Word: diderot
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...appeared eager to impress on his guests that he was not just a saber rattler. To establish his superior knowledge of French letters, the ex-librarian told his stunned interlocutors that he had read "Diderot and all your Encyclopedists. I've even read that 18th century author who wrote that remarkable book, The Mechanical Man." None of Mao's guests knew what book he was talking about, and they were too polite to ask.* "Above all," Mao said, "I'm an admirer of Napoleon. There isn't one of his works I don't know...
...Young U.S. Living in the times of the French Enlightenment, Houdon became one of the first sculptors to live independent of noble patronage. He did the great intellects: Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet, D'Alembert, Buffon. Commissions then brought him to the young U.S. to sculpt Washington in his stolid soldierliness, Franklin in his honest wisdom, Jefferson in his aristocratic brilliance...
...took over the place and declared "Ourself founder." The faculty, rendering unto Caesar, removed "Jesus" from the front door and put up "Ludovici Magni" (Louis-le-grand). The pleased king founded a foreign-language study annex in Constantinople and a scholarship fund that salvaged more talent, including Encyclopedist Denis Diderot and one Franç Marie Arouet, the talented son of a notary who later called himself Voltaire. "Everyone who carries a name in France has spent his early youth in Louis-le-grand," gloated the Archbishop of Paris -charitably including that perverted praetorian, the Marquis de Sade. The pattern continued...
Voltaire, Diderot and others extracted from Locke what they chose, and the rational individual was enthroned as monarch of the universe. Never was the triumph of individualism more swiftly followed by disaster. In the French Revolution the Goddess of Reason danced in the streets?until she found herself at the foot of the guillotine. It remained for Napoleon to create from the Revolution the modern state (including the draft and the secret police) in which individual men are submerged in the abstract glory of the nation...
...France to North Africa, went to the U.S. and joined the OSS in Washington. By 1947, U.S. Citizen May had a doctorate from the University of Illinois and a teaching job at Yale, soon became a top scholar of 17th and 18th century French literature, wrote books on Racine, Diderot, Rousseau and others. A leader as well as a scholar, Professor May now runs Yale's Junior Year Abroad program, in 1961 became chairman of the important Course of Study Committee. Now, as Dean May, he will oversee living and learning for 3,990 undergraduates, and become...