Abstract
“Quelle notion précise,” asked the author of the Salon de 1767, “peut-on avoir du bien et du mal, du beau et du laid, du bon et du mauvais, du vrai et du faux, sans une notion préliminaire de l’homme.”1 For Diderot an understanding of the nature of man and of his cognitive powers was the starting-point for speculation about ethics and aesthetics, and by extension about politics. He began his intellectual career under the influence of Shaftesbury as a rationalist deist, strongly inclined towards scepticism, but unable to take the final step to a radical negation of the transcendental. This philosophical limbo suited an antimetaphysician like Voltaire perfectly, but for Diderot it was a frustrating barrier to speculative thought. The Lettre sur les aveugles (1749), inspired by Condillac’s sensationalism and founded upon an implicit atheist materialism, marked the turning-point. By opting for the only fruitful alternative to Catholic theology he was able to embark upon a sustained study of the origins of human knowledge which had previously been closed to him. The first steps in the Lettre sur les aveugles are hesitant; the arguments which make the individual’s moral conscience dependent on the degree to which he is able to perceive the external world through his senses are either crude or faulty.
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© 1973 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Strugnell, A. (1973). Materialism and the Morale Universelle. In: Diderot’s Politics. Archives Internationales D’Histoire Des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 62. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2447-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2447-1_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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