Articles from the Encyclopédie

Summary

Editorial preface

The first volume of the Encyclopéedic announced that Diderot was the author of the work's unsigned articles, and the editor of articles marked with an asterisk. The second volume, however, stated that unsigned articles could be by different authors, including persons who did not wish their identity to be known, while Diderot's asterisk was to prove scarce after the publication of volume VIII, and to vanish altogether after volume x. In the absence of surviving manuscript or other evidence, the correct attribution to their authors of Encyclopédic articles has therefore proved difficult and sometimes a matter for conjecture. Diderot seems to have been responsible for over 5,000 articles or editorial additions in all (many of just two or three lines), of which more than 3,000 appeared in the first two volumes alone. Even when their authorship is not in question, the originality of these contributions often remains doubtful, especially with regard to two subjects on which he wrote extensively: synonyms, for which he drew heavily on the work of the abbé Girard; and the history of philosophy, for which he relied largely on Brucker. Sometimes Diderot cited his source, merely adding a few comments of his own; sometimes he so modified the original text as to make a wholly novel point, not least by diverting his readers' attention to a second article, which informs the real sense of the first.