Naigeon : une certaine image de Diderot sous la Révolution
Abstracts
Naigeon. A certain image of Diderot during the Revolution
Naigeon, the legatee of Diderot’s works, is a central figure for the understanding of Diderot’s reception in the French Revolution. He was the only person to proclaim his affinity with him before the fall of Robespierre. The first two volumes of Ancient and Modern Philosophy for Panckouke’s Encyclopédie méthodique constituted both a political platform from which to attack kings and priests and a defence of Diderot and his materialistic philosophy against even the abbé Morellet, a philosophic enemy of revolutionary violence symbolised by the curé Meslier’s famous phrase. In 1798, Naigeon published a new 15-volume edition of Diderot’s works with the aim of dissociating his hero from any collusion with Babeuf and the conspiracy of Equals. He therefore attacked counter-revolutionaries like Fontanes and La Harpe, who took advantage of Babeuf’s trial to turn the Philosophe into a bloodthirsty revolutionary, but he himself reprimanded Diderot for his excessive libertinism, particularly in Jacques le Fataliste. Naigeon also came into conflict with Diderot’s daughter, who felt he had dispossessed her of her father’s works and asked the counter-revolutionary Meister to write a critique of the 1798 edition. Naigeon doubtless confused his attachment to Diderot and his revolutionary engagement, but this very confusion reflects one of the Philosophe’s many faces.
References
Electronic reference
Pascale Pellerin, “Naigeon : une certaine image de Diderot sous la Révolution”, Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie [Online], 29 | 2000, Online since 18 June 2006, connection on 13 June 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rde/104; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rde.104
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