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Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 20
Yuletide signups so far:
3 requests for Frederician RPF, 2 offers
2 requests for Circle of Voltaire RPF, 3 offers !! :D :D
(I am so curious as to who the third person is!)
3 requests for Frederician RPF, 2 offers
2 requests for Circle of Voltaire RPF, 3 offers !! :D :D
(I am so curious as to who the third person is!)
Diderot - Personal Life
I chose it because it was available on Kindle, cheap, and Amazon recommended it to me. ;) It was not as scholarly as I would have liked, but it was as good a starting point as any.
I haven't finished writing up the most important part, his work on the Encyclopédie, but that requires a little more precision, so I'm still working on it. For now, you can have the rest.
Personal life
Denis Diderot was born in Langres in 1713 to a bourgeois father, a cutler in a region famous for cutlery.
His parents quickly realize their son isn't cut out to be a cutler or anything like it, so they start preparing him for the priesthood. He becomes an abbé/abbot as a 12-year-old, but he has this little problem with authority and is constantly getting in trouble. My favorite story is that he liked tricking his teachers by working really obscure syntax into his Latin and Greek, waiting for them to correct him, then taking great pleasure in proving that he was right and they were wrong.
So he increasingly gets the sense that this isn't the life for him. He ends up in Paris studying philosophy, but scholasticism and orthodoxy also drive him crazy, so he drifts aimlessly for a while, studying but not pursuing a serious career. During this period, he meets and befriends Rousseau.
Meanwhile, Diderot falls in love with a beautiful but pious (?? your life choices, Diderot) woman named Toinette (short for Antoinette), who's the product of a noble family fallen on hard times and currently working as a laundress. He manages to court her by convincing her parents that he's EXTREMELY CHASTE, i.e. on the verge of becoming a priest. In a very similar way, he recently once swindled someone out of a bunch of money by pretending he was about to enter the priesthood.
That's Diderot for you.
He eventually gets permission from her parents to marry her, on the condition that his parents agree. So he leaves Paris and goes home for the first time in 10 years.
Parents most emphatically do not agree. Dad actually has him locked up! Historians think this was in a monastery. Dad then writes to Toinette's parents and says that he'll only agree to release his son if this wretched girl takes a solemn vow never to marry him.
But Diderot escapes through a window and walks halfway to Paris, 120 km, before meeting up with someone who can give him a ride the rest of the way. (If you think that's exciting, his mother once sent a servant to Paris to bring him some money, and the servant apparently walked the entire 230 km in both directions. No, footnotes aren't abounding in this volume, and even when they're there, a major source for Diderot's life is his granddaughter, which we've seen how even children can be woefully uninformed about the details of their parent's lives, so take everything with a grain of salt.)
Anyway! He makes it back to Paris, where he and Toinette get married, secretly, at midnight, in one of the few parishes where people could get married without their parents' permission. And even then, it was only legal after age 30!
The marriage is passionate at first, but Diderot seems to have been a man of great passions of medium length (like a few years), and he eventually moves on. According to some anecdotes, she had a terrible temper and could get physically violent with him and with neighbors, and he was afraid to confront her during later marital disputes (he would apparently hide in his study, write a letter to a mutual friend, and have the friend deliver the message to her) but take this all with a grain of salt.
So he's friends with Rousseau for a while, but like Voltaire and Maupertuis, they have a messy and public falling out. Like theirs, it was triggered by trivial-seeming outward events that exploded. However, in their case, it seems to have been a more drawn-out process, and less catastrophic (possibly because Louis XV wasn't the type to get involved in their
pamphletbook wars). One example: they have a big fight over whether Rousseau should accept a pension from Louis. Rousseau says doing so would violate his principles. Diderot says he owes it to his dependents to be financially responsible. Per the author of the bio, they had a lot of these arguments that reflected fundamental differences about how to live in the world and what kind of compromises to make.Shortly before Rousseau's Confessions was supposed to come out, Diderot has a suspicion they were going to 1) be a bestseller, 2) trash him (both true), so he pre-emptively decides to work in some Rousseau-trashing in his life of Seneca.
Using the Essay to strike before the Confessions appeared in print, he compared Rousseau to Seneca’s detractors, and inserted a series of footnotes into his text that accused his former friend of being derivative, an obfuscator, a hypocrite, and an intellectual thief whose best ideas were borrowed from Seneca, Plutarch, Montaigne, and Locke. There was, of course, no mention of Diderot’s own role in exacerbating Rousseau’s paranoia by being aloof, by neglecting him, and by often mocking his fears as unwarranted.
Unfortunately for Diderot, Rousseau dies just before the Seneca book appeared (and the Confessions wasn't published until years later), and now Diderot looks petty and mean-natured. Oops! What do you do in a situation like this? You issue a second, expanded edition, now on Claudius and Nero, and you double down on Rousseau by writing at even greater length about how terrible he was, that's what you do.
This new and improved, "Now with more Rousseau-trashing!" edition appears in the same year as the first volumes of the Confessions appear. Says our author Curran:
While both men had hoped to claim the moral high ground in their final public clash, the written accounts of this twenty-five-year-old dispute did little to settle who was at fault. Indeed, more than anything else, the combination of spite and regret that drips from both men’s pens is a poignant testament to what they continued to have in common: the fear of mutual slander and the searing pain of lost companionship.
Diderot himself dies only a couple years later. During his final illness, he has the same problem that Voltaire had with wanting a decent burial and being worried about not getting one. But whereas Voltaire was a big name with powerful friends, and at least still believed in God, built a church, and attended Mass (even if only mockingly) when it served his purposes, Diderot is less protected *and* was a straight-up atheist. And to her credit, his wife Toinette, who is notably pious herself, wants Diderot to be able to get the assurance that he would get the burial he wants without having to convert, if he's dead set on not converting, and does her best to make that happen.
Hilariously, at this time (late 1783/early 1784), Diderot is living in the same parish as Voltaire died in just 6 years earlier, and in an attempt to get him to die a good Catholic, who should the Church send to try to convert him in his final illness but Jean-François Faydit de Terssac, who tag-teamed with the more famous Abbé Gaultier to try to get Voltaire to convert on his deathbed.
Terssac: I failed last time, but now's my chance! Diderot, you should totally publish a last work recanting all your previous works, then you can be on good terms with the Church.
Diderot: Or I could move to a different parish. Byyyeeee!
So Diderot died a few blocks from the church that had agreed to bury Maupertuis, Helvétius, and the like. (We haven't talked about Helvétius, but believe me, if you'd read this book, you'd be very surprised that he managed a Catholic burial. We'll probably cover him at some point.) So Diderot managed to get buried there without much fuss.
Ghost of Voltaire: This is way less exciting than having the King of France authorize the placing of your embalmed, heart-less, and brain-less corpse in a carriage as though it were still living and taken out of Paris to be buried somewhere more sympathetic.
Ghost of Diderot: But way simpler, and therefore strategically superior, omg.
Ghost of Voltaire: Never let it be said that I took the easy route, even in death!
Diderot's death scene, btw, was oddly touching, so I reproduce it here:
The next morning Diderot felt better than he had for months. After spending the morning receiving visits...the philosophe sat down with Toinette to his first proper meal in weeks: soup, boiled mutton, and some chicory. Having eaten well, Diderot then looked at Toinette and asked her to pass him an apricot. Fearing that he had already eaten too much, she tried to dissuade him from continuing the meal. Diderot reportedly replied wistfully: “What the devil type of harm can it do to me now?” Popping some of the forbidden fruit in his mouth, he then rested his head on his hand, reached out for some more stewed cherries, and died. While having anything but a heroic death à la Socrates, Diderot had nonetheless expired in a way that was perfectly compatible with his philosophy: without a priest, with humor, and while attempting to eke out one last bit of pleasure from life.
Re: Diderot - Personal Life
This is hilarious to me not least because it makes perfect sense that this is your favorite story :D
He manages to court her by convincing her parents that he's EXTREMELY CHASTE, i.e. on the verge of becoming a priest. In a very similar way, he recently once swindled someone out of a bunch of money by pretending he was about to enter the priesthood.
Wow!
This new and improved, "Now with more Rousseau-trashing!"
ahahahaha!
And to her credit, his wife Toinette, who is notably pious herself, wants Diderot to be able to get the assurance that he would get the burial he wants without having to convert, if he's dead set on not converting, and does her best to make that happen.
So, like, this is actually really touching to me. (I know very few notably pious people who would not be jonesing for the conversion, and that's in this day and age.)
Diderot: Or I could move to a different parish. Byyyeeee!
lolololol!
Ghost of Voltaire: Never let it be said that I took the easy route, even in death!
Voltaire, you... are not inaccurate there.
While having anything but a heroic death à la Socrates, Diderot had nonetheless expired in a way that was perfectly compatible with his philosophy: without a priest, with humor, and while attempting to eke out one last bit of pleasure from life.
That's actually kind of great, a good death in a different way than some others' good deaths, but it does seem like as good death as one is likely to get, to me. (Especially given that he was an atheist, so didn't run up against the religious problems of dying without confession.)
Re: Diderot - Personal Life
Lol! I honestly racked my brains trying to think of why I don't have more memories of doing this ("more" means I have some, yes :P), and then I realized:
I went to such bad schools that I had a hard enough time convincing my teachers I was right and they were wrong even when I wasn't trying to trick them!
Exhibit A: My inability to convince one of my high school English teachers that "The volleyball team plays well" is grammatically correct. His rationale: "'Volleyball' is a noun, adjectives modify nouns, therefore it's 'The volleyball team played good.'" *Could* *not* convince him otherwise. The conversation degenerated to the point where my mother forced me to write a letter of apology for rudeness when she found out I had asked him what his college degree was in (because I sure didn't think it was English).
Exhibit B: History class, also in high school. On an exam question that went, "The [some denomination]s believed that God was _______ and ______," I put "omniscient" and "omnipotent." I was marked wrong, because the answers were "all-knowing" and "all-powerful." *Could* *not* convince the history teacher that those words meant the same thing. I wasn't even trying to show off, I just put down the first words that popped into my head!
Trying to trick these people on purpose would have just ruined my GPA, which I needed for scholarships, because that was the only way I was paying for college, because it's not like a quality education for me was a priority or anything for my parents, smh.
Oh, wait, wait, I forgot one!
Exhibit C: The same history teacher who marked me off for "omniscient" and "omnipotent" repeatedly taught the class that James I/VI was Catholic. I could not convince her otherwise.
So, like, this is actually really touching to me. (I know very few notably pious people who would not be jonesing for the conversion, and that's in this day and age.)
I know, I was hugely impressed, which is why I had to include it! According to the author, she said she would give her life for him to become a believer, but if he wasn't going to, she still wanted to help him get that burial.
That's actually kind of great, a good death in a different way than some others' good deaths, but it does seem like as good death as one is likely to get, to me.
Agreed. It's a good Epicurean (in the original sense of the word) death.
Re: Diderot - Personal Life
Awwww! That's very... perceptive, or logical, or maybe both. <3
Re: Diderot - Personal Life
Dashkova also argues against philosophers accepting pensions when talking with Diderot. I note this is way easier to say if you're the owner of hundreds of serfs even during those times of your life when you're in disgrace.
(Young Boswell before meeting Johnson has a conversation with another guy as to whether it was right of Johnson to accept a pension from George II, when Johnson, as a Tory, had been highly critical of the Hannover succession. Boswell argued that it wasn't a bending of principle because Johnson could see it as his due from the nation and the King presenting same, and that he didn't suddenly produce praise for Team Hannover because of it.)
LOL on Diderot simply moving parishes. In fairness, I don't think it would have made a difference in Voltaire's case. He was more famous, and the Archbishop of Paris had it in for him personally, so no matter the parish, without a disclaimer as demanded: no burial.
That is a touching death scene.
Re: Diderot - Personal Life
Even Rousseau's greatest admirers admit that his sense of persecution and emotional volatility helped bring about his own worst nightmare: being abandoned by his friends, particularly Diderot. Throughout his writings, Rousseau had professed a love of humanity that knew no bounds; his real problem was getting along with actual humans, with their foibles, their inconsistencies, and their self-absorption, especially when it got in the way of his own.
Curran then goes on to explain how it was half Diderot's fault for encouraging the paranoia, but I had to share the quote, because I enjoyed the way he phrased the distinction between theory and practice in Rousseau's life. ;)