D'ALEMBERT, JEAN-BAPTISTE LE ROND. - Philosopher and mathematician, b. in Paris on 16 Nov. 1717, d. there on 29 Oct. 1783. A member of the Academy of Sciences and of the Académie Française, he linked his name both to fundamental works on integral calculus, mechanics, etc., and to that mighty publishing enterprise which was the Encyclopédie (for D'Alembert's philosophical system, expressed in it, see the treatment contained in the entry ENCICLOPEDIA).
Both from his collaboration on the Encyclopédie, and from his correspondence with Voltaire and with Frederick II, and from his minor works, there emerges his figure as a frank and convinced, yet cold and translucent, follower of a utilitarian rationalism. In his spiritual evolution he came at a certain point to conceive a natural morality raised to the rank of a science, indeed to that of the matrix of all the sciences, and to outline revealed religion as a "supplement" to natural knowledge. His "positivism" was born from the attempt to confine the Enlightenment within scientific schemas (F. Venturi, op. cit., p. 84). Among his minor works mention should be made of Sur la destruction des Jésuites en France (s. l. 1765), where he constructs the myth of "philosophy" that has put to flight the ambitious attempt of the Jesuits to dominate the world. As for the Jansenists, he deplores their useless disputes. Of great interest are the various éloges by D'Alembert: on Bossuet, Massillon, Montesquieu, Fénelon; particularly typical is the éloge of Fénelon for the forcing of its thesis: Fénelon is portrayed as a friend more of morality than of religion itself (v., e.g., D'A., Oeuvres, II, 1, Paris 1821, p. 491).
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Massimo Petrocchi