Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot [Paperback]

Jean Le Rond d'Alembert (Author), Richard N. Schwab (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226134768 | ISBN-13: 978-0226134765 | Publication Date: August 15, 1995 | Edition: 1

Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot expresses the hopes, dogmas, assumptions, and prejudices that have come to characterize the French Enlightenment. In this preface to the Encyclopedia, d'Alembert traces the history of intellectual progress from the Renaissance to 1751. Including a revision of Diderot's Prospectus and a list of contributors to the Encyclopedia, this edition, elegantly translated and introduced by Professor Richard Schwab, is one of the great works of the Enlightenment and an outstanding introduction to the philosophes.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (August 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226134768
• ISBN-13: 978-0226134765
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #199,629 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Education & Reference > Encyclopedias > History

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reason's raison d'etre: The Discourse, January 11, 2008

By 

Riccardo Pelizzo - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot (Paperback)

The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d'Alembert, ancestor of all the others, was an attempt to arrange and systematize the knowledge developed in a scattered and fragmentary manner, on the ruins of the scholastic philosophy and the medieval encyclopedism.

D'Alembert wrote a preliminary discourse as justification of the work plan. The Encyclopedia suggested a genetic order of the knowledge, decided on the model of the Locke's empiricism, and followed a classification of the sciences, founded on the Bacon's Knowledge Tree (Memory/History, Reason/Philosophy and Imagination/Poetry).

The work was also a "reasoned dictionary of sciences, arts and trades" as it explained the general principles of every science and arts, both liberal and mechanics, and their most remarkable details.

The part of the Discourse that perhaps the reader will appreciate more, concerns the history of the progress of human thought: here the science is considered in the prospect of the modern civilization's making and triumph. Of particulat interest is the passage where D'Alembert honours Bacon and Descartes as forerunners of Enlightenment's Age and prophets of the intellectual freedom.

The Encyclopedia offered to the middle class a new cultural model, of laical approach, rationally determined, bound to experience and turned to real life. The Enlightenment's faith in reason/rationality and progress fed on revolutionary conquests of rising middle class ( even Marx and Engels had words of admiration for the bourgeois enterprise).

2 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Who wouldn't want a book recommended by Friederich the Great, June 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot (Paperback)

The preliminary discourses are a surprisingly entertaining description of D'Alembert's ideas about knowledge and learning. This introduction to the great Encyclopedia of Diderot is an important work of the Enlightenment in itself.