The World in Time

Andrew S. Curran

Friday, April 19, 2019

Vincennes (Vignette), engraved by W. Miller, after Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1836. Photograph © Tate (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

“Despite repeated allusions to the importance of posterity, Diderot has not made life easy for his biographers,” Andrew S. Curran writes at the beginning of his book Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely. In this week’s podcast, the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University explains how he set about exploring the life of the French philosopher and editor of the Encyclopédie—and shows how the best way to start thinking about Denis Diderot is to split his seventy years on earth in two parts, his prison sentence in Vincennes serving as the point of bifurcation.

 

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Andrew S. Curran, author of Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely.

 

Thanks to our generous donors. Lead support for this podcast has been provided by Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince. Additional support was provided by James J. “Jimmy” Coleman Jr.

Discussed in this episode

More Podcasts

June 20, 2025

The World in Time:

Episode 3: Francine Prose

This week on the podcast, Donovan Hohn speaks with Francine Prose, author of 1974: A Personal History. More

The Populist Paul Revere, by J.S. Pughe, 1904.

August 14, 2020

The World in Time:

Thomas Frank

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The People, No. More

October 15, 2021

The World in Time:

Charles Foster

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness. More

October 04, 2011

The World in Time:

World Enough, and Time

Lewis Lapham speaks with Elizabeth Abbott, author of Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman More

February 12, 2021

The World in Time:

David S. Brown

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams. More