WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.280 You know, I was looking through the source stack 00:00:01.280 --> 00:00:04.160 for today, and this one image just kept jumping 00:00:04.160 --> 00:00:07.179 out at me. Oh, yeah. What was it? Okay, so picture 00:00:07.179 --> 00:00:11.380 this. It's 1773. You have the Empress of Russia, 00:00:11.519 --> 00:00:13.919 Catherine the Great, I mean, arguably the most 00:00:13.919 --> 00:00:15.800 powerful woman on the planet at that point. Right. 00:00:16.179 --> 00:00:19.420 And she's sitting in her private chambers. And 00:00:19.420 --> 00:00:22.760 across from her, like knee to knee, is this 60 00:00:22.760 --> 00:00:24.920 -year -old French philosopher. And he's not just 00:00:24.920 --> 00:00:27.260 sitting there quietly, is he? No. That's the 00:00:27.260 --> 00:00:29.859 thing. He's practically climbing on top of her. 00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:32.060 He's shouting. He's waving his arms around. And 00:00:32.060 --> 00:00:34.100 every single time he makes a point about liberty 00:00:34.100 --> 00:00:37.380 or law, he slaps her on the thigh. Hard. Yeah, 00:00:37.439 --> 00:00:39.399 hard. To the point where she apparently complained 00:00:39.399 --> 00:00:41.280 she was black and blue and had to put a table 00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:43.679 between them just for, like, self -preservation. 00:00:43.880 --> 00:00:47.100 Exactly. And that specific image, this frantic, 00:00:47.159 --> 00:00:50.579 unbelievably enthusiastic philosopher just physically 00:00:50.579 --> 00:00:53.880 assaulting an autocrat with his ideas, that to 00:00:53.880 --> 00:00:56.560 me is Dennis Diderot in a nutshell. It really 00:00:56.560 --> 00:00:59.460 is. Because we tend to file this guy away, you 00:00:59.460 --> 00:01:01.759 know, in history classes, the encyclopedia guy. 00:01:01.960 --> 00:01:05.239 Right. The dusty librarian who put all of human 00:01:05.239 --> 00:01:07.780 knowledge in alphabetical order. Which is, I 00:01:07.780 --> 00:01:10.099 mean, it's technically true, but it's sort of 00:01:10.099 --> 00:01:12.620 like calling the Beatles a garage band from Liverpool. 00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:16.379 It just completely misses the sheer chaotic scare 00:01:16.379 --> 00:01:19.120 of what he was actually doing. And that's exactly 00:01:19.120 --> 00:01:21.019 what we're digging into today. Because when you 00:01:21.019 --> 00:01:23.939 actually get into the sources, the letters, the 00:01:23.939 --> 00:01:26.920 secret manuscripts he hid, the actual police 00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:30.000 reports on him, you realize Diderot wasn't just 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:32.650 compiling a dictionary. No. He was building a 00:01:32.650 --> 00:01:35.609 bomb. A slow motion bomb, maybe, but definitely 00:01:35.609 --> 00:01:38.430 one that you could argue did more to dismantle 00:01:38.430 --> 00:01:41.049 the old regime than, you know, any single riot 00:01:41.049 --> 00:01:43.510 ever did. So for this deep dive, we're really 00:01:43.510 --> 00:01:45.189 going to look at two different versions of this 00:01:45.189 --> 00:01:47.650 man. First, there's a public Diderot. That's 00:01:47.650 --> 00:01:51.069 the editor, the hustler, the guy who's trying 00:01:51.069 --> 00:01:52.750 to change the way people think without getting 00:01:52.750 --> 00:01:54.329 himself executed. And then there's the other 00:01:54.329 --> 00:01:57.010 one, the secret Diderot. This is the part that 00:01:57.010 --> 00:01:59.519 I find fascinating. Me too. This is the guy who's 00:01:59.519 --> 00:02:02.159 writing absolute masterpieces. I mean, books 00:02:02.159 --> 00:02:04.359 that predict evolution, that deconstruct how 00:02:04.359 --> 00:02:07.000 novels even work, that analyze human corruption 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:09.780 with this brutal honesty. And then what does 00:02:09.780 --> 00:02:12.139 he do? He shoves them in a drawer. Literally 00:02:12.139 --> 00:02:14.879 hides them away. Yes. He knew the world wasn't 00:02:14.879 --> 00:02:16.740 ready for them. He knew the censors would burn 00:02:16.740 --> 00:02:20.300 him or worse. So he just... He skipped his own 00:02:20.300 --> 00:02:22.520 century. He decided he was writing for us. Which 00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:24.819 is just a hell of a gamble, isn't it? To bet 00:02:24.819 --> 00:02:27.159 your entire legacy on an audience that won't 00:02:27.159 --> 00:02:29.819 even be born for another, what, 200 years? It's 00:02:29.819 --> 00:02:32.240 an incredible act of faith in the future. So 00:02:32.240 --> 00:02:34.759 to really understand how a Cutler's son from 00:02:34.759 --> 00:02:37.460 Champagne ends up making that kind of bet, we 00:02:37.460 --> 00:02:40.240 have to start at the beginning. He wasn't born 00:02:40.240 --> 00:02:42.159 into the Parisian elite or anything like that, 00:02:42.199 --> 00:02:45.080 was he? Oh, far from it. He was born in 1713 00:02:45.080 --> 00:02:47.439 in Langres, in the Champagne region, and his 00:02:47.439 --> 00:02:50.750 background is actually... super important for 00:02:50.750 --> 00:02:52.810 understanding his later philosophy. He wasn't 00:02:52.810 --> 00:02:55.449 aristocracy. He wasn't part of the academic establishment. 00:02:55.750 --> 00:02:59.129 His father, Didier Diderot, was a master cutler. 00:02:59.189 --> 00:03:02.330 A knife maker. Exactly. A highly skilled craftsman. 00:03:02.409 --> 00:03:05.689 He made surgical instruments, lances, all sorts 00:03:05.689 --> 00:03:08.469 of fine knives. And this gave Diderot a lifelong 00:03:08.469 --> 00:03:12.490 respect for trade, for tools, for the physical 00:03:12.490 --> 00:03:14.849 reality of how things are actually made. So he 00:03:14.849 --> 00:03:17.889 had this real world, hands -on perspective from 00:03:17.889 --> 00:03:20.909 the very beginning. He did. In an era where a 00:03:20.909 --> 00:03:23.009 lot of philosophers sort of looked down on manual 00:03:23.009 --> 00:03:25.750 labor as something, you know, servile or base, 00:03:26.090 --> 00:03:28.389 Ghidorah had this almost blue -collar appreciation 00:03:28.389 --> 00:03:31.210 for the mechanical arts. He understood that the 00:03:31.210 --> 00:03:33.430 world is made of matter, and you can shape that 00:03:33.430 --> 00:03:36.210 matter with skill and with your hands. It feels 00:03:36.210 --> 00:03:38.229 like that tangible connection to the physical 00:03:38.229 --> 00:03:40.569 world really grounded him. He wasn't just thinking 00:03:40.569 --> 00:03:42.250 in abstract forms. He was thinking about, you 00:03:42.250 --> 00:03:45.990 know, steel and edges and function. But the family 00:03:45.990 --> 00:03:48.810 dynamic itself, it wasn't exactly smooth. Not 00:03:48.810 --> 00:03:51.030 at all. It's a classic rebellion story, really. 00:03:51.250 --> 00:03:53.490 His father wanted him to become a respectable 00:03:53.490 --> 00:03:56.250 professional. He had a sister, Denise, who did 00:03:56.250 --> 00:03:58.469 her absolutely adore. He called her female Socrates, 00:03:58.650 --> 00:04:01.349 which I love. Wow. But the family had very specific 00:04:01.349 --> 00:04:03.650 plans for Dennis. They wanted him to be a priest, 00:04:03.669 --> 00:04:06.449 maybe a lawyer. The safe, steady path. The respectable 00:04:06.449 --> 00:04:08.310 career. Right. And he went along with it for 00:04:08.310 --> 00:04:10.229 a while. He studied with the Jesuits. He actually 00:04:10.229 --> 00:04:12.009 did consider the clergy. And then he pivoted 00:04:12.009 --> 00:04:15.740 to law school for a bit. In 1734, he makes the 00:04:15.740 --> 00:04:18.139 decision that, you know, terrifies parents in 00:04:18.139 --> 00:04:20.560 any century. He decides he's just going to be 00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:25.199 a writer in Paris with no money. And his father, 00:04:25.319 --> 00:04:28.720 the master knife maker who values... practical, 00:04:28.759 --> 00:04:31.639 tangible things. I'm guessing he didn't love 00:04:31.639 --> 00:04:33.740 the idea of his son becoming a scribbler. He 00:04:33.740 --> 00:04:35.579 disowned him. Just cut him off completely. No 00:04:35.579 --> 00:04:37.279 more money, no more support. You're on your own. 00:04:37.399 --> 00:04:40.139 There he is. We have a 20 -something Diderot, 00:04:40.279 --> 00:04:42.720 totally disowned, and he's loose in Paris in 00:04:42.720 --> 00:04:45.519 the 1740s. Yeah. It really strikes me that he's 00:04:45.519 --> 00:04:49.019 essentially living the gig economy life just 00:04:49.019 --> 00:04:51.720 300 years early. He's translating, he's hustling 00:04:51.720 --> 00:04:54.420 for any work he can find. It is absolutely the 00:04:54.420 --> 00:04:57.459 starving artist phase. The sources call it his 00:04:57.459 --> 00:05:00.560 bohemian existence. He's living in a garret, 00:05:00.620 --> 00:05:03.439 you know, a tiny attic room wearing old worn 00:05:03.439 --> 00:05:06.180 out clothes. He's doing any translation work 00:05:06.180 --> 00:05:08.800 he can get just to pay for food. He's translating 00:05:08.800 --> 00:05:10.920 a history of Greece, a medicinal dictionary, 00:05:11.199 --> 00:05:13.879 just pure grunt work. But this is also where 00:05:13.879 --> 00:05:16.660 he starts building his network, finding his people. 00:05:16.839 --> 00:05:18.779 And he meets Jean -Jacques Rousseau. He does. 00:05:19.220 --> 00:05:21.939 Another future heavy hitter of the Enlightenment. 00:05:22.139 --> 00:05:25.399 How did they meet? They meet at the Café de la... 00:05:25.389 --> 00:05:29.009 which was the spot for chess and coffee in Paris. 00:05:29.129 --> 00:05:32.389 You can just picture it, right? Two broke, brilliant 00:05:32.389 --> 00:05:35.470 young guys watching these intense chess games, 00:05:35.689 --> 00:05:38.589 drinking coffee they can barely afford, and just 00:05:38.589 --> 00:05:40.490 complaining about the state of the world. The 00:05:40.490 --> 00:05:43.290 start of a beautiful and very tumultuous friendship. 00:05:43.569 --> 00:05:45.889 They were thick as thieves back then, and it's 00:05:45.889 --> 00:05:48.569 in the middle of all this... Poverty and intellectual 00:05:48.569 --> 00:05:51.129 ferment that Diderot, of course, falls in love. 00:05:51.290 --> 00:05:54.230 With Antoinette Champion. Right. And on paper, 00:05:54.310 --> 00:05:56.889 from his family's perspective, this was a complete 00:05:56.889 --> 00:05:59.569 disaster. She was a very devout Catholic, which 00:05:59.569 --> 00:06:01.970 he was already moving away from. She had no money, 00:06:02.050 --> 00:06:04.970 no dowry, and very low social standing. She was 00:06:04.970 --> 00:06:08.629 a linen draper's daughter. So not exactly a strategic 00:06:08.629 --> 00:06:11.189 match for moving up in the world. Not at all. 00:06:11.250 --> 00:06:13.750 And his father absolutely hated it. He hated 00:06:13.750 --> 00:06:15.930 the match so much, he actually tried to get Diderot 00:06:15.930 --> 00:06:18.709 imprisoned. to prevent the marriage from happening. 00:06:18.889 --> 00:06:20.850 He tried to have his own son locked up. Yes, 00:06:20.850 --> 00:06:24.819 but... Diderot, being Diderot stubborn and rebellious, 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:27.519 he just went and married her anyway, in secret, 00:06:27.620 --> 00:06:31.339 in 1743. I feel like there's a but coming. The 00:06:31.339 --> 00:06:34.019 romantic rebel marries for love against his father's 00:06:34.019 --> 00:06:37.100 wishes. Usually that story either ends with, 00:06:37.259 --> 00:06:40.000 and they lived happily ever after, or it goes 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:42.420 completely off a cliff. Yeah, it went off a cliff 00:06:42.420 --> 00:06:44.259 pretty quickly. The marriage was not a happy 00:06:44.259 --> 00:06:47.819 one. The sources paint Antoinette as pious and, 00:06:47.839 --> 00:06:49.740 well, maybe a bit of a nag, but you also have 00:06:49.740 --> 00:06:51.899 to admit Diderot was probably impossible. to 00:06:51.899 --> 00:06:54.740 live with I so he was restless he was always 00:06:54.740 --> 00:06:57.120 working always out and he wasn't faithful he 00:06:57.120 --> 00:06:59.319 had a whole series of affairs but the most significant 00:06:59.319 --> 00:07:01.300 one the one that really mattered intellectually 00:07:01.300 --> 00:07:03.839 and emotionally was with a woman named Sophie 00:07:03.839 --> 00:07:06.259 Voland and we know so much about this because 00:07:06.259 --> 00:07:08.040 of the letters right I've seen them described 00:07:08.040 --> 00:07:12.360 as literature in their own right Yes. His correspondence 00:07:12.360 --> 00:07:14.920 with Sophie Voland is just, it's incredible. 00:07:15.079 --> 00:07:17.180 Historians consider it one of the absolute literary 00:07:17.180 --> 00:07:19.279 treasures of the 18th century. They're not just 00:07:19.279 --> 00:07:22.180 love letters. They are a direct feed from his 00:07:22.180 --> 00:07:25.180 brain to the page. A window into his mind. A 00:07:25.180 --> 00:07:27.660 completely unfiltered window. He writes to her 00:07:27.660 --> 00:07:31.079 about philosophy, about court gossip, about new 00:07:31.079 --> 00:07:33.779 scientific discoveries, about his digestion, 00:07:34.060 --> 00:07:36.680 about the plays he saw last night. It's the most 00:07:36.680 --> 00:07:39.199 candid, honest look we have into his mind. He 00:07:39.199 --> 00:07:44.379 didn't have to fill So, okay. He's broke. He's 00:07:44.379 --> 00:07:46.680 unhappily married. He's pouring his soul out 00:07:46.680 --> 00:07:49.699 in letters to his mistress. He needs cash. And 00:07:49.699 --> 00:07:52.279 this leads to one of the absolute weirdest origin 00:07:52.279 --> 00:07:54.199 stories for a philosophical work I have ever 00:07:54.199 --> 00:07:56.060 heard. We have to talk about the talking jewelry. 00:07:56.319 --> 00:07:59.439 Ah, yes. Les bijoux indiscrets, or the indiscreet 00:07:59.439 --> 00:08:02.500 jewels, published in 1748. Tell us the story 00:08:02.500 --> 00:08:05.079 behind this because it's wild. It is. So the 00:08:05.079 --> 00:08:07.540 story goes that his mistress at the time, a woman 00:08:07.540 --> 00:08:10.379 named Madeleine de Prézieux, this is before Sophie 00:08:10.379 --> 00:08:13.519 Voland, was demanding money. He was broke. At 00:08:13.519 --> 00:08:15.920 some point, Diderot made a comment that writing 00:08:15.920 --> 00:08:19.500 a novel was trivial, that it was easy. She basically 00:08:19.500 --> 00:08:21.660 dared him to do it. So he writes a novel on a 00:08:21.660 --> 00:08:24.040 dare. On a dare and to make some quick money. 00:08:24.220 --> 00:08:26.959 He supposedly churned it out in about two weeks. 00:08:27.100 --> 00:08:30.920 And the result is... Well, it's basically erotica. 00:08:31.060 --> 00:08:32.600 But it's Diderot, so it has to have a twist. 00:08:32.639 --> 00:08:35.500 It can't just be smut. It has a very, very strange 00:08:35.500 --> 00:08:38.059 twist. The plot involves a sultan who gets a 00:08:38.059 --> 00:08:40.720 magic ring from a genie. When he points this 00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:43.659 ring at any woman, her, well, the book uses the 00:08:43.659 --> 00:08:47.139 slang term bijou or jewels, but it's a euphemism 00:08:47.139 --> 00:08:49.840 for her vagina. Her jewels begin to speak. It 00:08:49.840 --> 00:08:52.320 talks. It talks. And it confesses all of its 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:54.740 sexual experiences out loud for everyone to hear. 00:08:54.840 --> 00:08:56.759 I mean, that is, that's certainly a premise. 00:08:56.820 --> 00:08:58.299 It sounds like something from a bad B movie. 00:08:58.720 --> 00:09:01.179 It absolutely is. And on the surface, it's just 00:09:01.179 --> 00:09:03.980 bawdy and scandalous. But because Diderot can't 00:09:03.980 --> 00:09:06.139 help himself, he just stuffs the book with these 00:09:06.139 --> 00:09:09.059 long digressions on philosophy, music theory 00:09:09.059 --> 00:09:11.879 and literature. It's actually a pretty sharp 00:09:11.879 --> 00:09:14.279 satire of the French court and the gossip culture 00:09:14.279 --> 00:09:16.879 of Versailles. But there's one specific chapter 00:09:16.879 --> 00:09:19.120 that really hints at where his mind is going. 00:09:19.379 --> 00:09:21.299 The dream sequence. Yes. There's this bizarre 00:09:21.299 --> 00:09:23.620 dream sequence where a child named Experiment 00:09:23.620 --> 00:09:26.899 grows into a giant and systematically destroys 00:09:26.899 --> 00:09:30.980 a huge ancient temple named Hypothesis. That's 00:09:30.980 --> 00:09:33.080 actually really profound. It's the scientific 00:09:33.080 --> 00:09:36.500 method literally destroying old dogma and received 00:09:36.500 --> 00:09:39.299 wisdom. And he's hidden it inside this dirty 00:09:39.299 --> 00:09:42.220 joke about a magic ring. Exactly. It shows that 00:09:42.220 --> 00:09:44.600 even when he was, you know, slumming it for cash, 00:09:44.700 --> 00:09:46.639 his mind was already attacking the established 00:09:46.639 --> 00:09:49.120 order. He was making this argument that we can't 00:09:49.120 --> 00:09:51.299 just guess how the world works based on old books 00:09:51.299 --> 00:09:53.879 or theories. That's Hypothesis. We have to go 00:09:53.879 --> 00:09:55.899 out and test it. We have to experiment. And did 00:09:55.899 --> 00:09:58.539 it work? Did he make his money? Oh, yeah. The 00:09:58.539 --> 00:10:00.700 book was sold clandestinely, of course, but it 00:10:00.700 --> 00:10:03.139 was a massive hit. It actually ended up being 00:10:03.139 --> 00:10:05.720 the most published and widely read work of his 00:10:05.720 --> 00:10:09.340 entire career during his own lifetime. He later 00:10:09.340 --> 00:10:12.220 called it a debauchery of the mind, but it paid 00:10:12.220 --> 00:10:14.179 the bills. So he pays the bills with talking 00:10:14.179 --> 00:10:16.659 jewels, but he's clearly gearing up for something 00:10:16.659 --> 00:10:20.279 much more serious. We start to see a shift in 00:10:20.279 --> 00:10:22.460 the late 1740s. He starts writing things that 00:10:22.460 --> 00:10:27.110 are genuinely... This is where we meet the dangerous 00:10:27.110 --> 00:10:30.669 philosopher. In 1746, he publishes his first 00:10:30.669 --> 00:10:33.129 really original work, Philosophical Thoughts. 00:10:33.389 --> 00:10:35.610 Now, he's still a deist at this point. He believes 00:10:35.610 --> 00:10:38.049 in a god, but a distant one, like a watchmaker 00:10:38.049 --> 00:10:39.690 who wound up the universe and then just walked 00:10:39.690 --> 00:10:42.190 away. But he's already pushing boundaries. He 00:10:42.190 --> 00:10:44.669 is. He's arguing for the importance of feeling 00:10:44.669 --> 00:10:47.129 and passion alongside pure reason, which was 00:10:47.129 --> 00:10:49.169 a bit radical. And he's already leveling some 00:10:49.169 --> 00:10:51.690 pretty sharp critiques at institutional Christianity. 00:10:51.950 --> 00:10:53.750 And the police are starting to pay attention 00:10:53.750 --> 00:10:56.629 to this guy. They definitely are. A year later, 00:10:56.710 --> 00:11:00.210 in 1747, he writes another piece called The Skeptic's 00:11:00.210 --> 00:11:03.620 Walk. It's a dialogue between a deist, an atheist, 00:11:03.879 --> 00:11:06.879 and a pantheist. The police actually seized the 00:11:06.879 --> 00:11:08.700 manuscript before it could even be published. 00:11:08.919 --> 00:11:11.360 They were onto him. But the real turning point, 00:11:11.440 --> 00:11:13.039 the thing that really lands him in hot water, 00:11:13.139 --> 00:11:17.779 is the letter on the blind in 1749. Yes. This 00:11:17.779 --> 00:11:21.539 is the pivot point. This is where he stops being 00:11:21.539 --> 00:11:24.600 just a literary nuisance and starts being a genuine 00:11:24.600 --> 00:11:27.019 threat to the state. The title sounds so clinical, 00:11:27.039 --> 00:11:28.960 though. It sounds like a medical case study you'd 00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:31.039 find in a dusty archive somewhere. And that was 00:11:31.039 --> 00:11:33.419 the whole trick. The Enlightenment was obsessed 00:11:33.419 --> 00:11:35.620 with this thought experiment posed by a scientist 00:11:35.620 --> 00:11:39.360 named Molina. The question was, if a man born 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:42.299 blind who knows shapes only by touching them... 00:11:42.539 --> 00:11:45.159 A cube, a sphere, suddenly gains his sight. Would 00:11:45.159 --> 00:11:46.840 he be able to tell the difference between the 00:11:46.840 --> 00:11:48.919 cube and the sphere just by looking at them? 00:11:49.120 --> 00:11:51.419 So it's a question about hardware versus software, 00:11:51.539 --> 00:11:54.700 almost. Is our brain preloaded with an understanding 00:11:54.700 --> 00:11:57.179 of geometry, or do we have to learn it all through 00:11:57.179 --> 00:12:00.799 our eyes? Precisely. The empiricists, like John 00:12:00.799 --> 00:12:04.379 Locke, said no. We are blank slates. We learn 00:12:04.379 --> 00:12:07.000 everything through our senses. Diderot takes 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:09.360 this idea and just sprints with it. He interviews 00:12:09.360 --> 00:12:11.779 a real blind man to understand how he structures 00:12:11.779 --> 00:12:14.720 his world. But then he introduces a character 00:12:14.720 --> 00:12:17.659 based on a real person. Nicholas Saunderson, 00:12:17.879 --> 00:12:20.779 a brilliant blind English mathematician. And 00:12:20.779 --> 00:12:22.700 this is where the trouble starts. This is it. 00:12:22.759 --> 00:12:25.399 Because in the book, Saunderson is on his deathbed. 00:12:25.539 --> 00:12:27.779 A priest is there trying to get him to repent, 00:12:27.919 --> 00:12:30.940 to accept God. And the priest uses the classic 00:12:30.940 --> 00:12:34.620 argument. Let me guess. Look at the beauty of 00:12:34.620 --> 00:12:36.679 the world. Look at the stars. Look at the complexity 00:12:36.679 --> 00:12:39.179 of the human eye. Surely only a divine designer 00:12:39.179 --> 00:12:41.000 could have made all this. That's it. Exactly. 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:43.080 It's the argument from design. The watchmaker 00:12:43.080 --> 00:12:45.759 analogy. The world is so complex and ordered, 00:12:45.820 --> 00:12:47.720 someone must have built it. And Saunders and 00:12:47.720 --> 00:12:50.340 the blind man just destroys it. Completely. He 00:12:50.340 --> 00:12:51.980 says to the priest, if you want me to believe 00:12:51.980 --> 00:12:54.419 in God, you have to let me touch him. He says, 00:12:54.519 --> 00:12:56.759 you look at the world around you and see perfection 00:12:56.759 --> 00:12:59.440 and order. I touch my own body. I feel my own 00:12:59.440 --> 00:13:02.139 blindness and I see a mistake. I see a world 00:13:02.139 --> 00:13:06.200 that is not perfect. Wow. That is chilling. He's 00:13:06.200 --> 00:13:08.240 basically arguing that the existence of God is 00:13:08.240 --> 00:13:10.940 relative to your senses. If you can't see the 00:13:10.940 --> 00:13:13.720 glory of creation, does that glory even exist 00:13:13.720 --> 00:13:15.759 for you? And it gets even worse for the priest. 00:13:16.100 --> 00:13:18.379 Sanderson then goes on to argue that if there 00:13:18.379 --> 00:13:21.220 is a God, he's a distinct underachiever. And 00:13:21.220 --> 00:13:24.399 he introduces this concept that is... Just. It's 00:13:24.399 --> 00:13:27.059 shockingly Darwinian. A century before Darwin. 00:13:27.279 --> 00:13:30.120 A century before Darwin. He imagines the universe 00:13:30.120 --> 00:13:34.059 not as a perfect static clock, but as this chaotic 00:13:34.059 --> 00:13:36.500 soup of matter constantly mixing and matching 00:13:36.500 --> 00:13:39.139 over millions and millions of years. A relentless 00:13:39.139 --> 00:13:42.000 churning of atoms. Right. And he says that in 00:13:42.000 --> 00:13:44.480 this process, monsters are created constantly. 00:13:44.559 --> 00:13:47.379 Creatures with no heads or three legs or no stomachs. 00:13:47.379 --> 00:13:49.340 They can't survive, so they die immediately. 00:13:49.559 --> 00:13:51.919 We never see them. The only things that we do 00:13:51.919 --> 00:13:53.759 see are the ones that, by sheer chance, chance 00:13:53.759 --> 00:13:57.440 worked. So what we call design is just survivorship 00:13:57.440 --> 00:13:59.220 bias. It's just the stuff that didn't immediately 00:13:59.220 --> 00:14:03.000 fall apart. Exactly. In 1749, he is describing 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:05.220 in principle the theory of natural selection. 00:14:05.720 --> 00:14:08.759 He is stripping the divine magic out of the act 00:14:08.759 --> 00:14:11.419 of creation and replacing it with trial, error, 00:14:11.580 --> 00:14:14.980 and deep time. The historian Conway Zirkle noted 00:14:14.980 --> 00:14:18.100 that this passage is so accurate, it almost forces 00:14:18.100 --> 00:14:20.340 you to accept evolution even without all the 00:14:20.340 --> 00:14:23.059 evidence we have today. So talking vaginas was 00:14:23.059 --> 00:14:24.820 one thing. The authorities could sort of ignore 00:14:24.820 --> 00:14:28.129 that as smut. denying the divine order of the 00:14:28.129 --> 00:14:30.529 entire universe, that's another level. That they 00:14:30.529 --> 00:14:33.769 could not let slide. In July of 1749, the police 00:14:33.769 --> 00:14:35.669 come for him. They had been watching him. They 00:14:35.669 --> 00:14:37.909 raid his house. He's arrested. And he's thrown 00:14:37.909 --> 00:14:39.710 into the dungeon at the Chateau de Vincennes. 00:14:40.029 --> 00:14:42.389 Solitary confinement. Complete solitary confinement. 00:14:42.610 --> 00:14:44.570 And this is where we get that incredible MacGyver 00:14:44.570 --> 00:14:47.269 moment. It really is. He has no paper, no pen, 00:14:47.409 --> 00:14:50.509 no ink. But Diderot cannot not write. His mind 00:14:50.509 --> 00:14:53.049 is just racing constantly. The only book they 00:14:53.049 --> 00:14:54.970 let him keep was a copy of Milton's Paradise 00:14:54.970 --> 00:14:58.279 Lost. So he scraped the slate from the dungeon 00:14:58.279 --> 00:15:01.519 walls, crushed it into a fine dust, mixed it 00:15:01.519 --> 00:15:03.399 with some wine they gave him with his meals to 00:15:03.399 --> 00:15:05.580 make a kind of ink. And used a toothpick as a 00:15:05.580 --> 00:15:09.019 pen. And used a sharpened toothpick as a pen 00:15:09.019 --> 00:15:12.159 to write notes in the margins of Paradise Lost. 00:15:12.379 --> 00:15:15.279 Writing notes with wine slate ink. I mean, that 00:15:15.279 --> 00:15:18.419 is just incredible dedication, but it also speaks 00:15:18.419 --> 00:15:21.000 to a kind of desperation, doesn't it? it does 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:24.519 he was terrified he had no idea if or when he 00:15:24.519 --> 00:15:26.600 would ever get out he was completely cut off 00:15:26.600 --> 00:15:29.500 from his friends his family his work eventually 00:15:29.500 --> 00:15:32.580 after about three months he cracked He signed 00:15:32.580 --> 00:15:35.279 a humiliating letter of submission promising 00:15:35.279 --> 00:15:37.559 not to write any more debaucheries of that kind. 00:15:37.759 --> 00:15:40.000 And they let him go. They let him go. But he 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:42.580 was released for a very specific reason. Not 00:15:42.580 --> 00:15:45.360 out of mercy, but because a group of powerful 00:15:45.360 --> 00:15:48.379 publishers desperately needed him for a massive 00:15:48.379 --> 00:15:50.840 new project. The encyclopedia. The project that 00:15:50.840 --> 00:15:52.899 would consume the next 20 years of his life. 00:15:53.039 --> 00:15:55.220 Right. So he gets out of Vincent, but he's on 00:15:55.220 --> 00:15:57.399 a very short leash. He knows he's being watched. 00:15:57.600 --> 00:15:59.919 He needs a project that's big enough to pay the 00:15:59.919 --> 00:16:03.080 bills, but... theoretically, at least safe enough 00:16:03.080 --> 00:16:05.460 to keep him out of the dungeon, enter the encyclopedia. 00:16:05.659 --> 00:16:09.179 The project that basically ate his life. And 00:16:09.179 --> 00:16:10.919 we really need to frame the scale of this thing. 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:13.659 This wasn't just a book. This was a 20 -year 00:16:13.659 --> 00:16:15.700 war of attrition. By the time it was finished, 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:21.799 it was 28 volumes, 71 ,818 articles, over 3 ,000 00:16:21.799 --> 00:16:24.799 distinct custom -made illustrations. And it didn't 00:16:24.799 --> 00:16:26.620 start that way, did it? Initially, it was just 00:16:26.620 --> 00:16:28.779 supposed to be a straightforward translation 00:16:28.779 --> 00:16:31.360 of an English dictionary, right? A quick cash 00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:33.039 grab for the publishers. That was the original 00:16:33.039 --> 00:16:35.879 plan, yes. Just translate Ephraim Chambers' encyclopedia. 00:16:36.889 --> 00:16:38.950 But Diderot, being Diderot, he couldn't just 00:16:38.950 --> 00:16:41.850 translate. He saw a bigger opportunity. He realized 00:16:41.850 --> 00:16:44.710 that knowledge in 18th century France was completely 00:16:44.710 --> 00:16:47.289 gatekept. What do you mean by that? Well, if 00:16:47.289 --> 00:16:48.950 you wanted to know about theology, you had to 00:16:48.950 --> 00:16:51.389 ask a priest. If you wanted to know about law, 00:16:51.570 --> 00:16:53.929 you had to consult a nobleman. If you wanted 00:16:53.929 --> 00:16:57.070 to know how to make glass or weave silk, well, 00:16:57.110 --> 00:16:59.009 you actually couldn't find out. Those were trade 00:16:59.009 --> 00:17:01.730 secrets guarded by the guilds. So knowledge was 00:17:01.730 --> 00:17:04.190 siloed. It was kept separate and controlled by 00:17:04.190 --> 00:17:07.369 different groups. Exactly. And Diderot wanted 00:17:07.369 --> 00:17:11.170 to smash the silos. His grand vision was to consolidate 00:17:11.170 --> 00:17:14.509 all human knowledge, not just academic knowledge, 00:17:14.609 --> 00:17:17.089 but the practical knowledge of trades and crafts, 00:17:17.450 --> 00:17:20.569 the mechanical arts, and make it accessible to 00:17:20.569 --> 00:17:22.890 everyone. This goes right back to his dad, the 00:17:22.890 --> 00:17:25.690 knife maker. It absolutely does. Diderot held 00:17:25.690 --> 00:17:28.390 this really radical belief that the man who weaves 00:17:28.390 --> 00:17:31.450 the silk for the bishop's robe is just as intellectually 00:17:31.450 --> 00:17:34.309 valuable as the bishop who wears it. So he and 00:17:34.309 --> 00:17:36.210 his team went into the workshops. He didn't just 00:17:36.210 --> 00:17:38.230 read a book about weaving. He went to the factories. 00:17:38.430 --> 00:17:41.150 He spent days learning how to strip a quill, 00:17:41.250 --> 00:17:43.769 how to cast a cannon, how to properly tan leather. 00:17:44.109 --> 00:17:46.049 There's a story in the notes that he would actually 00:17:46.049 --> 00:17:48.849 have craftsmen bring their machines to his office, 00:17:49.069 --> 00:17:51.869 disassemble them piece by piece, and then reassemble 00:17:51.869 --> 00:17:53.279 them in front of him so he could... could commission 00:17:53.279 --> 00:17:56.400 accurate illustrations. The plates. The illustrations 00:17:56.400 --> 00:17:59.720 are the secret weapon of the encyclopedia. Before 00:17:59.720 --> 00:18:01.740 this, if you looked at a diagram of a machine, 00:18:02.019 --> 00:18:04.160 it was usually kind of artistic and not very 00:18:04.160 --> 00:18:07.119 clear. Diderot pioneered the use of exploded 00:18:07.119 --> 00:18:09.940 views, literally showing the screw, the lever, 00:18:10.059 --> 00:18:12.819 the gear, all separated and floating in space. 00:18:13.119 --> 00:18:15.400 It was an instruction manual for civilization 00:18:15.400 --> 00:18:18.099 itself. Okay, that all sounds great. It sounds 00:18:18.099 --> 00:18:22.029 progressive. And useful. But why was it so dangerous? 00:18:22.170 --> 00:18:25.250 Why would the Pope ban a book about how to tan 00:18:25.250 --> 00:18:27.910 leather? Because of the cross references. This 00:18:27.910 --> 00:18:31.390 is where Diderot was an absolute genius of subversion. 00:18:31.670 --> 00:18:34.470 He knew the royal censors were reading the big, 00:18:34.470 --> 00:18:36.789 obvious articles, you know, Christ, King, Soul. 00:18:37.049 --> 00:18:39.009 So in those articles, he kept the definitions 00:18:39.009 --> 00:18:41.210 relatively orthodox. He played nice in the headlines. 00:18:41.450 --> 00:18:43.170 Exactly. But then at the end of the article, 00:18:43.269 --> 00:18:45.609 he'd add a little distinct symbol, a renvoy, 00:18:45.809 --> 00:18:47.990 a cross reference. Like a hyperlink in a modern 00:18:47.990 --> 00:18:50.869 web page. Precisely. It was a paper hyperlink. 00:18:51.029 --> 00:18:52.430 So, for instance, you're reading the article 00:18:52.430 --> 00:18:54.549 on cannibalism. It describes, you know, people 00:18:54.549 --> 00:18:57.509 eating human flesh, gross, barbaric, something 00:18:57.509 --> 00:19:00.230 only savages do. But then at the bottom of the 00:19:00.230 --> 00:19:03.390 article, there's a little link. See, also, Eucharist. 00:19:03.430 --> 00:19:06.269 Oh, wow. No, he didn't. He linked the Catholic 00:19:06.269 --> 00:19:08.809 ritual of consuming the body and blood of Christ 00:19:08.809 --> 00:19:12.759 directly to cannibalism. Very subtly, yes. He 00:19:12.759 --> 00:19:14.799 never says it out loud. He just puts the link 00:19:14.799 --> 00:19:16.480 there and lets you connect the dots yourself. 00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:19.140 Or you'd read an article on the Cordelier, a 00:19:19.140 --> 00:19:22.079 specific order of Franciscan monks. And the cross 00:19:22.079 --> 00:19:23.980 -reference at the bottom would guide you to the 00:19:23.980 --> 00:19:27.160 entry for Capuchon, which is a monk's hood, but 00:19:27.160 --> 00:19:28.940 it's also a plant known for putting people to 00:19:28.940 --> 00:19:31.500 sleep. The shade. He's calling the monks boring 00:19:31.500 --> 00:19:33.940 and useless. He's calling them a useless narcotic. 00:19:34.119 --> 00:19:36.660 The whole encyclopedia was a treasure hunt like 00:19:36.660 --> 00:19:38.960 this. If you followed the links, you found the 00:19:38.960 --> 00:19:41.900 real radical philosophy hidden beneath the surface. 00:19:42.140 --> 00:19:44.500 He was teaching an entire generation of readers 00:19:44.500 --> 00:19:46.799 how to think critically, not just telling them 00:19:46.799 --> 00:19:49.220 what to know. It's the ultimate Trojan horse. 00:19:49.619 --> 00:19:52.359 You buy it for the diagrams of windmills and 00:19:52.359 --> 00:19:54.970 plows. But you end up becoming an atheist who 00:19:54.970 --> 00:19:57.089 questions the monarchy. And the government absolutely 00:19:57.089 --> 00:19:59.170 knew it. They revoked the project's printing 00:19:59.170 --> 00:20:02.549 license in 1759. They threatened the printers 00:20:02.549 --> 00:20:04.910 with being sent to the galleys, which was basically 00:20:04.910 --> 00:20:07.549 being chained to an oar on a ship until you die. 00:20:08.089 --> 00:20:11.250 The Pope officially put it on the index of forbidden 00:20:11.250 --> 00:20:13.930 books and threatened to excommunicate any Catholic 00:20:13.930 --> 00:20:16.990 who read it. The pressure was immense. And his 00:20:16.990 --> 00:20:19.680 co -editor, D 'Alembert. He quits. Dillenberg 00:20:19.680 --> 00:20:22.380 quit. He was a brilliant mathematician, but he 00:20:22.380 --> 00:20:24.400 was also cautious. He saw the writing on the 00:20:24.400 --> 00:20:26.319 wall and said, I'm done. This is suicide. I'm 00:20:26.319 --> 00:20:29.750 out. But Diderot stayed. Diderot stayed. For 00:20:29.750 --> 00:20:33.609 10 more years alone, he personally wrote nearly 00:20:33.609 --> 00:20:37.210 7000 of the articles himself. He ruined his eyesight 00:20:37.210 --> 00:20:39.849 proofreading pages by candlelight. He basically 00:20:39.849 --> 00:20:42.329 became a ghost working in secret, constantly 00:20:42.329 --> 00:20:44.369 looking over his shoulder, never knowing when 00:20:44.369 --> 00:20:46.369 the police might knock on his door again. It 00:20:46.369 --> 00:20:48.230 becomes a spy story at this point, doesn't it? 00:20:48.269 --> 00:20:50.410 There was a mole inside the government helping 00:20:50.410 --> 00:20:52.670 him. Yes. And this is one of the most amazing 00:20:52.670 --> 00:20:56.170 parts of the story. His secret protector was 00:20:56.170 --> 00:20:58.970 a man named Mel Gerbs, who was the official government 00:20:58.970 --> 00:21:01.329 director of the book trade. He was the chief 00:21:01.329 --> 00:21:04.369 censor. The guy who literally signed the orders 00:21:04.369 --> 00:21:07.349 to raid Diderot's house and confiscate his papers 00:21:07.349 --> 00:21:10.150 was secretly a pro -Enlightenment official. So 00:21:10.150 --> 00:21:12.769 the chief censor was on their side. He was. There's 00:21:12.769 --> 00:21:15.470 this incredible moment where Mel Gerbs has to, 00:21:15.569 --> 00:21:17.990 for political reasons, order a raid on Diderot's 00:21:17.990 --> 00:21:20.470 house to confiscate the encyclopedia manuscripts. 00:21:21.420 --> 00:21:23.759 He sends a secret message to Diderot the day 00:21:23.759 --> 00:21:26.039 before, saying, they're coming for you tomorrow. 00:21:26.539 --> 00:21:29.319 Diderot panics and says, but I have thousands 00:21:29.319 --> 00:21:31.359 of pages. I have nowhere to hide them. Yeah, 00:21:31.380 --> 00:21:33.539 and what does Malgerbe say? Malgerbe says, send 00:21:33.539 --> 00:21:35.240 them all to my house. Nobody will ever think 00:21:35.240 --> 00:21:37.779 to look for them there. That is just incredible. 00:21:38.019 --> 00:21:40.180 The banned books were being hidden in the home 00:21:40.180 --> 00:21:42.559 of a government official responsible for banning 00:21:42.559 --> 00:21:45.579 them. It really shows you how pervasive these 00:21:45.579 --> 00:21:48.099 Enlightenment ideas were becoming. Even the people 00:21:48.099 --> 00:21:50.099 running the system knew this system was broken. 00:21:50.559 --> 00:21:52.920 But the personal cost for Diderot was immense. 00:21:53.240 --> 00:21:56.079 And there's a final tragic irony to this 20 -year 00:21:56.079 --> 00:21:59.019 struggle. He's sacrificing his freedom, his health, 00:21:59.099 --> 00:22:02.140 his personal safety, all to publish this monument 00:22:02.140 --> 00:22:05.619 to human knowledge and truth. And then the great 00:22:05.619 --> 00:22:07.759 betrayal. Le Brayton, his publisher, the man 00:22:07.759 --> 00:22:10.180 who was getting rich off of Diderot's incredible 00:22:10.180 --> 00:22:13.000 risk. Walk us through what Le Brayton did. Because 00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:14.660 this is the kind of corporate sabotage that would 00:22:14.660 --> 00:22:19.369 make a modern CEO just blush. It was 1764. The 00:22:19.369 --> 00:22:22.430 project is almost done. The final volumes are 00:22:22.430 --> 00:22:25.150 at the printer. Diderot thinks he's finally crossed 00:22:25.150 --> 00:22:27.670 the finish line after two decades of hell. He 00:22:27.670 --> 00:22:29.710 goes to consult a printed volume for a cross 00:22:29.710 --> 00:22:32.519 -reference and realizes the text. It doesn't 00:22:32.519 --> 00:22:34.720 look right. It feels shorter than he remembered. 00:22:34.779 --> 00:22:36.799 He checks another article. It's wrong, too. What 00:22:36.799 --> 00:22:38.920 has happened? He discovers that his publisher, 00:22:39.140 --> 00:22:41.180 LeBreton, was so terrified of being arrested 00:22:41.180 --> 00:22:43.799 that after Diderot finished his meticulous editing 00:22:43.799 --> 00:22:45.759 and went home for the night, LeBreton and his 00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:47.619 foreman were going into the print shop, taking 00:22:47.619 --> 00:22:50.119 the typesetting, and physically cutting out entire 00:22:50.119 --> 00:22:52.119 paragraphs and sentences they thought were too 00:22:52.119 --> 00:22:54.529 dangerous. They were censoring the encyclopedia 00:22:54.529 --> 00:22:56.750 after the editor in chief had signed off on the 00:22:56.750 --> 00:22:59.690 proofs. Yes. And the worst part, they burned 00:22:59.690 --> 00:23:03.049 Diderot's original corrected manuscripts to cover 00:23:03.049 --> 00:23:05.789 their tracks. So Diderot didn't just lose the 00:23:05.789 --> 00:23:08.390 printed text. He lost the only record of what 00:23:08.390 --> 00:23:10.750 he had actually written. He discovered that the 00:23:10.750 --> 00:23:13.230 work he had spent 25 years of his life on had 00:23:13.230 --> 00:23:16.640 been, in his words, mutilated and defaced. Oh, 00:23:16.640 --> 00:23:19.200 I can't even imagine. You spend two decades building 00:23:19.200 --> 00:23:22.000 this monument to truth, and your own boss secretly 00:23:22.000 --> 00:23:24.920 defaces it right before the unveiling. Diderot 00:23:24.920 --> 00:23:28.220 was devastated. He wept. He confronted Le Brayton 00:23:28.220 --> 00:23:30.940 and said, You have massacred the work of 20 good 00:23:30.940 --> 00:23:34.299 men and wasted 25 years of my life. He felt that 00:23:34.299 --> 00:23:36.799 his great contribution to the world, his legacy, 00:23:36.819 --> 00:23:39.079 had been ruined. But looking back now, from our 00:23:39.079 --> 00:23:41.539 perspective, was it a waste? Absolutely not. 00:23:41.640 --> 00:23:44.559 Even in its mutilated form, the encyclopedia 00:23:44.559 --> 00:23:48.339 was a revolutionary document. It completely changed 00:23:48.339 --> 00:23:50.839 the intellectual landscape of Europe. It democratized 00:23:50.839 --> 00:23:53.359 knowledge. It absolutely laid the intellectual 00:23:53.359 --> 00:23:56.240 groundwork for the French Revolution. But for 00:23:56.240 --> 00:23:59.079 Diderot personally, it was the final straw. He 00:23:59.079 --> 00:24:01.099 realized that if he wanted to write the pure 00:24:01.099 --> 00:24:04.180 truth, the unmutilated truth, he couldn't publish 00:24:04.180 --> 00:24:06.440 it. Not in France, not in the 18th century. And 00:24:06.440 --> 00:24:08.079 that's what drives him underground. That's what 00:24:08.079 --> 00:24:10.269 gives us the secret Diderot. Yeah. Because while 00:24:10.269 --> 00:24:12.390 all of this encyclopedia nightmare was going 00:24:12.390 --> 00:24:15.089 on, he was writing these other even more radical 00:24:15.089 --> 00:24:17.470 books and just putting them away in a drawer. 00:24:17.710 --> 00:24:20.190 Writing for the drawer. It's a fascinating psychological 00:24:20.190 --> 00:24:23.089 state to be in. In a way, he was freed from censorship 00:24:23.089 --> 00:24:25.309 because he wasn't even trying to please a censor 00:24:25.309 --> 00:24:27.269 anymore. He was writing for an ideal reader, 00:24:27.430 --> 00:24:30.410 a future audience that didn't exist yet. Let's 00:24:30.410 --> 00:24:31.869 talk about some of these secret masterpieces. 00:24:32.009 --> 00:24:36.269 Let's start with The Nun, La Religios. Because 00:24:36.269 --> 00:24:38.569 the origin of this story is, again, kind of a 00:24:38.569 --> 00:24:41.359 practical joke, right? Diderot loved a good prank. 00:24:41.579 --> 00:24:44.420 So he had a friend, the Marquis de Cromas, who 00:24:44.420 --> 00:24:46.339 had moved away from Paris to the countryside. 00:24:47.339 --> 00:24:49.640 Diderot and his circle of friends missed him 00:24:49.640 --> 00:24:51.700 and wanted him to come back. So they hatched 00:24:51.700 --> 00:24:54.079 this plan. They started writing these fake letters 00:24:54.079 --> 00:24:56.319 to the Marquis, pretending to be a young nun 00:24:56.319 --> 00:24:59.240 named Suzanne, who is begging for his help to 00:24:59.240 --> 00:25:01.400 escape her convent. They were catfishing the 00:25:01.400 --> 00:25:03.960 Marquis. Essentially, yes. They were inventing 00:25:03.960 --> 00:25:07.339 this tragic damsel in distress figure to lure 00:25:07.339 --> 00:25:10.000 their friend back to the city. But Diderot got 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:12.799 so invested in the character of Suzanne and her 00:25:12.799 --> 00:25:15.339 voice and her suffering that he ended up turning 00:25:15.339 --> 00:25:17.579 the whole elaborate prank into a full -blown 00:25:17.579 --> 00:25:19.980 novel. His friends would find him at his desk 00:25:19.980 --> 00:25:22.880 weeping over his own writing, and he'd say, I 00:25:22.880 --> 00:25:25.599 can't help it. Poor Suzanne is suffering so much. 00:25:25.960 --> 00:25:28.380 And the nun is not a lighthearted romp. It's 00:25:28.380 --> 00:25:31.650 not the sound of music. No, it is a gothic horror 00:25:31.650 --> 00:25:34.650 story. Suzanne is an illegitimate child who is 00:25:34.650 --> 00:25:36.869 forced into a convent by her parents to hide 00:25:36.869 --> 00:25:40.109 their sin and avoid paying a dowry. But she doesn't 00:25:40.109 --> 00:25:42.289 have a religious vocation. She just wants to 00:25:42.289 --> 00:25:45.369 be free. And the book details, in excruciating 00:25:45.369 --> 00:25:47.809 detail, the psychological and physical abuse 00:25:47.809 --> 00:25:51.269 she suffers. The other nuns, the mother superiors, 00:25:51.309 --> 00:25:54.009 some are just cruel and sadistic. Others are 00:25:54.009 --> 00:25:56.609 sexually predatory. So he depicts the convent 00:25:56.609 --> 00:25:58.910 not as a sanctuary of faith, but as a kind of 00:25:58.910 --> 00:26:02.079 prison that drives people mad. Exactly. His main 00:26:02.079 --> 00:26:04.460 point wasn't necessarily to attack Christianity 00:26:04.460 --> 00:26:07.480 itself, but to attack the institution of forced 00:26:07.480 --> 00:26:09.960 cloistering. He believed that if you lock people 00:26:09.960 --> 00:26:12.619 up and deny their basic human nature, their need 00:26:12.619 --> 00:26:15.240 for freedom, for sex, for society, for intellectual 00:26:15.240 --> 00:26:17.980 stimulation, that nature will warp. It will become 00:26:17.980 --> 00:26:20.720 toxic and monstrous. He was using fiction to 00:26:20.720 --> 00:26:23.119 make a very powerful psychological argument about 00:26:23.119 --> 00:26:25.519 fundamental human needs. And he never even tried 00:26:25.519 --> 00:26:27.859 to publish this in his lifetime. Absolutely not. 00:26:27.960 --> 00:26:31.579 It finally came out in 1796, well after he and 00:26:31.579 --> 00:26:33.880 the French monarchy were both dead. If he had 00:26:33.880 --> 00:26:36.619 published that in the 1760s, he would have been 00:26:36.619 --> 00:26:38.619 back in the dungeon at Vincennes and they probably 00:26:38.619 --> 00:26:40.240 would have thrown away the key. Then there's 00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:42.839 Rameau's nephew. This is considered by many, 00:26:42.940 --> 00:26:45.619 especially later philosophers, to be his true 00:26:45.619 --> 00:26:48.619 masterpiece. What is going on in this book? It 00:26:48.619 --> 00:26:50.910 sounds very strange. It is strange. It's the 00:26:50.910 --> 00:26:53.410 dialogue, which was Diderot's favorite format 00:26:53.410 --> 00:26:55.569 because it allowed him to argue with himself 00:26:55.569 --> 00:26:58.609 and explore all sides of an issue. It's a long, 00:26:58.609 --> 00:27:00.990 rambling conversation between two characters. 00:27:01.250 --> 00:27:04.210 Moi, which means me, who is a stand -in for Diderot 00:27:04.210 --> 00:27:06.549 the philosopher, and Louis, which means him. 00:27:06.750 --> 00:27:09.029 And him is the dissolute ne 'er -do -well nephew 00:27:09.029 --> 00:27:11.289 of the famous composer Jean -Philippe Rameau. 00:27:11.329 --> 00:27:13.569 The nephew is quite a character. He is one of 00:27:13.569 --> 00:27:15.529 the great characters in literature. He's a failed 00:27:15.529 --> 00:27:18.170 musician, a moocher, a parasite, a brilliant 00:27:18.170 --> 00:27:22.049 cynic. He is completely amoral. He believes that 00:27:22.049 --> 00:27:24.569 the world is a brutal jungle where everyone is 00:27:24.569 --> 00:27:26.170 eating everyone else, so you might as well grab 00:27:26.170 --> 00:27:28.769 whatever pleasure you can. He has this great 00:27:28.769 --> 00:27:32.769 line, hurrah for wisdom, to drink good wines, 00:27:32.890 --> 00:27:37.170 gorge on choice foods, tumble pretty women. Outside 00:27:37.170 --> 00:27:40.089 of that, all is vanity. He sounds like a modern 00:27:40.089 --> 00:27:43.859 antihero. The Joker to Diderot's Batman? Or maybe 00:27:43.859 --> 00:27:46.099 a character out of a Dostoevsky novel? That's 00:27:46.099 --> 00:27:48.279 a great analogy. The philosopher character, Moy, 00:27:48.460 --> 00:27:51.079 tries to argue for virtue, for morality, for 00:27:51.079 --> 00:27:53.460 the greater good. And the nephew just tears every 00:27:53.460 --> 00:27:56.640 single argument to shreds. He exposes the hypocrisy 00:27:56.640 --> 00:27:59.839 of so -called polite society. He points out that 00:27:59.839 --> 00:28:02.140 the virtuous people are often boring or secretly 00:28:02.140 --> 00:28:04.740 corrupt, while the scoundrels are at least honest 00:28:04.740 --> 00:28:06.299 about their appetites and are having all the 00:28:06.299 --> 00:28:09.000 fun. So why is this book so important philosophically? 00:28:09.339 --> 00:28:11.400 Because Diderot doesn't let the good guy win. 00:28:11.819 --> 00:28:16.019 The dialogue ends in a stalemate. The Nephew 00:28:16.019 --> 00:28:18.799 makes genuinely compelling points about how society 00:28:18.799 --> 00:28:21.759 forces people to debase themselves just to survive. 00:28:22.460 --> 00:28:25.640 The German philosopher Hegel, years later, fell 00:28:25.640 --> 00:28:28.339 in love with this book. He saw it as a brilliant 00:28:28.339 --> 00:28:31.779 anticipation of his master -slave dialectic. 00:28:32.059 --> 00:28:34.420 It's a critique of the enlightenment from inside 00:28:34.420 --> 00:28:36.940 the enlightenment. It admits that reason alone 00:28:36.940 --> 00:28:39.579 might not be enough to make people happy or truly 00:28:39.579 --> 00:28:42.279 good. And the journey of this manuscript is just 00:28:42.279 --> 00:28:44.680 as wild as the content, right? It's like a literary 00:28:44.680 --> 00:28:47.039 thriller. It was found among his papers after 00:28:47.039 --> 00:28:49.740 his death. A copy was smuggled to Russia, then 00:28:49.740 --> 00:28:52.079 to Germany. It was given to the poet Schiller, 00:28:52.180 --> 00:28:54.700 who then gave it to Goethe, the author of Faust. 00:28:55.019 --> 00:28:57.359 Goethe was so blown away he translated it into 00:28:57.359 --> 00:29:00.500 German himself and published it in 1805. For 00:29:00.500 --> 00:29:02.559 a long time, the French only knew about this 00:29:02.559 --> 00:29:04.859 French masterpiece by translating it back from 00:29:04.859 --> 00:29:07.200 Goethe's German. That is completely absurd. The 00:29:07.200 --> 00:29:08.680 French had to read one of their own greatest 00:29:08.680 --> 00:29:10.640 philosophers via a German translation because 00:29:10.640 --> 00:29:12.619 he had hidden his work so well. It just shows 00:29:12.619 --> 00:29:14.920 you how effectively Diderot had sealed his best 00:29:14.920 --> 00:29:17.259 work away from his own time. We also have to 00:29:17.259 --> 00:29:19.359 touch on Jacques the Fatalist. This sounds like 00:29:19.359 --> 00:29:21.960 another metafictional mind -bender. It is. It's 00:29:21.960 --> 00:29:24.819 a novel about a servant, Jacques, and his unnamed 00:29:24.819 --> 00:29:27.420 master who are traveling somewhere. We never 00:29:27.420 --> 00:29:29.880 find out where. And Jacques is a fatalist. He 00:29:29.880 --> 00:29:31.960 believes that everything that happens, good or 00:29:31.960 --> 00:29:34.319 bad, is written on a great scroll in the sky. 00:29:34.920 --> 00:29:37.740 So the book is a long exploration of free will 00:29:37.740 --> 00:29:40.660 versus determinism. But it's the style that's 00:29:40.660 --> 00:29:43.619 so revolutionary. Diderot constantly breaks the 00:29:43.619 --> 00:29:46.319 fourth wall. So, like... Deadpool or Fleabag 00:29:46.319 --> 00:29:49.380 does today. Exactly like that. But 200 years 00:29:49.380 --> 00:29:52.420 earlier, the narrator directly argues with the 00:29:52.420 --> 00:29:54.299 reader. He'll stop the story and say things like, 00:29:54.319 --> 00:29:55.519 you want me to tell you where they're going? 00:29:55.619 --> 00:29:57.660 Why should I? This is my story. I can send them 00:29:57.660 --> 00:29:59.819 wherever I want. He interrupts the plot to tell 00:29:59.819 --> 00:30:01.740 you that all stories are fake and that he is 00:30:01.740 --> 00:30:03.940 in control. It sounds like something written 00:30:03.940 --> 00:30:07.920 in the 1960s or 70s, like Tristram Shandy or 00:30:07.920 --> 00:30:11.200 a Kurt Vonnegut novel. It was unbelievably avant 00:30:11.200 --> 00:30:13.079 -garde. He was deconstructing the conventions 00:30:13.079 --> 00:30:15.799 of the novel before the novel was even fully 00:30:15.799 --> 00:30:18.339 established as a form. He was playing with the 00:30:18.339 --> 00:30:20.799 whole idea of narrative, asking, who is really 00:30:20.799 --> 00:30:22.940 in control here? The author, the characters, 00:30:23.220 --> 00:30:26.299 the reader, or is it all just fate written on 00:30:26.299 --> 00:30:28.579 that great scroll? So we have the rebel, the 00:30:28.579 --> 00:30:31.420 encyclopedia editor, the secret writer, but we 00:30:31.420 --> 00:30:33.720 can't ignore Diderot the art critic. Yeah. You 00:30:33.720 --> 00:30:35.660 mentioned in the intro that he basically invented 00:30:35.660 --> 00:30:38.720 the genre. Yeah. How do you... How do you invent 00:30:38.720 --> 00:30:41.359 art criticism? Well, before Diderot, people wrote 00:30:41.359 --> 00:30:43.759 about art, but it was usually very academic or 00:30:43.759 --> 00:30:46.279 technical. It was all about composition and color 00:30:46.279 --> 00:30:49.160 theory and classical illusions. Diderot wrote 00:30:49.160 --> 00:30:51.440 for a private handwritten newsletter called the 00:30:51.440 --> 00:30:53.680 Correspondus Literare, which was circulated to 00:30:53.680 --> 00:30:57.279 a few dozen VIP subscribers across Europe. Princes, 00:30:57.400 --> 00:30:59.839 kings, Catherine the Great. The crucial thing 00:30:59.839 --> 00:31:02.220 is most of his readers would never actually see 00:31:02.220 --> 00:31:03.960 the paintings he was writing about at the Paris 00:31:03.960 --> 00:31:06.140 Salons. So he had to paint a picture with words. 00:31:06.339 --> 00:31:08.900 Yeah. He had to make them see it. Exactly. He 00:31:08.900 --> 00:31:10.880 had to translate the visual experience into a 00:31:10.880 --> 00:31:13.299 verbal one. And he did it with this incredible, 00:31:13.480 --> 00:31:16.019 emotional, vivid language that one of his friends 00:31:16.019 --> 00:31:19.319 said was. Almost a new sense. He wouldn't just 00:31:19.319 --> 00:31:21.220 describe the painting, he would walk into it. 00:31:21.299 --> 00:31:23.059 He'd start talking to the figures in the scene. 00:31:23.180 --> 00:31:25.619 He'd criticize the painter for bad lighting or 00:31:25.619 --> 00:31:28.160 stick postures, as if he were a theater director 00:31:28.160 --> 00:31:31.450 giving notes to an actor. So he wasn't just describing 00:31:31.450 --> 00:31:34.089 what was on the canvas. He was describing the 00:31:34.089 --> 00:31:37.170 feeling it produced in him. And he was so opinionated. 00:31:37.269 --> 00:31:40.069 He loved the painter Jean -Baptiste Cruz, who 00:31:40.069 --> 00:31:43.069 did these sentimental, moralizing scenes of family 00:31:43.069 --> 00:31:46.089 life. And he absolutely hated François Boucher, 00:31:46.210 --> 00:31:48.910 who painted these fluffy pink rococo nudes and 00:31:48.910 --> 00:31:51.329 flying cupids. He thought Boucher's work was 00:31:51.329 --> 00:31:53.609 frivolous. Diderot believed art had to have a 00:31:53.609 --> 00:31:55.650 moral purpose. It had to move you. He famously 00:31:55.650 --> 00:31:58.390 wrote, First, touch me, astonish me, tear me 00:31:58.390 --> 00:32:02.069 apart, make me weep. And then, if you can, delight 00:32:02.069 --> 00:32:05.250 my eyes. Exactly. For him, the emotional impact 00:32:05.250 --> 00:32:07.950 came first. The aesthetics were secondary. He 00:32:07.950 --> 00:32:10.269 wanted art to be a profound experience, not just 00:32:10.269 --> 00:32:12.750 pretty wallpaper for aristocrats. And speaking 00:32:12.750 --> 00:32:15.829 of profound experiences, he also gave us a very 00:32:15.829 --> 00:32:19.450 famous phrase from his theater writings, which 00:32:19.450 --> 00:32:23.210 is that universal feeling of thinking of the 00:32:23.210 --> 00:32:26.069 perfect witty comeback only after you've left 00:32:26.069 --> 00:32:27.650 the party and you're already walking down the 00:32:27.650 --> 00:32:29.829 stairs. We have all been there. And Diderot, 00:32:29.970 --> 00:32:32.150 who was by all accounts a brilliant and energetic 00:32:32.150 --> 00:32:35.509 conversationalist, felt that acutely. He wrote 00:32:35.509 --> 00:32:37.609 that he was very sensitive, and when he was in 00:32:37.609 --> 00:32:40.289 a heated argument or felt overwhelmed, his mind 00:32:40.289 --> 00:32:42.849 would just go blank. It was only later in the 00:32:42.849 --> 00:32:44.789 quiet that the perfect zinger would strike him. 00:32:44.869 --> 00:32:47.470 It really humanizes him. Even the smartest man 00:32:47.470 --> 00:32:49.029 in France sometimes couldn't think of a good 00:32:49.029 --> 00:32:51.269 record until he was in the cab on the way home. 00:32:51.509 --> 00:32:54.250 Now, for all this genius, Diderot was perpetually 00:32:54.250 --> 00:32:57.380 broke. He had a daughter. Angelique that he adored 00:32:57.380 --> 00:32:59.960 and he needed to provide a dowry for her. He 00:32:59.960 --> 00:33:02.759 had no pension, no savings. And who steps in 00:33:02.759 --> 00:33:06.380 to save the day? None other than his fan, Catherine 00:33:06.380 --> 00:33:08.920 the Great of Russia. It's one of history's oddest 00:33:08.920 --> 00:33:12.579 and most interesting friendships. In 1765, Catherine 00:33:12.579 --> 00:33:14.920 hears that Diderot is being forced to sell his 00:33:14.920 --> 00:33:18.019 massive library to pay for his daughter's dowry. 00:33:18.740 --> 00:33:20.740 She wants to cultivate this image of herself 00:33:20.740 --> 00:33:23.019 as an enlightened monarch, so she makes this 00:33:23.019 --> 00:33:25.880 grand gesture. She says, I will buy your library, 00:33:26.059 --> 00:33:28.619 and she pays him a huge sum for it. But then 00:33:28.619 --> 00:33:30.619 she adds a condition. What's the condition? She 00:33:30.619 --> 00:33:32.640 says, you will keep the books in Paris. You are 00:33:32.640 --> 00:33:35.460 now my librarian, employed by me, and here is 00:33:35.460 --> 00:33:38.400 a generous salary to take care of them. She even 00:33:38.400 --> 00:33:41.259 paid him 50 years' salary up front. So she buys 00:33:41.259 --> 00:33:44.119 his library but leaves it at his house and pays 00:33:44.119 --> 00:33:46.539 him to be its caretaker. That is a brilliant 00:33:46.539 --> 00:33:49.240 power move. It was the ultimate form of patronage. 00:33:49.339 --> 00:33:51.339 It gave him financial security for the rest of 00:33:51.339 --> 00:33:53.680 his life. And eventually, Diderot felt a deep 00:33:53.680 --> 00:33:56.740 obligation to go and thank her in person. So 00:33:56.740 --> 00:34:00.000 in 1773, at the age of 60, he undertakes this 00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:02.319 incredibly arduous journey to St. Petersburg. 00:34:02.640 --> 00:34:04.920 The 60 -year -old philosopher who hated traveling, 00:34:05.099 --> 00:34:07.619 dragging himself across a frozen Europe in a 00:34:07.619 --> 00:34:10.130 horse -drawn carriage. He was miserable on the 00:34:10.130 --> 00:34:12.809 journey. He got colic. He hated the food. But 00:34:12.809 --> 00:34:14.750 he finally arrives and he and Catherine just 00:34:14.750 --> 00:34:17.869 hit it off. They met almost daily for months. 00:34:18.449 --> 00:34:20.929 And this brings us right back to the thigh slapping. 00:34:21.130 --> 00:34:25.309 He spoke to her in his words, man to man. He 00:34:25.309 --> 00:34:28.010 completely forgot she was an all -powerful autocrat. 00:34:28.070 --> 00:34:30.150 He treated her like one of the guys back at the 00:34:30.150 --> 00:34:32.210 Café de la Régence in Paris. And he tried to 00:34:32.210 --> 00:34:34.409 give her serious political advice, right? He 00:34:34.409 --> 00:34:36.730 tried to turn Russia into a constitutional monarchy. 00:34:36.909 --> 00:34:39.809 He did. He spent his time there drafting these 00:34:39.809 --> 00:34:42.769 vast, elaborate plans for reforming the entire 00:34:42.769 --> 00:34:45.630 Russian state. He told her she should abdicate 00:34:45.630 --> 00:34:48.510 her absolute power. He told her to establish 00:34:48.510 --> 00:34:51.030 a legal code where the nation is sovereign, not 00:34:51.030 --> 00:34:53.289 the monarch. He basically told the Empress of 00:34:53.289 --> 00:34:55.210 Russia you should fire her. yourself for the 00:34:55.210 --> 00:34:57.250 good of the people. I can't imagine an empress 00:34:57.250 --> 00:34:59.510 taking that particularly well. She was very polite 00:34:59.510 --> 00:35:01.329 to his face. She enjoyed his intellect and his 00:35:01.329 --> 00:35:04.050 energy. But later she dismissed his plans as 00:35:04.050 --> 00:35:07.550 incoherent gibberish. And she wrote this famous, 00:35:07.590 --> 00:35:10.210 devastating letter about him. She said, Monsieur 00:35:10.210 --> 00:35:12.929 Diderot, in your plans for reform, you forget 00:35:12.929 --> 00:35:15.230 the difference between our two positions. You 00:35:15.230 --> 00:35:17.710 work only on paper, which accepts anything. It 00:35:17.710 --> 00:35:20.429 is smooth and flexible and offers no resistance 00:35:20.429 --> 00:35:24.079 to your imagination or your pen. But I... a poor 00:35:24.079 --> 00:35:26.539 empress, I work on human skin, which is altogether 00:35:26.539 --> 00:35:30.260 more irritable and ticklish. Wow. You write on 00:35:30.260 --> 00:35:32.780 paper. I write on skin. That is such a crushing 00:35:32.780 --> 00:35:34.860 critique of the gap between theory and practice. 00:35:35.059 --> 00:35:37.500 It is. It's the ultimate collision of the idealist 00:35:37.500 --> 00:35:40.699 philosopher and the realist politician. Diderot 00:35:40.699 --> 00:35:42.820 was dreaming of a perfect, rational society. 00:35:43.710 --> 00:35:46.090 Catherine was trying to manage a massive, feudal, 00:35:46.090 --> 00:35:48.869 unruly empire without getting overthrown or assassinated. 00:35:49.090 --> 00:35:51.489 But they did remain on good terms. And when he 00:35:51.489 --> 00:35:53.889 died, his library did eventually make its way 00:35:53.889 --> 00:35:55.849 to Russia. Let's talk about the end of his life 00:35:55.849 --> 00:35:58.650 and the final evolution of his philosophy. We 00:35:58.650 --> 00:36:00.329 mentioned the letter on the blind hinted at evolution. 00:36:00.590 --> 00:36:02.969 But as he got older, his private writings got 00:36:02.969 --> 00:36:06.269 even wilder. D 'Alembert's dream. This is maybe 00:36:06.269 --> 00:36:08.849 his most radical scientific and philosophical 00:36:08.849 --> 00:36:12.119 work, written in 1769. And of course, written 00:36:12.119 --> 00:36:14.960 only for the drawer. It's another dialogue where 00:36:14.960 --> 00:36:17.599 the philosopher d 'Alembert is dreaming, and 00:36:17.599 --> 00:36:20.559 Diderot, or a character representing him, interprets 00:36:20.559 --> 00:36:23.039 the strange, feverish things he says in his sleep. 00:36:23.559 --> 00:36:27.619 In it, he explores a pure, uncompromising materialism. 00:36:27.800 --> 00:36:29.860 What does that mean in this context? Because 00:36:29.860 --> 00:36:32.320 today, materialism just means, you know, buying 00:36:32.320 --> 00:36:35.409 expensive cars and watches. In philosophy, materialism 00:36:35.409 --> 00:36:37.409 is the belief that nothing exists except matter 00:36:37.409 --> 00:36:40.369 and its movements. There is no soul, no spirit 00:36:40.369 --> 00:36:42.230 that is separate from the physical body. Everything, 00:36:42.489 --> 00:36:45.510 life, consciousness, emotion, thought, it's all 00:36:45.510 --> 00:36:47.530 just the product of atoms arranging and rearranging 00:36:47.530 --> 00:36:49.889 themselves. It's all just vibrating strings or 00:36:49.889 --> 00:36:52.309 fermenting molecules. So when we die, we just 00:36:52.309 --> 00:36:54.909 disassemble. The collection of molecules that 00:36:54.909 --> 00:36:57.230 is you just comes apart and gets recycled back 00:36:57.230 --> 00:37:00.190 into the universe. He writes, everything changes. 00:37:00.210 --> 00:37:02.670 Everything passes. Nothing remains but the whole. 00:37:03.099 --> 00:37:06.039 He sees the universe as this one giant interconnected 00:37:06.039 --> 00:37:09.179 system, a perpetual recycling plant. The atoms 00:37:09.179 --> 00:37:11.940 that are you today might be grass tomorrow or 00:37:11.940 --> 00:37:14.699 a worm or part of a distant star. It's a very 00:37:14.699 --> 00:37:17.420 modern, scientific, ecological view of the universe. 00:37:17.679 --> 00:37:20.639 No gods, no souls, just matter in motion. And 00:37:20.639 --> 00:37:22.800 because he didn't believe in a soul or an afterlife, 00:37:23.099 --> 00:37:25.579 he had to grapple with a huge question. If there's 00:37:25.579 --> 00:37:28.269 no heaven or hell. What's the point? Why be good? 00:37:28.429 --> 00:37:30.510 Why bother writing books that no one will read 00:37:30.510 --> 00:37:32.869 until you're long dead? And this is where his 00:37:32.869 --> 00:37:35.769 beautiful, poignant concept of posterity comes 00:37:35.769 --> 00:37:37.809 in. This is really the emotional core of his 00:37:37.809 --> 00:37:41.030 atheism. He famously wrote, posterity is for 00:37:41.030 --> 00:37:43.309 the philosopher what the other world is for the 00:37:43.309 --> 00:37:45.909 man of religion. He believed that since there 00:37:45.909 --> 00:37:48.269 was no divine judgment, the only judgment that 00:37:48.269 --> 00:37:50.809 mattered was that of future generations, of us. 00:37:51.460 --> 00:37:53.699 He believed that if he wrote the truth honestly 00:37:53.699 --> 00:37:55.880 and fearlessly, then one day we would find his 00:37:55.880 --> 00:37:58.500 work and vindicate him. That was his heaven, 00:37:58.599 --> 00:38:01.539 being read and understood by you right now in 00:38:01.539 --> 00:38:03.760 this moment. That actually gives me chills. He 00:38:03.760 --> 00:38:06.639 was projecting all of his hope, his entire legacy, 00:38:06.780 --> 00:38:09.679 250 years into the future. He was counting on 00:38:09.679 --> 00:38:13.219 us to get it. He died in 1784, just five years 00:38:13.219 --> 00:38:15.099 before the French Revolution he helped to inspire. 00:38:15.340 --> 00:38:17.579 He died while eating an apricot compote, actually. 00:38:17.840 --> 00:38:19.980 His wife tried to stop him, saying it would make 00:38:19.980 --> 00:38:22.320 him sick. His last words were reportedly, what 00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:24.159 the devil harm do you think that will do to me 00:38:24.159 --> 00:38:27.179 now? He ate it, leaned back in his chair, and 00:38:27.179 --> 00:38:30.159 died of a pulmonary thrombosis. A final act of 00:38:30.159 --> 00:38:32.639 defiance against bodily decay right up until 00:38:32.639 --> 00:38:35.199 the very last second. But his afterlife, his 00:38:35.199 --> 00:38:38.280 physical afterlife, was messy. He was buried 00:38:38.280 --> 00:38:41.019 in the Church of St. Roche in Paris. But during 00:38:41.019 --> 00:38:43.119 the most radical phase of the revolution, in 00:38:43.119 --> 00:38:47.340 1793, the mood changed. The revolutionary government 00:38:47.340 --> 00:38:50.119 needed lead to make bullets to fight the monarchies 00:38:50.119 --> 00:38:52.980 of Europe, so grave robbers raided the church. 00:38:53.280 --> 00:38:56.000 They stripped the lead from the coffins, and 00:38:56.000 --> 00:38:58.559 they just dumped the bodies. Diderot's remains 00:38:58.559 --> 00:39:01.119 were most likely thrown into a common, unmarked 00:39:01.119 --> 00:39:05.719 mass grave. That is just a tragic, terrible irony. 00:39:05.980 --> 00:39:08.039 The man who laid so much of the intellectual 00:39:08.039 --> 00:39:10.239 groundwork for the revolution gets his grave 00:39:10.239 --> 00:39:13.119 desecrated and his body tossed in a pit by the 00:39:13.119 --> 00:39:15.280 revolutionaries themselves. It is. And for a 00:39:15.280 --> 00:39:17.239 while, the revolutionaries actually turned on 00:39:17.239 --> 00:39:19.940 him. Robespierre, with his cult of the supreme 00:39:19.940 --> 00:39:22.420 being, didn't like Diderot's atheism. Some even 00:39:22.420 --> 00:39:24.460 blamed Diderot's anti -clerical writings for 00:39:24.460 --> 00:39:27.119 persecuting the clergy. It took a very long time 00:39:27.119 --> 00:39:29.260 for his reputation to recover and for those secret 00:39:29.260 --> 00:39:42.389 books to finally come to light. So as we wrap 00:39:42.389 --> 00:39:44.429 this deep dive up, how do we synthesize this 00:39:44.429 --> 00:39:47.190 man, Denis Diderot? He's the encyclopedia guy, 00:39:47.289 --> 00:39:48.969 but he's also the pornographer, the prisoner, 00:39:49.190 --> 00:39:52.269 the art critic, the proto -evolutionist, the 00:39:52.269 --> 00:39:55.179 secret novelist. I think Diderot is the ultimate 00:39:55.179 --> 00:39:57.239 figure of the Enlightenment precisely because 00:39:57.239 --> 00:40:00.619 he is so human. Voltaire can be witty, but also 00:40:00.619 --> 00:40:04.280 feel a bit cold and superior. Rousseau is incredibly 00:40:04.280 --> 00:40:07.199 passionate, but was also arguably paranoid and 00:40:07.199 --> 00:40:11.130 narcissistic. Diderot is just... messy he's contradictory 00:40:11.130 --> 00:40:14.150 he wants to be a virtuous man but he's unfaithful 00:40:14.150 --> 00:40:17.150 to his wife he loves the truth but he pulls elaborate 00:40:17.150 --> 00:40:19.429 pranks on his friends he is certified genius 00:40:19.429 --> 00:40:22.409 but he's also deeply insecure and feels staircase 00:40:22.409 --> 00:40:24.510 wit he feels like a person you could actually 00:40:24.510 --> 00:40:26.639 have a beer with or you know A coffee at the 00:40:26.639 --> 00:40:29.159 Café de la Régence. Absolutely. He was this incredible 00:40:29.159 --> 00:40:31.800 combination of forces. He democratized knowledge 00:40:31.800 --> 00:40:34.079 for the public with the encyclopedia, but he 00:40:34.079 --> 00:40:36.099 reserved his deepest, most challenging, most 00:40:36.099 --> 00:40:38.639 dangerous truth for the future. He trusted us 00:40:38.639 --> 00:40:40.980 to be able to handle what his own century couldn't. 00:40:41.059 --> 00:40:43.840 He made a bet that one day we would be free enough 00:40:43.840 --> 00:40:46.619 to really hear what he had to say. And that really 00:40:46.619 --> 00:40:48.860 brings us to our final provocative thought for 00:40:48.860 --> 00:40:52.260 you, the listener. Gitterow placed all his chips 00:40:52.260 --> 00:40:55.000 on this idea of posterity. He bet his entire 00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:58.179 legacy on the idea that future humans, that's 00:40:58.179 --> 00:41:00.639 us, would be enlightened enough to understand 00:41:00.639 --> 00:41:03.719 him, to appreciate his radical questioning of 00:41:03.719 --> 00:41:06.900 all authority, all religion, and all social norms. 00:41:07.159 --> 00:41:08.780 When he was sitting across from Catherine the 00:41:08.780 --> 00:41:11.199 Great, slapping her knee, he was trying to bridge 00:41:11.199 --> 00:41:13.579 that huge gap between the philosophical ideal 00:41:13.579 --> 00:41:16.880 and the political real. He failed with her, but 00:41:16.880 --> 00:41:19.360 he left all the blueprints, all the secret writings 00:41:19.360 --> 00:41:23.789 for us. So the question is this. Are we the audience 00:41:23.789 --> 00:41:26.250 he was expecting? In a world of misinformation 00:41:26.250 --> 00:41:28.809 and social media bubbles and political polarization, 00:41:29.150 --> 00:41:31.190 have we actually lived up to the trust he placed 00:41:31.190 --> 00:41:33.409 in posterity? Or would he look at our world today 00:41:33.409 --> 00:41:35.949 and just start slapping our knees in frustration? 00:41:36.309 --> 00:41:38.230 That is the question. Something to think about. 00:41:38.829 --> 00:41:40.889 That's it for this deep dive into the chaotic 00:41:40.889 --> 00:41:42.989 and brilliant mind of Dennis Diderot. Thanks 00:41:42.989 --> 00:41:43.349 for listening.