Principal editor of the great Encyclopedia, novelist and prose writer of genius, contributor to the development of scientific thought and method, to the theory of the bourgeois drama and to the practice of art criticism, Diderot perhaps embodies the rich variety of the Enlightenment spirit more than any other man. His only real rival is surely Voltaire. Rousseau, whose influence was greater than Diderot's, would not thank us for classing him among the philosophes. The more profound philosophers - a Hume (...) or a Kant - not only lack his range, but are less unquestionably ‘Enlightenment men’. (shrink)

There are three significant questions which may be asked about the Enlightenment, as about any similar phenomenon: what? whence? and whither? This is a short general survey of this important movement in the history of ideas, which would combine some account of the historical and social background with a closer look at the thought of the more outstanding individuals.