Denis diderot brief biography samples free

Born October 5, , in Langres, a small town in the middle of France, Denis Diderot was the son of an artisan cutler who expected him to rise above his humble beginnings. After college, he managed to make ends meet through his work as a translator, given his skill in various languages, particularly English. This work resulted in his first few major publications in the early s, which started to draw a spotlight on his public persona while contributing little to his financial security.

Diderot met Rousseau in , and together with Etienne Bonnot de Condillac joined his philosophe movement in an effort to gain public acclaim and patronage as intellectuals in Parisian society. In , Diderot married and sired a daughter with Antoinette Champion.

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She was an equally poor woman whom he loved dearly, but his family back in Langres disapproved of the union and broke ties with him completely. However, it was his third work, published in , a novel of an erotic nature called Les Bijoux indiscrets The Indiscrete Jewels , that would earn him his first sizable financial return.

He also spent three months in jail in after the publication of Lettre sur les aveugles , though his sentence was cut down through his association with Voltaire. Diderot would go on to incorporate some of his ideas that were hostile to the religious authorities into the volumes of the work, resulting in many controversies throughout its publication, with its publication rights even being suspended several times under various accusations.

The various controversies surrounding the project found Diderot in a state of great financial security for once as they greatly boosted sales.

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In the late s, Diderot would go on to write several plays that were staged in Paris and were infused with his radical moral agenda. These riveting articles would result in the invention of the genre of art criticism. Diderot got an opportunity to return his thanks, and offer his political philosophy, seven years later when he visited Catherine in Russia.

After his death, Diderot was buried in a lead coffin. Ten years later, this coffin would be unburied by looters looking for lead to make bullets for French revolutionary armies, who would throw his remains in a mass grave filled with bodies from public executions. Wolfe, Charles T.