Diderot's Chaotic Order: Approach to Synthesis

Lester G. Crocker

Published by Princeton University Press 1974

Diderot's Chaotic Order

Approach to Synthesis

Lester G. Crocker

Volume 1277 in the series Princeton Legacy Library

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400867943

Overview
Contents

About this book

Because of its fragmentary, evolving, exploratory, and dialectical character, Diderot's thought has continuously resisted overall synthesis. In the ideas of "order" and "disorder," ideas important in all of eighteenth-century thought, Lester G. Crocker finds the key to an outline of a structure that leads to a genuine synthesis of Diderot's writings on philosophy, morality, politics, and aesthetics.

The tensions in Diderot's thought, Professor Crocker shows, reflect his understanding of reality itself—paradoxically, an anarchic order, a dynamic universe governed by laws but always changing in a chaotic way.

The book examines Diderot's approach to aesthetics as a human ordering response to the world, and his approach to morals and politics as practical ways of dealing with the problems of order and disorder in the context of life in society. In light of the concepts of order and disorder, the inextricable associations of all of these realms of thought in Diderot's work become clear, and a unity is perceived.

Since the problem of order and disorder was fundamental to an age faced with the dissolution of the Christian view of cosmic order, this novel approach to Diderot's work suggests new ways of understanding the Enlightenment as a whole.

Originally published in 1974.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
I. Cosmic Order Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
II. Aesthetics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	52
III. Morals Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
IV. Politics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	116
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Backmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	184