»Prose of the World«

Philosopher and translator, critic and writer, art agent and encyclopaedist: Denis Diderot, born in Champagne in 1713, died in Paris in 1784, was one of the defining figures of the movement that went down in history as the European Age of Enlightenment. But what is the vanishing point of his multifarious œuvre, which is characterised by downright centrifugal dynamics – unlike the works of his contemporaries Voltaire and Rousseau, Schiller, Kant and Hume?

Along scene from Diderot’s eventful and moving life and in precise readings of his key works Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht pursues this question and develops a new approach to this exceptional intellectual in his elegant book. He contrasts this with the system of Hegel, who was both irritated and fascinated by Diderot’s writings and conceptualised them under the term »the prose of the world«. Gumbrecht shows how radically Diderot engaged with the concretenesses and contingencies of the world and thereby reached the centre of an intellectual periphery that also attracted others: Goya, for example, but also Lichtenberg and Mozart. The movements of thought in this periphery reach us today as those of contemporaries.
 

»Innovative, lively, and full of ideas and insights, Prose of the World is a major contribution to our understanding and appreciation of Diderot's thought.« Thomas Pavel, author of The Lives of the Novel: A History

»This book represents a significant contribution by one of the world's leading literary scholars and public intellectuals, whose deep familiarity with the history of ideas and philosophy display a rare ingenuity.« Markus Gabriel, author of Why the World Does Not Exist

»Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Literature Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, brings to bear his 50-year intellectual love affair with Diderot to give us this magisterial study.« Dr. Cliff Cunningham, Sun New Austin

»Does Diderot (1713–84) have a particular affinity with the present time? Could the 21st century become, in terms of reception and resonance, the Age of Diderot, as the 19th was the Age of Voltaire and the 20th the Age of Rousseau? These questions drive this ambitious, erudite work by one of today's leading cultural historians and literary critics ... Essential.« CHOICE

»Gumbrecht's readings of these texts are astute, rigorous, and thought-provoking, and resist any straightforward or reductive explanation of Diderot's ideas. ... By turns effortlessly readable and intriguingly opaque, intellectually provocative in its reflections and yet hard to pin down to one thesis, this study encapsulates something of its genial yet complex subject matter in its very approach.« Joseph Harris, Lessing Yearbook

»[…] a good characterisation of Diderot.« Jürgen Kaube, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»[...] his book [is] a source of highly interesting suggestions.« Joseph Hanimann, Süddeutsche Zeitung

»Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht shows wherein the fascination with the French thinker and writer lies, particularly today.« René Scheu, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

»Prose of the World illustrates how Diderot didn’t try to reduce the complexity of the world and of reality by forcing it to fit into a system of ›necessary forms of progress‹ – unlike Hegel, who was fascinated by Diderot’s thought and writings, attempted to in his works. For Diderot, the world remains ›overwhelmingly – and at times excitingly – complex‹.« Susanne Kippenberger, Der Tagesspiegel