution, materialism, mathematics, and experimental science.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|651–652}}<ref name="Furbank 1992 109-115">{{cite book|title=Diderot: A Critical Biography|author=P.N. Furbank|publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|pages=109–115|year=1992}}</ref> It is speculated that Diderot may have contributed to his friend [[Baron d'Holbach]]'s 1770 book ''[[The System of Nature]]''.{{sfn|Morley|1911}} Diderot had enthusiastically endorsed the book stating that: {{blockquote|What I like is a philosophy clear, definite, and frank, such as you have in the ''System of Nature''. The author is not an atheist on one page and a deist on another. His philosophy is all of one piece.<ref name=AoV />{{rp|700}}}}

In conceiving the ''Encyclopédie'', Diderot had thought of the work as a fight on behalf of posterity and had expressed confidence that posterity would be grateful for his effort. According to Diderot, "posterity is for the philosopher what the 'other world' is for the man of religion."<ref name=AoV />{{rp|641}}

According to Andrew S. Curran, the main questions of Diderot's thought are the following :<ref>Andrew S. Curran, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely, Other Press, 2019, p. 14</ref>
* Why be moral in a world without god?
* How should we appreciate art?
* What are we and where do we come from?
* What are sex and love?
* How can a philosopher intervene in political affairs?