Up with Artisans

Diderot begins his entry on “Art” in the first volume of the Encyclopedia with a brief for artisans: “Let us at last give artisans their due. The liberal arts have spentenough time singing their own praises; they could now use what voicethey have left to celebrate the mechanical arts. It is for the liberal arts tolift the mechanical arts from the contempt to which they have been solong relegated by prejudice; it is for the patronage of kings to protectthem from the poverty in which they still languish. Artisans haveregarded themselves as contemptible because they have been held incontempt; let us teach them to think better of themselves; it is the onlyway to obtain better products from them. Let a man pull himself awayfrom the comfort of the academies and go down into the workshops,to collect information about the arts and set it out in a book which willpersuade artisans to read, philosophers to think usefully, and the greatto make at last some beneficial use of their authority and wealth” ( Diderot: Political Writings , 5).