"After rejecting Diderot for panthéonisation 100 years ago because of his atheism, the French now seem ready to bestow upon their countryman the high honor he has long deserved. No doubt Diderot himself would have been pleased. “Posterity is for the philosopher what the next world is for the man of religion,” he once wrote. But we all might take pride as well — because if Diderot is, at long last, welcomed into the Panthéon, it will be a collective acknowledgment that part of what makes an artist great is having the courage to provoke and challenge.
The message ought to resonate on this side of the Atlantic, too. While it’s sometimes easy for Americans to forget, thumbing one’s nose at the establishment has been central to our own cultural and political traditions since, well, Diderot’s time. After all, that’s how we became Americans in the first place.
Pour l'article en entier:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/opinion/diderot-an-american-exemplar-bien-sur.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130125
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