•By the time
the Encyclopédiefinally
reached completion, it contained nearly 72,000 articles accompanied by numerous illustrations.
Encyclopédie editor Denis Diderot
Shortly
after beginning, Diderot came up with a much more ambitious goal than a mere
translation. He wanted instead to create a comprehensive work that would
include the most up-to-date knowledge on the sciences, arts, and crafts. To
this end, he enlisted several of the best thinkers of the era—many of whom
were well-known philosophes—to write new articles for the Encyclopédie.
He also wanted to make the work accessible to a wide audience rather than
just for scholars.
Although
Diderot and d’Alembert ended up writing the majority of the articles,
contributions also came from many noted figures (especially Voltaire, as well
as Rousseau and Montesquieu). By the time the Encyclopédiefinally reached completion, it contained nearly 72,000 articles
accompanied by numerous illustrations.
The work
as a whole represents an outstanding example of Enlightenment thought: it
praised science while also questioning religion, social institutions, the
legal system, and more. As a result, the Catholic Church viewed it as
undermining its authority and placed the Encyclopédie on
its index of forbidden works. Nevertheless, it was widely read, with people
often obtaining cheaper reprint editions published in Switzerland.