Study Guide for Week 8
Assigned Document
DIDEROT, Dennis.
Excerpt from Supplement to the
Voyage of Bougainville (1772).
Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
was a French thinker and writer (a philosophe) most well known for his work as
one of the co-editors of the Encyclopédie project.
This project aspired to collecting the totality of human knowledge in a
multi-volume publication; it was an exemplary project of what we call the
Enlightenment.
This excerpt is not from
that project.
In 1771, Louis Antoine de
Bougainville published A
Voyage around the World, recounting his circumnavigation of the earth in
1766-1769. In his account, de Bougainville described a brief stop in
Tahiti, where he commented on Tahitian people’s attitudes toward
sexuality. A Tahitian named Aotourou traveled
with Bougainville back to France, where Aotourou’s
reactions to French society were accorded great interest. Diderot’s 1772
text is titled, Supplement to
the Voyage of Bougainville (Supplément au
Voyage de Bougainville); it was a response to and commentary on—a supplement
to--both de Bougainville’s A Voyage Around the world and a second book,
published in 1770, claimed to report Aotourou’s views
on France. Your reading is an excerpt from Diderot’s Supplement.
Very important: as you
read, consider what genre of writing the Supplement is? To start with, is it fiction or
non-fiction? What further refinement
might you make regarding what genre it is?
For the assigned excerpt by Diderot, click here.
Questions:
1a. What does Diderot find
objectionable in French society? Be specific, using aptly selected
quotations from the text.
1b. What does Diderot find
objectionable in Christianity as practiced in France? Again, be specific, using aptly selected
quotations from the text.
2. According to
Diderot’s text, what is the basis of desirability, for women and for men
respectively, in Tahiti?
3a. Identify and briefly
present at least one of Ouro’s views you agree with,
if any; and one you disagree with, if any.
3b. When you read the
arguments the text provides for each of the views of Ouro’s
you have selected, in what ways are they similar arguments? In what ways are they different or even
incompatible with each other?
In the case of the following question, rather than having
you turn in a written answer, I am asking you to prepare notes for yourself, so
that you can speak about the question in our workshop. Your notes should include both (i) points you
would make in addressing the question and (ii) specific quotations and page
citations that you would use to support your response: What do you think is
Diderot’s point in writing this text?