Denis Diderot Research Paper

Denis Diderot was born in 1713 to middle class parents who were able to afford a Jesuit education for him and hoped that he would join the clergy, like his father. Instead, he studied law at the Jesuit college of Louis-le-Grand in Paris, disappointing his parents (Hinchman). However, he may have studied After Diderot’s parents “disowned” him, he eventually left studying law to become a writer in order to share his thoughts on society (“Denis Diderot (1713-1783)”). To try to turn some sort of profit in his profession, Diderot took a job translating an English dictionary, Cyclopedia by Ephraim Chambers, into French. This would eventually turn from a translation project into the writing of his Encyclopedia (Hinchman). For most of his life, Diderot was a Deist; a kind of “enlightened” Christian who connected God to the physical world (Wilson). …show more content…
His earliest original work, Philosphical Thoughts Denis Diderot’s most famous and greatest work, Encyclopedie, included thousands of articles written or translated by Diderot about applications of scientific theory, useful tools, geography, and most importantly, the ideas of phil. During this time period, the whole concept of having a reference book for pretty much everything was still quite novel at the time; Diderot wrote and edited his multi-volumed work more than 21 years before the first Encyclopedia Britannica was published (Wilson 73). According to Ivy League History professor Arthur M.