Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot was a prominent Enlightenment philosopher and Editor in Chief of the Encyclopedié, one of the great achievements of the French Enlightenment. Diderot entered into the project after roughly a year, but soon assumed full control of its development, despite efforts by French censors to ban or curtail its production. Diderot was also a writer of some ability; Jacques le Fataliste et son Maǐtre (Jacques the Fatalist and his Master) was amongst his more formidable works, challenging traditional conventional novel writing and also explored the nature of free will.
Biography
Diderot's father was a well off master cutler in Langres. Although Diderot's first ambition was to be a priest, this idea faded when he moved to Paris to further his education. His father had made arrangements for him to study law, but he disliked this idea. In fact, he disliked the very idea of any profession at all. As a result, his father cut off his allowance and for the next ten years he lived an aimless existence in Paris, doing all manner of menial work. He once had a post as a tutor in the household of a wealthy Parisian financer but abandoned his post, telling his employer "I am a Thousand times too rich and too well off in your house, and must leave it" [1]
In 1741 he met Anne-Toinette Champion, a beautiful woman who met Diderot's fathers disapproval. He told his father he intended to marry her, causing a major fight between father and son; as a result, Diderot demanded his inheritance, threatening to have his father arrested if he did not receive it. Obtaining royal permission, his father imprisoned him in a monastery. He escaped, laid low and married his sweetheart in secret; this was a decision he would later regret, as it was an unhappy and painful marriage.
Diderot began to come to prominence in 1746, when he published his first original work Pensées Philosophiques (Thoughts on Philosophy) which was condemned to be burnt by the Parlement of Paris on the following grounds:
"Presenting to restless and reckless spirits the venom of the most criminal and absurd opinions that the depravity of human reason is capable of; and by an unaffected uncertainty placing all religions on almost the same level, in order to finish up by not accepting any" [2]