Diderot (review)

120 H/STORY OF PHILOSOPHY As I hope the above remarks suggest, even where Bennett's book is mistaken, it is interesting and opens up avenues for discussion. STEVEN RAPPAPORT McGill University Diderot. By Arthur M. Wilson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Pp. xviii+ 917. $25) Arthur M. Wilson has completed his biographical study of Diderot, the first volume of which, The Testing Years, appeared in 1957. The second part, The Appeal to Posterity, is now reprinted together with the first part, thus requiring readers of the earlier volume to acquire a rather expensive, but handsomely illustrated book. The portrait is fuLl-length. Diderot's life was not as dramatic as some, except for his struggles over the Encyclop~die with repressive forces of the Old R6gime; but for a writer it was unusually interesting, lively and engagd. Wilson captures every ounce of drama. Acts and emotions, aesthetic creation and philosophic thought, the character of the man and the character of his mind--all are here, in this finely drawn portrait. Loves, friendships, hatreds; successes and failures--all are here, in a well-written, wellpaced and superbly constructed edifice. Beyond the man, we are made witness to his time, through his relations and a view of background events. Of the many merits of this work, I am inclined to consider two as outstanding. First, the documentation is so vast as to be apparently inclusive of everything ever written about Diderot and his context, from the eighteenth century primary sources to the present moment. Wilson does not overtly take a critical attitude toward these materials; he selects what he considers useful and avoids argumentation that would only spoil the aesthetic unity and proportion of his own book. Second, he has achieved a degree of objectivity that is rare indeed. He is sympathetic to his subject, as is only proper, and unstinting in his admiration. Yet he almost never falters when it comes to pointing out his faults and shortcomings, as a man, a writer and a thinker, x The writings of Diderot, an exemplar of the Enlightenment man, cover many fields, and Wilson's account gives us a superb overall view of the thinker and the artist. He does not attempt to give us new interpretations, or a new general interpretation. His method is rather eclectic, in the best sense. From the vast mass of scholarship, he culls and synthesizes what seems to him to represent the most acceptable and most coherent picture. His account is therefore almost always reliable, and together with the copious notes and references, offers us an incomparable mine of information. While all the analyses are of a high quality, several are particularly so. One is the account of the history of the Encyclopddie and its contents, especially of Diderot's own contributions.2 To select arbitrarily from the wealth of gems: 1 More emphasis might have been put on the antithesis between Diderot's heroic declarations and his clothing himself in Socrates' mantle, on the one hand, and his abject behavior in 1749 and 1782. In regard to the rewriting of Mine. d'Epinay's Histoire de Mine de Montbrillant , which was intended as a post-mortem weapon against Rousseau's dreaded posthumous Confessions, Wilson is praiseworthy for his effort to be even-handed, but he is, in my opinion, over-indulgent toward Diderot, by giving him the benefit of every doubt (pp. 608-611). The rewriting of letters, the forgery of an entire damning letter, the suppressions (all mentioned), cannot be passed off as a mere literary exercise or mystification. We cannot forget that Diderot condemned Rousseau for leaving behind memoirs to be published posthumously, while he took analogous action. As for Grimm's not destroying the notes, there are several possible explanations of the motives of a man who was a devious and a false friend. 2 A very minor cavil: Diderot's statement, "despotism and superstition lend each other BOOK REVIEWS 121 The whole Encyclop~die was suffused both explicitly and implicitly with a sharply defined methodology. First of all, the Encyclopedic believed in the empire of facts. It stood also for a particular way of thinking about data. It stood for...