Diderot and lessing as exemplars of a post-spinozist mentality

• Main Author: Crowther, Louise
• Published: University of Manchester 2008
• Subjects: 199.492
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.488977

The over-arching purpose of this thesis is to consider how Diderot and Lessing dealt with the impact of Spinozist thought and its consequences and to analyse the extent to which they can be said to exemplify a post-Spinozist mentality in dealing with three main issues: virtue and vice; freedom; and, finally, belief. It aims to prove not that Diderot and Lessing were direct disciples of Spinoza, but that both were influenced by the post-Spinozist climate pervading the eighteenth-century intellectual world. At the same time as locating similarities of approach between their thinking and Spinoza's, this thesis will also point out how Diderot and Lessing went beyond the Dutch philosopher's thinking, and how they often showed themselves to be even more radical than Spinoza himself.