A DIDEROT TRIPTYCH RE-EXAMINED.

This article focuses on the writings of Denis Diderot. The preoccupations which are central to the three works, and which effectively bind them together, as it were, derive essentially from problems with which Diderot had grappled for some years prior to their composition, and about which it may be useful to say something before considering the texts in greater detail. It is, very broadly, the case that, as he grew older, Diderot devoted an increasing proportion of his time and energy to the examination of social questions, rather than to the consideration of more abstract philosophical matters. Diderot was progressively accumulating and classifying for inclusion elsewhere in the "Encyclopédie," a vast corpus of material which bore witness to the immense diversity and heterogeneity of human societies throughout the ages. Consequently, though the "Encyclopédie," itself testifies repeatedly to his profound desire to elaborate a universal scheme of human history, and to devise universal moral precepts of the kind.