Society and the Individual

Abstract

In 1770 Diderot’s political thought entered a phase of swift and intense development culminating in the rejection of the figure of the wise ruler as the centre-piece of his doctrine. The abandonment of the belief that an enlightened absolute monarch could legislate to harmonise the life of the nation with the precepts of universal morality was forced upon him by the accumulation of irrefutable evidence hostile to it.¹ The radical changes taking place in Diderot’s political ideas were paralleled by remarkable activity in the philosophical and literary fields. Between 1770 and 1773 he wrote the Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville and the Entretien d’un père avec ses enfants, both of them works concerned directly with philosophical and moral questions. Over the same period the fictional works of his maturity, the Neveu de Rameau,² Jacques le Fataliste and his best known contes approached their final form or were written in their entirety. These writings reflect in different ways Diderot’s preoccupation with the relationship of the individual to society, and the divergent conclusions which emerge from the philosophical works on the one hand and the fiction on the other throw into relief the conflict going on in his mind.