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Chosen by:
Professor David Garrioch,
School of Historical Studies, Faculty of Arts
Encyclopédie : ou, Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers / par une société de gens de lettres. Mis en ordre & publié par M. Diderot ..., & quant à la partie mathématique, par M. d'Alembert (Paris, 1751-1780) 35 v. (fol.)
The Monash Library’s copy of the much sought-after original folio edition of the Encyclopédie, published from 1751 to 1772, is one of the gems of the collection. Not only is this work rare and extremely valuable, but as the Encyclopédie is still not available online it offers Australian scholars direct access to one of the most influential works of the European Enlightenment in the form in which it reached its audience. Comprising 17 volumes of text and 11 of engravings, it attempted to encapsulate all human knowledge while giving particular attention to science, technology and manufacturing. In this respect it was a typical product of its time, one of growing confidence in science and in human capacity for progress.
The Encyclopédie was the brainchild of Denis Diderot (1713-84), a French philosopher, art critic, and polymath. It was originally to be simply a French translation of Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences (1728), but Chambers’ book had only two volumes and was largely concerned with definitions. Diderot’s vision was broader: his work would contain full-length articles on all important subjects. It was deliberately conceived as a ‘reasoned’ encyclopaedia, whose authors would comment critically on the key issues of the age. Many of the leading radical French intellectuals of the eighteenth century agreed to contribute, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Baron d’Holbach, and particularly the brilliant mathematician Jean Le Rond d’Alembert.
When the first volumes appeared they caused a scandal. Even though they had been approved by the royal and church censors, readers quickly realised that the work was highly subversive. While entries like ‘Christianity’ were fairly orthodox, those on obscure topics often rewarded closer reading. Thus the article ‘Eagle’ parodied the idea of the Holy Spirit. Diderot’s piece on ‘Authority (Political)’ contained the suggestion that rulers were only legitimate if they had the consent of their people—a fairly overt attack on the idea of Divine Right monarchy. In 1759, therefore, both the French government and the Catholic Church banned the Encyclopédie and the title pages of several of the volumes in our collection bear a label reading ‘Ouvrage défendu’ (banned work). The final ten volumes were published illegally.
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