The Encyclopédie, which eventually had thirty-five volumes, would go on to continue to spread Enlightenment knowledge to countries all around the world.
Arguably the third most influential voice of the French Enlightenment, and Enlightenment overall, Denis Diderot (1713–1784), a writer and philosopher best known for editing and assembling the massive Encyclopédie , an attempt to collect virtually all of human knowledge gathered in various fields up to that point. Twenty-eight volumes in length—seventeen text, eleven illustrated—the portion of the Encyclopédie edited by Diderot was published one volume at a time from 1751 to 1772. Diderot, assisted by French mathematician Jean Le Rond d’Alembert for part of the project, painstakingly collected as much Enlightenment-era knowledge as he possibly could. After Diderot’s involvement, an additional seven volumes were completed, but Diderot himself did not edit them.
*The Encyclopédie became a prominent symbol of the enlightenment and helped spread the movement throughout europe …show more content…
A veritable who’s-who of Enlightenment-era scholars contributed to the collection, including Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau (see Rousseau, p. 29 ). Due to the highly scientific—and thus untraditional—nature of the Encyclopédie, it met with a significant amount of scorn. Diderot was widely accused of plagiarism and inaccuracy, and many considered the collection to be an overt attack on the monarchy and the