Absorbing ... In this extremely well-written biography, Curran vividly portrays Diderot as a brilliant man filled with contradictions and passions who acted as a central figure in the advancement of intellectual freedom.
... engrossing ... a narrative sustained with appealing clarity and energy ... Indeed, readers of this biography are likely to be impressed by the scope of Diderot’s thought and by his courage, as he risked persecution to ask and answer taboo questions, thereby making it easier, and safer, for us to do the same.
The Encyclopédie [Diderot's chief project] was not explicitly radical or anticlerical, but as Mr. Curran points out, it slyly knocked religion from its pedestal by treating entries on matters of faith on a parity with entries on glass-blowing or letterpress printing ... This publication history is elegantly untangled by Mr. Curran, whose clear style and interest in the psychology of it all transforms it into a lively narrative ... The Diderot who emerges from Mr. Curran’s [book] is...a person dedicated above all to fostering an adversarial culture. One is left mulling over Mr. Curran’s phrase 'the art of thinking freely.' The cultivation of such fearless open-mindedness was indeed an art, not a form of political evangelization, and whether or not you agree with anything Diderot ever said, you are bound to be exhilarated by his creativity.
Making sense of [several] mercurial works is not easy, and situating them in such a life as Diderot’s is even more challenging, so it is remarkable that in Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely Andrew Curran succeeds admirably in both regards. He is far from the first to take on the task, and he makes no inflated claims for his originality. What he offers is the most accessible version of the life and work of this protean figure who trained for the priesthood and ended up questioning every imaginable orthodoxy ... Although Curran is alert to Diderot’s penchant for constantly interrupting his own train of thought, his emphasis on the philosophical logic of Diderot’s ideas obscures the role of aesthetics in everything that he touched, not just in his art criticism. Curran seems surprised by Diderot’s quest for a moral foundation for the fine arts, but this is only surprising if you fail to recognize that aesthetics was crucial to the transformation of worldview underway in his time ... Curran.. [gives an excellent account] of Diderot’s works and their place in the writer’s life, but the narrative nature of [his account] can obscure his significance for us now.
Curran does a terrific job of sorting through the crazily complicated history of the Encyclopédie’s publication ... Curran also makes a strong and convincing case that the largely forgotten Louis de Jaucourt, a chevalier, or knight, and a practicing physician, was chiefly responsible for finishing the big book; he produced seventeen thousand articles for it, gratis.
While Curran does not reveal any startling new facts about Diderot’s life or work, his fluent and spirited book surpasses its predecessor in finding a center of gravity in the Enlightenment’s most kaleidoscopic thinker ... [Curran's book contains] a series of brilliant and often hilarious stratagems.
[Curran] has done an excellent job. It is very well researched, leaving no stone unturned, covering all the territory of the times, both foreground and background, and it is learned and lucid ... Curran has unearthed quite a number of fascinating gems of information.
... a brilliant, sparkling affair that courses over every major and minor incident in Diderot’s remarkable life ... the most charming aspect of Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely is the flattering way it bows low to its own modern-day readers, right here in the 21st century. In writing about those voluminous and far less-known pieces of Diderot prose, Curran imagines a reader-relationship that spans centuries instead of only social strata ... Lacking the man, we’re fortunate at least to have this fine, cheering book.
Lively ... Curran gamely sifts through the mountain of Diderot’s output without for a moment making it feel burdensome. Rather, he ably balances the details of Diderot’s life with thoughtful considerations of the source and depth of his philosophical byways, taking his more peculiar ideas seriously but not literally. Curran’s mission is served by his subject’s wealth of experiences ... An intellectually dense and well-researched yet brisk journey into one of history’s most persuasive dissenters.
Marvelous ... much more than a biography, as Curran renders in vivid detail the social and intellectual life of 18th-century France ... Readers will be left with a new appreciation for Diderot, of his wide-ranging thought, and of his life as an expression of intense intellectual freedom.
