Diderot’s Chaotic Order: Approach to Synthesis

199 Pages·1974·7.521 MB·English

by  Lester G. Crocker

Diderot's
Chaotic Order

Lester Q. Crocker
Diderot's
Chaotic Order
Approach to Synthesis
Princeton University Press
1974
Copyright © 1974 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press
Princeton and London
All Rights Reserved
LCC: 73-22127
ISBN: 0-691-07199-3
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication
Data will be found on the last printed page of this book
Publication of this book has been aided by the Whitney Darrow
Publication Reserve Fund of Princeton University Press
This book has been composed in Linotype Baskerville
Printed in the United States of America by
Princeton University Press
Princeton, New Jersey
for Billie, and for Roger,
Leslie and Fred
Sunt lacrymae rerum et mentem
mortalia tangunt

Contents
Preface ix
I. Cosmic Order 3
II. Aesthetics 52
III. Morals 75
IV. Politics 116
Conclusion 150
Bib liography é çï
Index 175

Preface
O
RDER AND DISORDER ARE FUNDAMEN-
tal categories of our experience and our modes of
thought. Whether they are subjective ms rof of appre­
hending and interpreting experience or perceptions of
objective relationships is not sy ae to decide. They un­
doubtedly have ve itceffa ts cepsa and are related to our
security and our needs. However, although ideas of good
order, or even of order f, lesti are quite variable, there
are surely objective correlatives of these ideas, or f in­
stance in physical and al icos phenomena. No one—to
take extreme examples—would consider a destructive
hurricane or a war to be ms rof of order. et Y one could
argue that the one is intrinsic to the physical ws al of
what is called "the natural order," and that war, like
revolution, is so la a violent ss ecorp of replacing one
order by another, conceivably a better one. This is the
inescapable ambiguity that makes the subject lt uciffid
to deal with, both or f the philosopher and or f the scholar
who es hsiw to understand the philosopher.
The ancient Hebrews were probably more impressed
by ic msoc disorder than by order. eh whaY as w a God
of justice, and he as w intended to be an ordering
principle; but the ok oB of Job reveals a deep appre-
hensiveness on the part of thinking men in a d-oG
centered culture. Even if God had created an orderly
world, there as w no doubt that men were constantly
IX