A dictionary against prejudice
Explore how the Encyclopédie organized knowledge, honoured the trades and used cross-references to question authority under censorship.
An original introduction. This guide accompanies the work; it is neither the complete text nor a translation.
Situating the text
Launched by the bookseller André Le Breton as a translation of Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, the project became an original work under Diderot and d’Alembert from 1747. The first volume appeared in 1751; when the privilege was revoked in 1759, d’Alembert had already withdrawn, and Diderot finished the text volumes clandestinely, discovering in 1764 that Le Breton had secretly cut passages from the proofs. Seventeen folio volumes of text and eleven of plates gather more than seventy thousand articles by well over a hundred contributors, ordered alphabetically yet linked by a tree of knowledge and a web of cross-references. Beside philosophy, theology and the sciences, the work gives unusual room to the mechanical arts, describing tools and workshops in words and engraved plates.
Following the arguments
Tree of knowledge : Following Bacon, the Preliminary Discourse sorts all knowledge under memory, reason and imagination, that is history, philosophy and poetry, and files theology as a branch of philosophy. Mechanical arts : Articles and plates on weaving, printing, mining or pin-making treat the skill of artisans as deserving the same attention as the learning of scholars. Linked articles : The cross-references connect articles across the alphabet, so that a conventional entry can be corrected or undermined by another that a censor might overlook.
Continuing the reading
Begin with d’Alembert’s Preliminary Discourse and Diderot’s own article “Encyclopédie”, then sample “Political Authority”, “Art” and a volume of plates; the ARTFL and ENCCRE online editions make it easy to follow the cross-references. Launched by the bookseller André Le Breton as a translation of Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, the project became an original work under Diderot and d’Alembert from 1747. The first volume appeared in 1751; when the privilege was revoked in 1759, d’Alembert had already withdrawn, and Diderot finished the text volumes clandestinely, discovering in 1764 that Le Breton had secretly cut passages from the proofs.
Organizing knowledge is never neutral: the order of entries, the place of the trades and the links between articles already carry a philosophy.
Your turn to think.
- Why does the Encyclopédie give the mechanical arts as much dignity as the liberal arts?
- How can a cross-reference become a critical tool that escapes the censor?
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