Denis Diderot
1713–1784 · French Enlightenment · Prominent
Diderot gave twenty-five years of his life to editing the Encyclopedie, and kept his boldest writing in manuscript, where it stayed. No French materialist went further. Matter is all there is, he held, a living matter that arranges itself and throws up minds and the look of design with no God and no purpose behind it. Your thinking is your brain at work and stops when the brain does. Nothing you do escapes its causes.
Signature
The position Diderot is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Mind
- leans Brain Only
- Agency
- Hard Determinism
Positions on the 12 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Mechanistic (21 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Brain Only (16 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Universals
- leans Nominalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Changing (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Constructed (17 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (12 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Immanence (9 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Polity
- leans Liberalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ethics
- leans Ends (25 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- War
- mildly leans Militarism (63 on a 0–100 scale from Pacifism to Militarism)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (25 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- leans Global (79 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
8 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Diderot refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Knowledge
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Natural Emergence
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Utilitarian Calculation / Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Hard Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Eternal Cosmos
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Process / Becoming
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Consent of the Governed / Rational Expertise
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Expression
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Productive Tension
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Annihilation
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Virtue to Cultivate
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Evolved Animal / Tabula Rasa
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?