Philosophical Thoughts

A string of about sixty numbered thoughts, some no longer than a line, weighing belief against unbelief. It was Diderot's first real book, published anonymously in 1746 and ordered burned by the Paris parlement within months. Its freedom alarmed the censors more than any single claim: it moves nimbly among positions rather than arguing one thesis, which is much of the form's power and its danger.

By taking his weapon and reversing it. Pascal's Pensees used the fragmentary, numbered form to drive the reader toward faith. Diderot borrows exactly that form and points it the other way, toward doubt and a religion answerable to reason. Much of the book is a direct reply to Pascal, meeting the great apologist on his own ground and turning his method against his conclusion.

Deism, not yet atheism. He rejects the dogmatic atheist, who claims to know more than anyone can, and the credulous believer, who swallows miracles and terrors reason should refuse. What is left is a God the order of nature might warrant, believed on evidence rather than authority. This is the young Diderot, before the materialism of his later years, arguing for a faith reason could accept.

The strong feelings and desires the moralists of his day wanted subdued. Diderot means to rehabilitate them: passions are not the enemy of virtue but the engine of everything great a person does. He distinguishes their misuse from their power, and argues that a life stripped of them is not purified but impoverished. This defense sits at the book's opening and gives it much of its energy.

Because its freedom frightened the authorities more than any particular heresy. Refusing both devotion and dogmatic atheism, ridiculing superstition, and defending passion, it modeled a mind thinking without deference, which the censors found more dangerous than a single false claim. The Paris parlement condemned it in July 1746, and the burning did the usual work of making it wanted, spreading it well beyond a young writer's reach.