Conceptual Enlightenment

Abstract This paper reconstructs Diderot's Encyclopédie as a project of conceptual enlightenment and moral epistemology. It argues that the Encyclopédie is more than a mere lexical compendium, as it entails epistemological affordances that promote epistemic autonomy. The paper situates the Encyclopédie between Kant's media critique of enlightenment and its own epistemic claim, showing how its hypertextual form reconciles mediated knowledge with autonomous thinking. As such, the Encyclopédie can be understood as a dynamic model of conceptual rationality—transforming concepts into reasons, and readers into responsible epistemic agents.