Starred review from January 17, 2011
Historian Blom (The Vertigo Years) visits the salons of 18th-century Europe and compares this "radical" Enlightenment with the more bourgeoisie, "soft Enlightenment" of Votaire, Kant, and other philosophers. Though Baron d'Holbach's uncompromising atheist writings are largely ignored today, his salon was once considered "the epicenter of intellectual life in Europe." Great minds of the time, including Diderot and Rousseau, gathered at his table. Blom draws close to Diderot's Encyclopedia, two decades in the making. Loaded with facts and rife with subversive thought, the Encyclopedia's contributors expounded with impunity on forbidden, dangerous subjects, giving the reading public a proxy seat at Holbach's table. Blom's hugely enjoyable effort succeeds most in exposing readers to the ideas of a wide range of philosophers, from Epicurus to Kant; cleverly, Blom surrounds his medicine with titillating asides, from Rousseau's fetishes (exposing his bottom to female passers-by in Tunis in the hopes of getting slapped) to a selection from D'Alembert's Dream that bears a marked resemblance to a certain café scene in When Harry Met Sally. To make philosophy accessible is the mark of a good writer; to make it exciting is the mark of a great one.
September 1, 2010
Historian Blom (Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West, 1900-1914, 2008, etc.) returns with a flowing, limpid account of an 18th-century French salon that housed the greatest names in French philosophy.
The real star here is Denis Diderot, who, though he never created a comprehensive philosophical system, nonetheless wrestled with troubling ideas of human nature and culture that continue to vex. Blom begins and ends with personal perspectives, wondering why Voltaire and Rousseau (one-time regulars at the salon) are revered, and Diderot and Baron Paul-Thierry d'Holbach (who hosted and wrote, as well, often under a pseudonym) are not nearly so honored. Diderot is known, of course, for his innovative fiction and for his magisterial work--the 17-volume Encyclop�die that took him and his colleagues many years to produce, but which Diderot saw as an onerous burden. Blom then sketches the backgrounds of each of his principals, but he is most interested in the ideas that drew them together, later divided some of them and animated their discussions. Foremost among these is religion. Many at the salon were avowed atheists, during a time when such a position was risky, even suicidal. Diderot went to prison and was released only after promising to eschew blasphemy henceforth. Blom charts the rise and fall of the once-intimate friendship between Diderot and Rousseau, which ended in bitterness and recrimination. Other notables were in and out of the salon, among them David Hume, whose intelligence and philosophy Blom also highlights, Adam Smith and Shakespearean actor David Garrick. Diderot, as Blom reiterates often, reveled in the flesh, believed shame and guilt were instruments of oppression, anticipated Darwin and believed that what we call "intelligent design" is nonsense.
A swift, readable reminder that ideas are exciting--and have consequences.
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November 1, 2010
Blom here returns to the field of an earlier triumph (Enlightening the World: Encylop'die, the Book That Changed the Course of History, 2005) to take the measure of Encyclop'dies editor, Denis Diderot. Placing Diderot in the natural habitat of Enlightenment philosophes, the Parisian salon circa 1750, Blom presents one Diderot habituated, hosted by Baron Paul Thierry dHolbach. Baron who? readers may wonder, but dHolbach attracted Diderot, Rousseau, and Hume to his salon and also penned atheistic philosophical tracts. If those endure less in intellectual history than the writings of his guests, dHolbachs hospitality receives Bloms recognition as an incubator of the Enlightenment. Over the barons table, as conversationalists volleyed their subversions of the ancien r'gime and then crystallized the badinage into published works, Blom pauses to summarize its arguments. Those who might not be pleased with such paraphrasing might be placated by Bloms interludes about the relationships among dHolbachs group, their japes, their lusts, their acrimonies: Rousseau, the great lover of humanity, hated Diderot and Hume. A perceptive, readable portrayal of a seminal coterie in the history of ideas.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)