Reason's Playboy

THE EMBATTLED PHILOSOPHER (442 pp.) --Lester G. Crocker--Michigan State College ($6.50).

French Philosopher Denis Diderot had the intellectual brilliance that sparkled in an 18th century drawing room, but he sometimes found less conventional ways to display his native gifts. When a lady painter who was doing his portrait objected that his clothes hid his neck, the eminent thinker silently retired behind a curtain and reappeared a moment later "as naked as a worm."

"I should never have dared to suggest it," the lady painter fluttered, "but you have done well and I thank you."

Many a woman probably said the same thing to dashing Denis Diderot, but for another reason. "Look for women who won't make you sigh too long," young Denis advised. "They amuse as much as the others; they take less time; you possess them without worries and leave them without regrets." Up in Paris from the provinces, where he almost took vows of chastity and became a priest, Diderot followed his own advice and lived the left-bank vie de Boheme, made up of much talk, not enough food and more than enough love.

It was then, as a student, that Diderot caught that insidious 18th century disease: a chronic high fever to know everything. The Embattled Philosopher tells the story of how Denis Diderot, philosopher, encyclopedist, playwright, novelist, art critic, conversationalist and lover, came to personify the French 18th century, and how he created the intellectual Trojan horse that led to the downfall of the Bourbon monarchy. It is the first biography of Diderot to appear in English in three-quarters of a century, and it is a good one. Author Lester G. Crocker, a Goucher College professor and former movie writer, knows how to blow the dust off his subject, and bring both an 18th century personality and his ideas to life.

The Big Idea. Papa Diderot objected to his son's studies, but let him be until he learned that Denis planned to marry. He then had the young lover imprisoned in a monastery with a lettre de cachet. But Denis escaped, dashed after his cherie, married her and almost immediately stopped loving her. There followed a succession of mistresses. The first was expensive and forced him to write his early books about philosophy to provide her with pocket money. The second was Sophie, Diderot's great love. "Ah," he rhapsodized, "what a woman! How tender she is, how sweet, honest, delicate, sensible!" But she was hardly a beauty. At 38, she was well past the first blush of youth. Nevertheless he wrote her lovingly: "My dear, I kiss your brow, your eyes, and your dried-up little face . . ."

Meanwhile, Diderot had been offered a hack job revising an English encyclopedia, and had stumbled on the big idea of his life. The idea was not to attempt a one-man encyclopedia similar to most of those already in existence, but to launch a monumental group effort to wrap up all "the knowledge scattered over the surface of the earth" in one work of many volumes. The conception was both grandiose and absurd, but not so absurd that a shrewd publisher failed to back it. Diderot was the leading spirit behind the enterprise, "a volcano in permanent eruption." He wrote on everything from stocking looms to Spinoza, and had the collaboration of Voltaire on grace and wit, of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on music, of Montesquieu on taste, of D'Alembert on mathematics and of Turgot on economics.

But ancien regime bigwigs considered Diderot a troublemaker, along with other suspect writers and scientists. Work on the encyclopedia was interrupted; Diderot was imprisoned for 3 1/2 months. After all, he believed that "liberty is a gift of heaven, and every individual of the human species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he enjoys reason."

Victory in 28 Volumes. But when Diderot got out of jail, after writing an apologetic letter, the interrupted work went on. Its new ideas permeated French society, penetrated even the palace, where Madame de Pompadour took an interest. At last, after 26 years and 28 volumes, 17 of text, eleven of plates, Diderot's job was completed. It stood as a model (later surpassed) for future encyclopedias, and with all its mistakes and weaknesses, it perfectly expressed the tolerant rationalistic materialism of the Age of Reason.

In the meantime the embattled philosopher had spread his range, written some plays (successful), some novels (pornographic), some candid art criticism (about a painting showing Joseph turning his back on Potiphar's voluptuous wife, he commented: "I can't imagine what Jacob's son could have wanted; I wouldn't have asked for any better, and I have often settled for less").

Fun with Catherine. He was a gay, light-hearted fellow, easily moved to speech and hard to stop once he started talking. After listening to him, old Voltaire dryly commented: "Nature has refused him one talent, and an essential talent: that of the dialogue."

Crowned heads of Europe wanted Diderot as a featured attraction at their courts. He steadfastly refused to meet Frederick the Great, considering the Prussian monarch a tyrant. Catherine the Great proved more appealing. She subsidized the philosopher by buying his library and paying him to keep and care for it. At her court, he made free as always with word and gesture, and afterwards the monarch of all the Russias complained: "I can't get out of my conversations with him without having my thighs bruised and black and blue; I have been obliged to put a table between him and me to shelter myself and my limbs from his gesticulations." It was also Catherine who pronounced a brilliant verdict on most of the 18th century sages when she told Diderot: "Sometimes you seem to have the head of a man 100 years old, at other times that of a child of twelve."

His mind was rich and lively, but it was unsystematic and inconsistent. He contributed no one major idea to philosophy or the history of thought, but, like Voltaire, was a great popularizer and propagator of the new gospel. It is the reason why in his day he was so profoundly important, and why today he is more likely to be read about than read.

Five years after his death in 1784, the Bastille fell.

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