Term Papers on DIDEROT: THE ENLIGHTENED PHILOSOPHER

Term Paper Title	DIDEROT: THE ENLIGHTENED PHILOSOPHER
# of Words	1084
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	4.34

DIDEROT: THE ENLIGHTENED PHILOSOPHER

Denis Diderot was born in 1713 in the pious town of Langres, France. He was the oldest surviving child of a family whose long tradition it was to make renowned cutlery. At the age of thirteen, he decided to leave school because he became impatient with his teachers. They weren't feeding him enough of the information he craved. He decided to join his father in the cutlery business. That lasted for four days. He simply described his family's trade as boring. Diderot decided impatience was better than boredom and returned to school at the local Jesuit college.
He became an Abbe in hopes of pursuing a religious career and assuming his uncle Vigneron's position as canon at the local church. When Diderot was fifteen Vigneron fell ill and died leaving his religious office to young Diderot. When the cathedral chapter would not allow such a young man to take the position and gave it to someone else, they crushed all chances of the Diderot family producing another religious man. Soon after, Denis Diderot left for Paris to resume his studies at the College d'Harcourt and Louis-le-Grand.
It was here in Paris, that Diderot became the great philosopher that we know today. He started his new life in Paris with little to no money at all. Diderot was poverty stricken and forced to survive any way he could. He often changed residences when he owed too much in overdue rent and concocted wild schemes for borrowing money. He was a tutor for a well-to-do family but after three months, confinement drove him into the streets again. Diderot was not a man who stayed in a place that was not to his liking; no matter how beneficial. For a while he became a writer for sale, making his living by writing sermons and doing translations among other odd tasks.
In 1728, at the age of twenty-eight, Diderot fell hopelessly in love with his future wife, Antoinette Champion. By French Bourgeois standards, the match was not a good one. Diderot was several steps higher than Champion on the social ladder and she was poorly educated, fatherless, and had no dowry. Nevertheless, Diderot and Champion, four years his senior, were married and produced one surviving child. She was named Angelique after Diderot's mother and his sister who went mad and died at the age of twenty-eight.
From then until the time of his death in 1784, Diderot published many pieces of writing from plays to poems to essays, all the time climbing in wealth and recognition. He was a controversial writer and twice had his writings burned by the executioner and once served jail time. He was a freethinker that associated with the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire and had admirers such as Catherine the Great whose court he visited at her request.
History is all about interpretation. Diderot's life is no exception. One account of his life portrays him as a self-made man and concentrates on the later part of his life and his beliefs. Another account sees him as being taught to think and to question everything while still in Langres and therefore focuses on his early years and his upbringing. In my ...

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