The title of this work may seem to beg an important question, since it rests on the assumption that Diderot has a ‘concept of physical energy’. Indeed the aim of the study is, in part, to assemble evidence in support of the acte de foi implicit in its title. I am using ‘physical energy’ in a loose sense, as a convenient term to denote ‘what matter can do’ as distinct from ‘what matter is made of’. Hence it may be taken as broadly synonymous with ‘power’ or ‘force’, encompassing both active and potential forms, and thus corresponding to a combination of the fourth...

The story of Françoise de Graffigny’s life reads like a novel. Following a disastrous marriage, she was forced by political upheavals to leave her native Lorraine and move to Paris, where she struggled to survive against poverty and persecution. Here she made her way into the heart of literary society in the heyday of the Enlightenment, wrote a novel – the Lettres d’une Péruvienne (1747) – that made her an international celebrity, wrote a play – Cénie (1750) – that ranked among the ten most successful new plays of the century, and became a noted salon hostess. Yet fifty...

The 1760s was a pivotal decade for the philosophes. In the late 1750s their cause had been at a low ebb, but it was transformed in the eyes of public opinion by such events as the Calas affair in the early 1760s. By the end of the decade, the philosophes were dominant in key literary institutions such as the Comédie-Française and the Académie française, and their enlightened programme became more widely accepted. Many of the essays in this volume focus on Voltaire, revealing him as a writer of fiction and polemic who, during this period, became increasingly interested in questions of...

Les historiens ont traditionnellement concentré leur attention sur un abbé Grégoire activiste politique, social et culturel de la Révolution, un homme qui a inlassablement fait campagne pour l’abolition de l’esclavage et de la peine de mort, pour le suffrage universel, pour l’extension de l’enseignement primaire, l’avancement et le soutien de la langue française. Et pourtant Grégoire était un personnage bien plus complexe que ne semble le laisser entendre l’héritage républicain qu’il a laissé. Dans La Pensée de l’abbé Grégoire: despotisme et liberté, Jean...

'Libelles diffamatoires', 'écrits scandaleux', 'lettres anonymes', 'histoires forgées à plaisir': autant de manifestations, explique Voltaire à Frédéric II en 1739 de la 'fureur de nuire' de ceux qui sont résolus à le 'perdre'. Le modèle se transpose aisément aux querelles qui marquent l'affirmation conflictuelle du pouvoir intellectuel des philosophes des Lumières au cours des vingt années qui suivent la publication du Prospectus de l'Encyclopédie. Olivier Ferret se propose de combler une lacune dans les études dix-huitiémistes (les travaux que les littéraires - surtout les...

Until recently, the marquise Du Châtelet (1706-1749) was more remembered as the companion of Voltaire than as an intellectual in her own right. While much has been written about his extraordinary output during the years he spent in her company, her own work has often been overshadowed. This volume brings renewed attention to Du Châtelet's intellectual achievements, including her free translation of selections from Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the bees; her dissertation on the nature and propagation of fire for the 1738 prize competition of the Académie des sciences; the 1740 Institutions...