Diderot, lecteur et interprète de Leibniz (review)

This book takes on the difficult question of the extent of Diderot's knowledge of and engagement with the work of Leibniz, a question which has remained unanswered in the work of scholars such as Yvon Belaval who concluded that one could at best speak of 'le sentiment d'avoir affaire à une influence indirecte, diffuse, confuse' and who warned that 'l'influence d'un auteur sur un esprit intuitif comme celui de Diderot est parfaitement compatible avec une lecture disparate et superficielle'. Fauvergue's book challenges the idea of a vague influence and, in its most interesting section, she makes a convincing argument that, although Diderot's access to Leibniz's work was often mediated, his reading of it was not superficial. In her detailed analysis of Diderot's article 'LEIBNITZIANISME' in the Encyclopédie, Fauvergue shows that this mediation is itself fascinating. Whilst it is well known that, in order to write the article, Diderot relied heavily on Brucker's Latin Historia Critica Philosophica, Fauvergue shows that the Encyclopédie article is much more than simply a French translation of Brucker's Latin for, since Brucker's piece is partly made up of excerpts from Leibniz's works in Latin, Diderot's article offers translations of Leibniz. In some cases, his are the very first translations of Leibniz into French. There can be no doubt that the work of translation amounts to more than a 'lecture superficielle', and Fauvergue also shows that Diderot's translations often reveal deliberately materialist interpretations of Leibniz's metaphysics. While this second section is very engaging, the first and third sections of the book are much less easy to get on with: there are many interesting points made, especially regarding Leibniz's notion of force as the essential quality of matter and Diderot's interpretation of it in terms of sensibilité, but the argument is rather sporadic and quite difficult to follow, and material is repeated in a number of places. Moreover, it is disappointing not to find any exploration of the 'promenade Vernet' with its echo of Leibniz's anecdote of the garden at Herrenhausen, nor more engagement with Diderot's playful echoes of Leibniz's notions of identity, pre-established harmony and determinism in Jacques le fataliste.