Letter on the Blind  

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<blockquote>This powerful essay ... revolves around a remarkable deathbed scene in which a dying blind philosopher, Saunderson, rejects the arguments of a [[Divine Providence|providential]] God during his last hours. Saunderson's arguments are those of a Neo-[[Spinoza|Spinozist]], [[Naturalism (philosophy)|Naturalist]], and [[Fatalist]], using a sophisticated notion of the [[Spontaneous generation|self-generation]] and natural evolution of species without Creation or supernatural intervention. The notion of [[Materialism|"thinking matter"]] is upheld and the "[[argument from design]]" discarded ... as hollow and unconvincing. The work appeared anonymously ... and was vigorously suppressed by the authorities. Diderot, who had been under police surveillance since 1747, was swiftly identified as the author ... and was imprisoned for some months at [[Vincennes]], where he was visited almost daily by [[Rousseau]], at the time his closest and most assiduous ally. (Jonathan I. Israel, ''[[Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750]].'')</blockquote> <blockquote>This powerful essay ... revolves around a remarkable deathbed scene in which a dying blind philosopher, Saunderson, rejects the arguments of a [[Divine Providence|providential]] God during his last hours. Saunderson's arguments are those of a Neo-[[Spinoza|Spinozist]], [[Naturalism (philosophy)|Naturalist]], and [[Fatalist]], using a sophisticated notion of the [[Spontaneous generation|self-generation]] and natural evolution of species without Creation or supernatural intervention. The notion of [[Materialism|"thinking matter"]] is upheld and the "[[argument from design]]" discarded ... as hollow and unconvincing. The work appeared anonymously ... and was vigorously suppressed by the authorities. Diderot, who had been under police surveillance since 1747, was swiftly identified as the author ... and was imprisoned for some months at [[Vincennes]], where he was visited almost daily by [[Rousseau]], at the time his closest and most assiduous ally. (Jonathan I. Israel, ''[[Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750]].'')</blockquote>
 +==Citations==
 +
 +:What is this world of ours? A complex entity subject to sudden changes which all indicate a tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings which follow one another, assert themselves and disappear; a fleeting symmetry; a momentary order. --Dying words of [[Nicholas Saunderson]] as portrayed in [[Lettre sur les aveugles]] [Letter on the Blind] (1749)
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In Letter on the Blind (1749, French: Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui voient), Denis Diderot takes on the question of visual perception, a subject that, at the time, experienced a resurgence of interest due to the success of medical procedures that allowed surgeons to operate on certain cases of blindness from birth. Speculations were then numerous upon what the nature and use of vision was, and how much perception, habit, and experience allow individuals to identify forms in space, to perceive distances and to measure volumes, or to distinguish a realistic work of art from reality.

According to Diderot’s essay, a blind person who is suddenly able to see for the first time does not immediately understand what he sees, and he must spend some amount of time establishing rapports between his experience of forms and distances (understandings that he first acquired by touch) and the images that were thereafter apparent to him by sight.

On 24 July of 1749, Diderot is arrested and imprisoned at Vincennes for this work. On 3 November he is released and begins his work on the Encyclopédie again.

Analysis

"Letter on the Blind" (1749), introduced Diderot to the world as a daringly original thinker. The subject is a discussion of the interrelation between man's reason and the knowledge acquired through perception (the five senses). The title, "Letter on the Blind For the Use of Those Who See", also evoked some ironic doubt about who exactly were "the blind" under discussion. In the essay a blind English mathematician named Saunderson argues that since knowledge derives from the senses, then mathematics is the only form of knowledge that both he and a sighted person can agree about. It is suggested that the blind could be taught to read through their sense of touch (a later essay, Lettre sur les sourds et muets, considered the case of a similar deprivation in the deaf and mute). What makes the Lettre sur les aveugles so remarkable, however, is its distinct, if undeveloped, presentation of the theory of variation and natural selection.Diderot's contemporary, also a Frenchman, Pierre Louis Maupertuis–who in 1745 was named Head of the Prussian Academy of Science under Frederic the Great– was developing similar ideas. These proto-evolutionary theories were by no means as thought out and systematic as those of Charles Darwin a hundred years later.

This powerful essay ... revolves around a remarkable deathbed scene in which a dying blind philosopher, Saunderson, rejects the arguments of a providential God during his last hours. Saunderson's arguments are those of a Neo-Spinozist, Naturalist, and Fatalist, using a sophisticated notion of the self-generation and natural evolution of species without Creation or supernatural intervention. The notion of "thinking matter" is upheld and the "argument from design" discarded ... as hollow and unconvincing. The work appeared anonymously ... and was vigorously suppressed by the authorities. Diderot, who had been under police surveillance since 1747, was swiftly identified as the author ... and was imprisoned for some months at Vincennes, where he was visited almost daily by Rousseau, at the time his closest and most assiduous ally. (Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750.)

Citations

What is this world of ours? A complex entity subject to sudden changes which all indicate a tendency to destruction; a swift succession of beings which follow one another, assert themselves and disappear; a fleeting symmetry; a momentary order. --Dying words of Nicholas Saunderson as portrayed in Lettre sur les aveugles [Letter on the Blind] (1749)




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