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    Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely
    Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely
    Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely
    Audiobook13 hours

    Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

    Written by Andrew S. Curran

    Narrated by Paul Boehmer

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity-for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality. One of Diderot's most attentive readers during his lifetime was Catherine the Great, who not only supported him financially, but invited him to St. Petersburg to talk about the possibility of democratizing the Russian empire.

    In this thematically organized biography, Andrew S. Curran vividly describes Diderot's tormented relationship with Rousseau, his curious correspondence with Voltaire, his passionate affairs, and his often iconoclastic stands on art, theater, morality, politics, and religion. But what this book brings out most brilliantly is how the writer's personal turmoil was an essential part of his genius and his ability to flout taboos, dogma, and convention.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 24, 2019
    ISBN9781541404670
    Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

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    Reviews for Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely

    4.5/5

    24 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Many thanks for access to this caliber of absorbing biography much enjoyed after the Robert K. Massie’s story of Catherine the Great.
    • 5/5
      very informative, and his thematic approach to Diderot's life (as opposed to a strictly chronological one )brought out a lot of subtle detail.
    • 5/5
      My only complaint is the plethora of names....many I knew, many I did not. An all inclusive list of the characters ( more extensive than the abbreviated list provided) would have been welcome. I love the Enlightenment and works dealing with this timeframe I find exciting and wonderful. Diderot is a minor hero of mine so the book was a feeding frenzy on my part. Well-written although splitting the book into two sections, one mostly biographical and the second mostly thematic was maybe not the best. Still, an excellent read.