 Diderot had no desire to use his writings to ensure “the immortality of the evildoer” (ibid.; ERCN II, 6; DPV XXV: 246–247), and at the same time he also considered normative moral philosophy to be a failure, a view he shared with such virtuous individuals as Locke. (In response to his friend Lady Peterborough’s request for advice on how to morally educate her son, Lord Morduant, Locke recommended, in a 1697 letter, that he should read Livy (for history), along with geography and the study of morality. But, he explained, “I mean not the ethics of the schools”, but rather Tully (i.e., Cicero), Pufendorf, Aristotle and “above all the New Testament”, wherein “a man may learn how to live which is the business of ethics, and not how to define and distinguish and dispute about the names of virtue and vice” (King 1829: 5–6). This is not a ringing endorsement of academic moral philosophy, and Locke reiterates this view in his Thoughts Concerning Education, § 185 and the Reasonableness of Christianity, §§ 241–242.)