From Individual to Citizen

Abstract

Jacques le Fataliste marks a turning point in Diderot’s literary and intellectual career, for never again was he to turn his hand to fiction; nor, as far as we know, did he ever contemplate doing so. Even in the broader field of aesthetics he seems to have exhausted his inspiration: the eighth Salon is a poor affair, and as early as 1769 he had told Grimm that he had very little left to say about art.¹ But if as a writer of fiction, an art critic and an aesthetician he had reached the end of the road, in the realm of his first love, philosophy, he showed a renewed vigour, enthusiasm and originality, which continued unabated throughout the last decade or so of his life. When visitors called they invariably found him eager to debate philosophical questions, and when death took him in 1784, although failing health had prevented him from writing for two years, he was busily engaged in preparing a complete edition of his works.