Abstract
This chapter chronicles Diderot’s detailed proposals to Catherine II on the best way to organize education in Russia. The aim of education over the centuries, Diderot argues, has been, and continues to be, to make people virtuous and enlightened. Education must be designed to meet the needs of the majority. We must adapt the teaching to suit both the age of the students and their ability to understand. In order to attain these objectives, Diderot writes, we should proceed from the simple to the complicated, from the first stage to the last, from what is most useful to what is least useful, from what is essential to all to what is essential to only a few. There are two sorts of knowledge, Diderot states: elementary knowledge which is essential to everyone, and secondary or conventional knowledge which is needed only for the particular path we have chosen in life. Not every occupation requires the measure of essential or elementary knowledge which a full university education requires. The volume and diversity of knowledge taught is to be determined by its benefit to society. Diderot would classify the sciences in the same way as his fellow countryman and contemporary Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon, classified minerals and plants in the 36 volumes of his Histoire Naturelle. According to this method, animals and plants are classified according to their usefulness and proximity to us in nature: the more remote the type of animal, the more obscure its place in science. An ox or a horse are therefore scientifically important, a hyena or a wolf rather less so. Diderot’s pyramid-shaped blueprint of knowledge may seem hierarchical to us, but it encompasses and involves all individuals, equips them with what they need and thereby makes them both happier people and more useful citizens. It is therefore, the chapter concludes, wholly in the spirit of the Encyclopaedia, that handbook for a better, more practical and enlightened world.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
There is a vast amount of literature on Diderot. An excellent bibliography is Fredrik A. Spear, Bibliographie de Diderot. Repertoire analytique international. (Histoire des idees et critique litteraire, volume 187), Geneva 1980, a second volume covering 1976-1986, published in Geneva, volume 264 in the same series. The bibliography contains 5844 entries.
When it comes to collected works, for a long time one had to be satisfied with the 20-volume edition published in Paris 1875-1877 with J. Assezat and Maurice Tourneux as editors. Then, in 1969-73, came a further Oeuvres Completes, published by Qub Francais du livre in Paris, with introductions by Roger Lewinter. Publication has been in progress since 1975 of a critical and annotated edition under the leadership of Herbert Dieckmann, of the Paris publishers Hermann. At the moment of writing 20 out of 33 planned volumes have been published. There is also a very large number of “selected works” compiled from various points of departure - aesthetic, dramatic, political and philosophical.
Diderot’s extraordinarily comprehensive correspondence was published in a modern critical and commented edition of 16 volumes by Georges Roth and Jean Verloot in Paris 1955–1970.
The basic book on Diderot’s life and works was written by Arthur M. Wilson: Diderot, New York, 1972.1 have used the french translation, Diderot, sa vie et son oeuvre, Paris, 1985.
Wilson’s work is characterized by the bibliographer Spear as “la biographie la plus complete comprenant une etude approfondie de 1’oeuvre et des indications bibliographiques tres etendues”. There are also a number of less comprehensive introductions to Diderot’s time, life and works, and an ocean of special studies.
Something has been written earlier on the “Plan dune university”, but not very much. I take up here the most important works and refer otherwise to Spear’s bibliography. There is a German annotated translation of Denis Diderot, Bildungsplan fur die Regierung von Russland, Beltz Monografien Padagogik, Basle, 1971. It is published in English in Francois de La Fontainerie, French Liberalism and Education in the 18th Century: The Writings of La Chalotais, Turgot, Diderot and Condorcet on National Education, under the heading “Diderot (1713-1784) and his Plan for a Russian University, (McGraw-Hill education classics, New York and London 1932). In the series L’enfant no. XV, Jean-Marie Dolle has written Politique et pedagogie. Diderot et les problemes de Veducation, Paris 1973. Here, the plan is placed in a pedagogical- political context and is related to Diderot’s other statements on pedagogics. The plan is discussed by Ernesto Codignole in Rivista pedagogica, vol 10 (1917), 380-407, in the essay “Diderot e Ie origini dell’utilitarismo pedagogico in Francia: II piano di un’universita russa”: by Cyprien Issaurat in La pedagogie, son evolution et son histoire, the chapter on “Diderot” (Bibliotheque des sciences contemporaines, 14), Paris 1886. E. Merle wrote in Technique art, science, no. 114 (1957-58) and no. 115 (1957-58) on “Diderot et son programme d’education (d’apres le Plan pour une universite)”. In Melanges de la Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne, Jacques Chouillet wrote “Un projet de reforme de l’universite au XVIIIe siede: le Plan d’une university de Denis Diderot pour l’Imperatrice de Russie (1775)” (no. 6 (1985), 47–58).
For Diderot’s time in Russia, Paul Verniere’s critical and annotated edition of Diderot’s Memoires pour Catherine II, Paris 1966, is very useful. Maurice Tourneux, Diderot et Catherine II, Paris 1899, should also be consulted.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1992 Springer-Verlag London Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sörbom, P. (1992). Diderot’s Russian University. In: Göranzon, B., Florin, M. (eds) Skill and Education: Reflection and Experience. Artificial Intelligence and Society. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1983-8_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1983-8_18
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-19758-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-1983-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive