Abstract
Eliane Martin-Haag : Diderot's "genius". Does the concern for aesthetics, which is specific to Enlightenment philosophers, show a failure of philosophical rationality or, on the contrary, a greater demand for rationality ? Diderot's conception of "genius" helps us to answer this question, for with this notion he aims philosophically at the construction of a historical conception of knowledge which involves the development of a "religion of humanity" or the cult of great men, in order to invent a hermeneutics or system of "interpretation". Reflection on art forces the philosopher to distinguish the universal from the identic. The genius is only one of numerous individualisations of reason, which means that his work must be subjected to a critical "interpretation". Diderot's "eclecticism" is to be distinguished from eclecticism in the pejorative sense or from "syncreticism".
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