Order and Chance
The Pattern of Diderot's Thought

This study discovers a pattern to Diderot's thinking.

Geoffrey Bremner (Author)

9780521107921, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 February 2009

276 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.6 cm, 0.35 kg

This study discovers a pattern to Diderot's thinking, a fundamental dualism attributable largely to the attitudes and assumptions of the time and giving a common structure to his ideas and writing. Geoffrey Bremner draws widely on Diderot's works in studying his ideas on perception and action, aesthetics, ethics and politics, as well as his plays and fiction. The subtlety of the textual analysis and the analogies Dr Bremner draws provide a convincing and illuminating argument for his interpretation. He supports this but emphasising the intellectual circumstances in which Diderot wrote and demonstrating his links to other eighteenth- and seventeenth-century writers. His study will therefore make a valuable contribution to the reassessment of the period that is currently underway, as well as to the central, elusive problem presented by Diderot's thought itself.

Introduction
Order and the Ancien Regime
Part I. Perception and Action: 1. Perception
2. Action
Part II. Systems of Order: 3. The concept of 'fullness'
4. A political system
5. A system of aesthetics
Part III. Social and Individual Values: 6. Public order and private disorder in Diderot's works
7. Chance and the moral order
Originals of French passages quoted in the text
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & political philosophy [HPS]