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Copyright of Con-textos Kantianos: International Journal of Philosophy is the property of Con-Textos Kantianos (CTK) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Resumo: Investigamos como Machado de Assis, no conto "Pílades e Orestes", propõe um modo singular de figurar a fala represada como signo ou sintoma da amizade e do amor, tanto no âmbito do personagem como no da forma narrativa. Tentamos mostrar como a postura do personagem Quintanilha pode ser entendida como inversão de papéis sexuais e familiares e como figuração da neurose histérica, em chave psicanalítica. Para tanto, comparamos o conto não apenas com os dois últimos romances de Machado, mas também com tragédias gregas que figuram o mito, além de dois contos da França do século XVIII, de Diderot e de Saint-Lambert.

The comparison made by Ada Lovelace in 1843 between the Analytical Engine and the Jacquard loom is one of the well-known analogies between looms and computation machines. Given the fact that weaving – and textile production in general – is one of the oldest cultural techniques in human history, the question arises whether this was the first time that such a parallel was drawn. As this paper will show, centuries before Lovelace's analogy, such a comparison was made by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. During the 17th century, Leibniz compared his calculating machines with another textile machine, the stocking frame, a machine which mechanized knitting and which was invented in 1589. During the following centuries, this machine was considered as a technological wonder and as a creation of God, and, during the last decades of the 17th century, Leibniz emphasized the need to consider it and other textile machines mathematically. What, then, were the reasons for the parallel drawn between this machine and Leibniz's automatic computation machines? And what were the consequences of this analogy concerning the artisanal knowledge embedded in manual textile practices? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Antikvitás & Reneszánsz is the property of MTA-SZTE Antikvitas es Reneszansz, Forrasok es Recepcio Kutatocsoport and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The essay investigates the historical background of the manuscript BnF, n.a.fr. 12961, which once belonged to Carlo Firmian, Plenipotentiary Minister of Austrian Lombardy and an important collector and bibliophile. It contains a series of extracts from Friedrich Melchior Grimm's Correspondance littéraire, including Diderot's Salons of 1761, 1763, 1765 and the beginning of 1767. The manuscript copy was commissioned by Firmian from German journalist during the latter's Italian trip in 1775-1776 and was sent to Milan in May 1779. The request for Diderot's writings was the result of the Plenipotentiary Minister's keen interest in the works by the French author, as is also confirmed by his library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sensualism is usually attributed to Condillac. Hobbes's treatise on Human nature (1650) shows, though, a century before Condillac's Traité des sensations (1754), the most characteristic marks of this philosophical current: the development of mental faculties and operations only through sensations so that all thought is some modification of sensation. Hobbes' treatise was translated into French by d'Holbach in 1772, providing a sort of Hobbesian revelation in Diderot. Even though the encyclopedist's theory of sensibility does not present clear traces of Hobbes' treatise, the latter contributes to a better understanding of it. With this in mind, I propose to read four chapters (I-III; VII) of Human nature from a Diderotian point of view. I intend to show that, on the one hand, Hobbes is a sensualist, and, on the other hand, his sensualism has a vitalist perspective thanks to a dual system of sensibility, whose centers (brain and heart) interact continuously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dismissive stance of thinkers towards fashion is often the starting point for those theories of fashion that are increasingly contributing to overcoming it. However, very rarely do even philosophies of fashion dedicate as much as a single thought to the fashion of philosophers. This neglected aspect of the everyday life of intellectuals, people of the mind, provides a new interpretive key. This article explores two prominent cases of intellectual celebrities, to whom we turn especially in times of crisis, personal or public. Diderot famously underwent a personal crisis as a result of a beautiful new silk dressing gown. Marx, on the other hand, often on the verge of destitution, repeatedly pawned his coat – which poignantly also featured at the beginning of Capital as the epitome of the commodity that does not keep you warm – affecting his capacity or otherwise to go and study at the British Museum. These two cases take us directly to the clothed body of two intellectuals and to the struggle – of mind and body, private and public – that led them, via practice, to theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of the captivated gaze has been taken up repeatedly in philosophy. Plato's Allegory of the Cave stands paradigmatically for this. Here, the gaze at the shadowy images prevents people from taking the path to the sun. Denis Diderot's critical reinterpretation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave is less well known. In Diderot, the view of the artificial light images is just as captivating as Plato's shadow images. Unlike there, however, Diderot does not distinguish between perception and cognition but instead focuses on the significance of the seemingly unimportant shift of the gaze within the cave. Diderot determines the starting point of the realisation of freedom in the liberation of one's own gaze from the captivation intended by third parties. Prerequisites for the liberation of the gaze are the realisation of an interruption. It is shifts in the alignment of the eyeballs that become visible here as lucid intervals and which, in Diderot, become the starting point of power analysis and the site of revolt and freedom practice. In this article, I will show how Diderot's demand for enabling the individual realisation of lucid intervals is not first and foremost an aesthetic, but a highly political one. The criteria of art, which are defined by Diderot and have not lost their relevance until today, are based on his explosive insight that the incessant captivation of the gaze stands in the way of democratisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within existing literature, scholars have most often examined Denis Diderot’s Salons in the contexts of art exhibitions and discourse. While the art world is an apt place to examine his works, this essay intends to broaden the scope of historical inquiry by situating his writing in the context of natural disasters. By approaching his Salons from outside the artistic milieu, I do not intend to imply that the circumstances of the eighteenth-century Parisian art world did not play a major role in Diderot’s work. It did, perhaps first and foremost. I am merely offering the idea that art criticism in France—and especially Diderot’s Salons—developed alongside a cultural consciousness of material durability. Writing about art offered a supplementary type of sustainability. It could conserve not only a literary description of the artwork but also the author’s distinctive experience of it. Diderot’s Salons make for an interesting case study, because his descriptions of art on display at the salon exhibitions are lengthier than any other art critical text written at the time and may lend insight, more broadly, into the power of writing as a tool for art conservation.

À partir de quel moment pouvons-nous dire qu’un personnage est méchant ? À la différence de certaines figures stéréotypées, certaines formes de malfaisance témoignent d’une plasticité étonnante. En mobilisant plusieurs définitions du XVIIe et du XVIIIe siècles, nous les confrontons à certaines manifestations de cette méchanceté au sein de la littérature, notamment dans Le Neveu de Rameau de Diderot et dans le Dictionnaire philosophique de Voltaire. Les personnages, étant des constructions d’idées, s’incarnent dans des dialogues ou à travers des anecdotes. Les idées qui en découlent visent à s’éloigner de l’image du bourreau machiavélique jusqu’à le voir apparaître comme une victime, invisible et médiocre.

Copyright of International Journal of Political Philosophy / Las Torres de Lucca is the property of Revista Las Torres de Lucca. Facultad de Filosofia, Ciudad Universitaria and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

تتكون دراسة صورة الأب " إبن أخ رامو" و رواية "جاك القدري" أولاً، وقبل كل شيء، من خلال تحديد مكانة الأب، حيث بدأت هذه الظاهرة للنقاش المفتوح للجميع في النصف الثاني من القرن الثامن عشر، ركز النقاش حول التعليم ومدى فاعلية دور الأب في تعليم أبنائه وتربيتهم، ومن خلال المعاني الأدبية واللغوية عند الفيلسوف ديدروDenis Diderot ، فقد أصبحت فاعلية التعليم في القرن الثامن عشر والدور التربوي للآباء نموذج للأخلاق يحتذى به. نستنتج من خلال دراستنا ايضا، أن صورة الأب عند ديدرو، تقدم جوانب غنية ومتناقضة، لأن هذه الجوانب حساسة للغاية للأبوة كما قدمتها الكوميديا ​​الكلاسيكية. بشكل عام، فإن الأبوة تنبع بتعقيدها وغموضها من تشابكها مع العديد من المشاعر الأخرى. Résumé Étudier l'image du père dans "Le Neveu de Rameau" et "Jacques le Fataliste" consiste d'abord à situer la question du père par rapport au grand débat sur l'éducation né dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIème siècle. L'étude de l'image du père dans "Le Neveu de Rameau" et "Jacques le Fataliste" passe avant tout par la détermination du statut du père. Dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle, un grand débat est né sur l'éducation et l'étendue de l'efficacité du rôle du père dans l'éducation en général et l'éducation des enfants en particulier, et à partir de là, nous allons essayer de montrer à travers les significations littéraires et linguistiques du philosophe Denis Diderot, l'efficacité de l'éducation au XVIIIe siècle et le rôle éducatif des pères en tant que modèle d'éthique. Au terme de cette étude, on peut conclure que l'image paternelle de Diderot présente des aspects riches et contrastés, car ces aspects restent très sensibles à la paternité telle que présentée par la comédie classique. Ainsi que l'utilisation de formes littéraires telles que le Dialogue, la Pantomime, etc., sert bien cette complexité. Abstract This study embodies a parental father's image in "Le Neveu de Rameau" and "Jacques le Fataliste" first and foremost, and above all else, by establishing the prominent role of a father. In the second half of the 18th century, a great debate arose on the education and extent of a father's influence in the upbringing and education of his children. From there we will try to show, through the literary and linguistic connotations of the philosopher Denis Diderot, the efficacy and status of education in the 18th century and the educational capacity of fathers as ethical role models. At the end of this study, we can conclude that the paternal image of Diderot presents rich and contrasting aspects on account of them being very sensitive to fatherhood as presented by classic comedy. In addition, the use of literary forms such as Dialogue, Pantomime, etc., serves this complexity well. All in all, parenthood stems from its complexity and enigma from its intertwining with many other emotions.

G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) has commonly been seen as Europe's leading philosopher since Kant. His influence extended across the globe down to the Second World War – not least through his dissident disciple, Karl Marx. Since then, despite intermittent revivals, his importance has tended to be eclipsed by a rising tide of anti-modernist polemic, extending from Heidegger to postmodernism. Central to Hegel's political thought was his view of the French Revolution. But notwithstanding its pivotal role in the development of his ideas, his reaction to that event has been systematically misconstrued. In presenting a more faithful account of Hegel's interpretation of his own era, the argument presented here places his response to contemporary developments in the context of a series of World Revolutions which framed the meaning of his age. This approach serves to illustrate the unique combination of historical and philosophical reasoning on which Hegel's thought depended. In the process, reconstructing his arguments raises challenging questions about the applicability of bygone political ideas to later historical periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

O artigo examina a noção de “unidade na variedade” na filosofia e crítica de arte de Diderot. Em diálogo com os ensaios publicados na coletânea intitulada Esthétiques de Diderot, de 2015, na qual vários especialistas examinam a atualidade da estética materialista do filósofo, este artigo aproxima as noções de unidade apresentadas na Enciclopédia com os usos e sentidos do termo nos Salões. Pretende-se mostrar como Diderot rompe gradativamente com a epistemologia clássica ao pensar a obra com uma unidade instável, ligada ao tempo e que se constitui apenas no fazer da obra; especificamente, pretende-se ressaltar o tratamento dado à variedade nas obras de Greuze e Vernet, procedimento que aproxima a crítica de arte de Diderot de elementos modernos, tais como os conceitos de sublime e de autonomia da arte, os quais indiciam a relevância da sua filosofia da arte.

Copyright of Lettre Clandestine is the property of Classiques Garnier and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofía is the property of Centro de Investigaciones Filosoficas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of FLAMME is the property of Universite de Limoges and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While Jean-Jacques Rousseau firmly defended the capacity of ordinary people to make good decisions for themselves, he did not view them as doing so naturally. In his view, they have to be educated and formed into citizens to be capable of sound decision making. But what is the nature of this education? For one prominent interpretive line, the Social Autonomy interpretation, the transformation occurs primarily through the education of reason. However, this article looks to an early draft of the Social Contract known as the Geneva Manuscript to argue that Rousseau views most people as narrowly self-interested and therefore in need of a passional transformation in order to make decisions based on the common good. People need their feelings expanded in order to agree to a good social contract. In the early draft, Rousseau considers a rationalist account of legitimacy and motivation made by his contemporary Denis Diderot but ultimately critiques and rejects it. This article traces the critique from the manuscript through to the final edition, emending the Social Autonomy interpretation, and further highlighting the necessity of emotional, extra-rational education in Rousseau’s thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Il Paradosso sull’attore tratteggia l’arte teatrale come un esercizio di molteplicità: secondo Diderot, il grande attore dev’essere al contempo tutto e nulla. Con un approccio materialista, la recitazione viene descritta come un lavoro e un’esperienza concreta in cui l’attore deve trovare un equilibrio tra la grazia della marionetta e l’eccedenza dell’ideale. Privo di sensibilità, padrone di sé, critico e distaccato, questo attore è interamente teso a commuovere il pubblico. Infatti, la teoria di Diderot è innanzitutto attenta alla relazione con lo spettatore, non tanto in vista di un messaggio morale da veicolare, quanto di un’esperienza estetica da promuovere. In questo contesto, la dialettica tra misura ed eccedenza si rivela un’importante chiave di lettura della concezione diderotiana del teatro, che peraltro racchiude sorprendenti anticipazioni di istanze contemporanee.

This essay is an exploration of Denis Diderot's attitude towards mortality. Diderot's work displays significant unease regarding the prospect of dying in a godless universe, and features various strategies for helping the existentially worried atheist cope with eventual annihilation. Most notably, throughout the course of his literary career Diderot developed two distinct schemes that might allow for a meaningful transcendence of death compatible with atheism. A comparison of these two apparently complementary schemes, which I call material and historical transcendence, reveals many parallels, but on further consideration it becomes clear that they are incompatible in a number of important ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tableau, an art form originating from theatres and the visual arts, is also a literary phenomenon. Literary tableaux are short scenic interruptions or pictorial compositions arresting the narrative flow and serving as highlighted moments where time stands still. Either they are scenes of intense emotion, or they occur at a crucial point in the plot. This paper distinguishes between two modes of writing that are at work in literary tableaux, which I will call absorption and contemplation. Absorption is a mode of writing and reading related to formal realism. In his theory about tableaux, Denis Diderot advocates for a realist art and literature that can create the illusion of a close relationship between the work of art and the reader/beholder. Focusing on the 18thcentury English writer Henry Fielding, this paper provides a close reading of selected scenes from the novel Tom Jones, arguing that Fielding created his own tableaux of contemplation. These instances are metafictional moments in which the narrator interrupts the narrative to converse with the reader about an event or a character in the novel. Often, they contain references to classical art and are a mix of epic, tragic and comic elements. Fielding’s tableaux explicitly present their own fictionality, consulting with the reader about the difference between art and life.

This contribution will engage with a key question concerning the Histoire des deux Indes (1780) by Raynal and Diderot, viz. What can the ideas and the writings of these two philosophes still teach us today? In our discussion we will focus first on Raynal’s Histoire and its 18th-century Europeans, their commerce and colonies outside Europe, with special attention to what at the time was almost a paradigm case: the global maritime merchant empire of the Dutch. Secondly, we will consider what Diderot’s many contributions have added to the Histoire’s power and impact, especially his critique of European colonial, commercial and civilisational endeavour around the world. At the time, as Diderot and Raynal gave voice to the discontents arising from the ongoing global expansion of Europe, their Histoire – as Jonathan Israel has shown in his magnum opus – became a major vehicle for the dissemination of their Radical Enlightenment. The question that will concern us here is the one posed by Anthony Pagden: What relevance do those radical ideas still have in our postcolonial and globalised world of today, where the former colonial empires and their peoples are today writing back themselves, clamouring to be heard?

Time and space are defining elements of creation in theater and all performing arts. These two concepts are embedded in the elements of the stage situation and were summed up by K.S. Stanislavski into the questions: When? and Where? The scenic representation of space can include the scenographic vision or it can be integrated through various techniques into a symbolization of it, either through gesture, sound, etc. Theatre theorists have made their contribution to the vision of time specific to theatre, analyzing it and making it visible in directorial poetics. Starting from the directors' vision of the stage, we focused our research on how the performance and the perception of time change in the attempt to make the created scenic world as credible as possible. The concepts of time and space have evolved in directorial poetics from an exterior placement to an interior one. Furthermore, twenty-first-century performance art is developing new conventions of time and space through the most advanced technologies, and creators want the story to be experienced as intensely as possible by the audience. The research is also taking into account the chronological criterion, the period in which the directors in focus created--between the eighteenth and the twenty-first centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit put alienation high on the philosophical agenda, as was readily recognized by Marx. Relatively well-known is also that Hegel’s concept of alienation was inspired by Goethe’s translation of Diderot’s dialogue Rameau’s Nephew, but the details and the conceptual implications of these details typically escape scholarly attention. Recognizing the basic idea of alienation as not-belonging to or being deprived of something, I emphasize that alienation implies a movement towards the limits of the human being, in which the mental suffering this involves is conditioned by social pathologies. To substantiate this claim, I show how Diderot’s satire implies uncompromising materialist social criticism, but that it does not employ the term ‘aliénation’ but instead reserves it for a kind of frenzy that borders on insanity. My claim is then that, in Goethe’s translation of Diderot’s dialogue, and in his translation of ‘aliénation’ to ‘Entfremdung’, Hegel found a general key for the conceptual critique of the spirit of Modernity. I therefore argue that, in the Phenomenology, Hegel employed alienation in more than one sense, raising madness to the level of a characteristic of Modernity, stressing the detrimental implications for consciousness under such living conditions, emphasizing how alienation works as negation, and, finally, pointing nevertheless to the possibility of embracing social and political reality.

Referência do texto comentado: Silva, Arlenice Almeida da. A ideia de Composição nos Salões de Diderot. Trans/Form/Ação: revista de filosofia da Unesp, v. 44, n. 2, 2021, p. 33 – 59.

This article proposes discursive and argumentative reflections that are particularly concerned with the differences between Diderot and D'Alembert on the question of inoculation, one of the most important subjects of their time. The polemic is articulated around several axes: pragmatic, when it focuses on the modalities of experimentation; epistemological, when it attacks the intellectualism that antecedes mathematical axioms to their benefits for society; personal, with direct accusations against the opponent. The first two parts illustrate the scientific context in which the main ideas arise and circulate, drawing a complex chessboard in which two works by Denis Diderot are focused. The third part, more substantial, studies the discursive procedures used to make more effective the attacks which target the mathematical abstraction of which Jean Le Rond D'Alembert is the leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution will engage with a key question concerning the Histoire des deux Indes (1780) by Raynal and Diderot, viz. What can the ideas and the writings of these two philosophes still teach us today? In our discussion we will focus first on Raynal's Histoire and its 18th-century Europeans, their commerce and colonies outside Europe, with special attention to what at the time was almost a paradigm case: the global maritime merchant empire of the Dutch. Secondly, we will consider what Diderot's many contributions have added to the Histoire's power and impact, especially his critique of European colonial, commercial and civilisational endeavour around the world. At the time, as Diderot and Raynal gave voice to the discontents arising from the ongoing global expansion of Europe, their Histoire - as Jonathan Israel has shown in his magnum opus - became a major vehicle for the dissemination of their Radical Enlightenment. The question that will concern us here is the one posed by Anthony Pagden: What relevance do those radical ideas still have in our postcolonial and globalised world of today, where the former colonial empires and their peoples are today writing back themselves, clamouring to be heard? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In §§ 50-51 of his Pensées sur l’interprétation de la Nature, Diderot draws consequences adverse to religion from the hypothesis of the sensibility of living matter in the Système de la Nature, prompting an endangered Maupertuis to respond. Diderot knows that he is reading his own materialistic conception ofmatter in Maupertuis but is feigning to object to it, while Maupertuis, who knows that the so-called objection is in truth Diderot’s own view, is compelled to defend himself. Through this rhetoric of feigned misunderstanding, real and fundamental questions (living matter, continuity, totality, unity of natural philosophy) raised by the phenomena of organization are being discussed

La condición problemática de la emoción en la estética moderna está unida al ideal de la autonomía del arte. En Kant aparece formulada esa problematicidad, que pertenece al marco estético moderno y que se traspasa al contemporáneo. Tras analizar las formulaciones, de Kant, Diderot, Schiller, Schleiermacher y Hegel principalmente, se propone una caracterización de las tres vías de negación o inhibición de la emoción y de sus respectivas alternativas en la estética y en el arte del siglo XX.

este ensaio toma como ponto de partida a afirmativa de Diderot de que o ator é tudo e nada ao mesmo tempo para repensar a formação do eu. Ao avançar além do paradoxo de Diderot como teoria da atuação, este artigo defende uma análise desconstrutiva da prática mimética do ator proposta por Lacoue-Labarthe, a qual permite que abordemos as condições ontológicas da interação entre apropriação e desapropriação, nada e possibilidade, distintividade e maleabilidade. Este ensaio mostra que a subversão indireta da distinção entre mimese passiva e ativa subjacente ao corpo em performance problematiza a questão do sujeito como tal.

The musical education painstakingly planned by the French philosopher Denis Diderot for his daughter Angélique included not only a wide repertoire for the keyboard, but also advanced rudiments of harmony and musical theory. This inusual pedagogical choice, set against the theories of Diderot regarding the deficient education of women as being at the root of their supposed intellectual inferiority, is the starting point of this article. The aim is to analyse the possible influence of Enlightenment ideas on the musical life of women in France during the last third of the eighteenth century. In addition, our analysis to the repertoire for harpsichord interpreted by Angélique, valuable evidence of musical life in the domestic sphere in this period, will give us an insight into an aspect of the history of music often overlooked by the official account, whose protagonists were mostly women.

In this essay I develop a feminist anti-colonial critique by reading two eighteenth-century literary texts that discuss Middle Eastern and Indigenous gender and sexual practices at length: Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes (1721) and Diderot's Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville (1772). While Montesquieu and Diderot are often heralded as anti-imperial European Enlightenment thinkers, the specific ways in which Montesquieu and Diderot use gender and non-European women's bodies to construct their political-theoretical arguments show us two distinct colonial logics, one imperial and the other settler-colonial. I show that whereas Montesquieu uses Persian and Muslim sexual and gender practices to put forward an imperial vision premised on the superiority of French political order over a despotic 'oriental' order, Diderot uses Indigenous sexual practices to denote a settler-colonial logic premised on the erasure of conquest and pacification of Indigenous women's bodies. In doing so I build on existing feminist and post/anti-colonial scholarship to develop gender and sexuality as central analytics of imperial and settler-colonial politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his ‘Treatise on the Capacity for Sensitivity to the Beautiful in Art …’ Winckelmann compares the feeling of the beautiful in art with liquid plaster poured over the head of the Apollo. While this reference to plaster as a material is unusual, his view of casts as propagators of good taste was widely shared. By looking at reactions to casts and cast collections by authors such as Goethe, Christian Gottlob Heyne, John Flaxman and others, this article analyses the complex relationship of notions of good taste on the one side and the perception of plaster casts on the other.

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) didn’t write a political treatise and he hardly systematically presented his political ideas, but these do exist in his work and they can be brought together. Researchers have tried to do that in their theoretical articles and studies, as well as in thematic editions of Diderot’s political writings collected in a single volume, of which we already have two such editions in the 20th century ‒ one edited by Vernière (1963) and the second by Versini (1995). Diderot expressed his political ideas in the articles “Political Authority” and “Natural Law”. In the first part of this article two opposing approaches are considered on the question of whether Diderot is a political thinker or not and what his achievements are; then we are going to analyse the political context of his tale the Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville (1772/1935). The Supplément is rich with his main political ideas, such as: the relationship between nature and man, the difference between natural and civil law, the origin of power and question of social reform.

Was Denis Diderot “the master of Danton”, as the historian Aulard asserted, or was he “the master of Brissot” as Jean Dautry stated? Or rather, was the philosophe the true inspiration of Babeuf? From a general point of view, research on the circulation and heritage of Diderotian political ideas in Europe has mostly been interpreted in relationships of analogy or in contrast with the event, ideas and men of the French Revolution. This article aims to analyze the debate on the most recent historical readings that have reawakened the hermeneutic dialectic on the relationship between the political thought and works of Denis Diderot and the spokesmen of the French Revolution. The significance of this study thus lies in its focus on the most recent historiographical readings on the uses of Diderotian stratified production, which over time have distorted his political vocabulary. At the present time, we have some data – from the cross-analysis between the study of unpublished sources and new research perspectives on political traineeships and clandestine circles – —on which to base future research: on the eve of the Revolution, Diderotian thought circulated in clandestine pamphlets and, in those same years, some men of the future Constituent took inspiration from the philosophe. Therefore, the category of “general will” in use among the men of the Constituent and the Legislative (Thouret, Brissot) seems not to be of Rousseauian derivation only.

Dans le récit d’un voyage qu’il fait en terre natale, Voyage à Bourbonne et à Langres (1770), Diderot se prend à rêver, en commentant les origines souterraines du thermalisme local, aux dimensions gigantesques du globe terrestre, à ses interconnexions, et aux incidences potentielles d’un récent et mystérieux tremblement de terre aux Antilles sur notre continent européen. Ses intuitions scientifiques y sont aussi un poème à l’éloge de la Nature et une réflexion sur ses origines.