He wrote about 17,000 articles on subjects including physiology, chemistry, botany, pathology, and political history, or about 25% of the entire encyclopaedia, all done voluntarily.

[1] In the generations after the Encyclopédie's, mainly due to his aristocratic background, his legacy was largely overshadowed by the more bohemian Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others, but by the mid-20th century more scholarly attention was being paid to him.

He sent it to be published in Amsterdam to avoid French censorship but the ship carrying the sole manuscript sank, and 20 years of labour was lost.

By the publication of the eighth volume, Diderot saw fit to thank his collaborator for his tireless dedication to the project, stating:"If we have raised a shout of joy like the sailor when he espies land after a sombre night that has kept him midway between sky and flood, it is to M. de Jaucourt that we are indebted for it.

[5] Jaucourt did not consistently create original articles expressing his own opinions and views of his subjects, but rather implicitly showed his personal beliefs through the careful cultivation of certain passages, emphasis and reiteration, and even word choice.

[7] Given the politically incendiary tone of the works Jaucourt copied and paraphrased from, he concealed the names and publication information of much of his source material.

Some of his works, such as those on historical subjects clearly contain radical and anti-clerical messages through implied comparisons between the ancient past and modern France, such as in his article "Paris".

As he delineates in his article "Traite des nègres," he believed that the commodification of human life is abhorrent and that every person has the fundamental right of freedom.