One of the great publishing events in all of history was the French Encyclopédie of the eighteenth century, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert. It was a massive project: many authors, 71,818 articles and 3,129 illustrations, published in 28 volumes over 25 years.
During my working visit to Guatemala, Luis Figueroa took me on a tour of Francisco Marroquín University’s library, and UFM’s rare book collection has an almost-complete set of the original Encyclopédie. I had the awesome experience of being able to leaf through the volumes with my own hands.
(Click to enlarge the images.)
That brought to mind Alasdair MacIntyre’s inclusion in the Gifford Lectures of 1988 of the role of that class of thinking in Moral Enquiry.