Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T17:54:43.705Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Diderot’s Conjectural History and the History of “Monstrous Nature”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2023

Joan-Pau Rubiés
Affiliation:
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
Neil Safier
Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
Get access

Summary

Writing his contributions to Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des Deux Indes, Diderot developed a peculiar perspective on how to rethink human society according to the ideals of the Enlightenment. The histories of the European conquest of the world unveiled a cultural energy that displayed the contradictory impulses of cruel desire for domination and benevolence. Ferocity and humanity sprang from the same physical constitution of mankind. However human history, like natural history, was not uniform. Monstrous anomalies could not, and were not, ignored, but had to be interpreted through the philosophical language of reason and historical experience. The European colonial conquests in fact showed four types of social monstrosity in action. The first tree, familiar from the example of the Spanish empire, were cruelty, greed and religion. Despotism was the fourth and most insidious category of monstrosity, because both the despots and their subjects lost their humanity. Philosophical history, nonetheless, also offered a glimpse of what a rational society could be like, by revealing the true roots of the natural, civil and religious codes. The cosmopolitan ideal corresponded to a natural code that offered the principles of pity and natural right through which a free society might be founded, one where the mutual relationship between morals and politics could be re-established on more rational grounds.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×