BAYLE, PIERRE

French skeptic who had an enormous influence on 18th-century thought; b. Carla, southern France, Nov. 18, 1647; d. Rotterdam, Dec. 28, 1706. Bayle, son of a Calvinist minister, attended the Protestant school at Puylaurens, and then the Jesuit college at Toulouse, where he converted to Catholicism and shortly thereafter back to Calvinism. His second conversion made him a relaps, subject to severe penalties during the persecutions of the Huguenots. Bayle fled to Geneva and studied philosophy and theology at the university. He then secretly returned to France and lived in disguise, earning his living as a tutor in Paris and Rouen and later as professor of philosophy at the Calvinist academy at Sedan, as the protegé of the fanatic Calvinist leader, Pierre Jurieu. In 1682, when the academy was closed by Louis XIV, Bayle and Jurieu became professors at the École illustre of Rotterdam. Here Bayle published his first work, his Thoughts on the Comets of 1680, a critical attack on superstition, intolerance, various philosophical and theological systems, historical inaccuracies, etc., followed by an answer to Father L. Maimbourg's History of Calvinism and a collection of defenses of cartesianism answering the attacks of the French Jesuits. From 1684 to 1687 he edited the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, reviewing all of the important writings then appearing. His famous work on toleration, the Philosophical Commentary on the words of Jesus, "Constrain them to come in," appeared in 1686. Here Bayle offered a defense of toleration of all groups from Catholics to Muslims, Jews, Unitarians, and even atheists. His erstwhile supporter, Jurieu, then turned upon him and denounced Bayle as a secret atheist. Thereafter Bayle and Jurieu fought each other in a constant pamphlet warfare whose fruits included the termination of Bayle's academic career, which thus gave him time to write his most important and influential work, the Historical and Critical Dictionary, first published in 1697. Bayle's Dictionary, which grew to be between seven and eight million words long, consists of biographical articles on all sorts of people from the most obscure theologians to the most famous figures in the Old Testament, and the most notorious political figures. The "meat" of the Dictionary consists in the lengthy, digressive, erudite footnotes, and notes to the notes, attacking and dissecting every possible theory in philosophy, theology, and science, and retailing salacious tales about famous and infamous personages. Some of the articles (on David, the Manichaeans, Pyrrho, Rorarius, Spinoza, and Zeno) became major battlegrounds of the intellectual world for the next 50 years, eliciting replies from philosophers and theologians of every persuasion. Bayle spent his remaining years writing defenses and explanations of his views against attacks from conservative and liberal Protestants, from Catholics, and from such philosophers as G. W. Leibniz. Bayle died with pen in hand finishing off another rebuttal.

Throughout the Dictionary and his later works, Bayle argued that various theories in philosophy, theology, and science involve contradictions and absurdities that appear incapable of resolution. Over and over, Bayle contended that his massive skeptical barrage showed that rational endeavor in all areas is hopeless, and that man should abandon reason and turn to faith as the only source of true knowledge. He reinforced his fideism by arguing that revealed truth was unintelligible, in conflict with reason, evidence, and morality. Heretical views such as Manichaeanism, he claimed, could be better defended rationally than could Christianity.

Many of Bayle's contemporaries assumed that his point was not the defense of religion, but its destruction. The philosophes saw the Dictionary as "the Arsenal of the Enlightenment," and used it to undermine traditional religion, theology, and philosophy. Leibniz, G. Berkeley, and D. Hume wrestled with Bayle's arguments and sought new solutions. But the 18th century ultimately found its resolution in replacing Bayle's skeptical treasury with scientific studies. As his learned biographies became outdated, his endless doubts came to be ignored and forgotten, and his fideism seen as a covert rationalistic critique of religion and philosophy, preparing the way for the Age of Reason. Recent studies, aimed at placing Bayle in the context of his time, have led to a reconsideration of his fideism, and suggest that he was, perhaps, a serious, though puzzled and puzzling believer, struggling with the various religious and scientific tensions of his day. His doubts and religious concern may have more lasting value than the scientific optimism that emerged from taking his texts as the death knell of the pre-Newtonian age.

See Also: skepticism; enlightenment, philosophy of.

Bibliography: Oeuvres diverses, comp. p. des maizeaux, 4v. (The Hague 1727–31; repr. 1964); A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical, 10 v. (London 1734–41); Selections from Bayle's Dictionary, ed. r. h. popkin (New York 1965). p. dibon et al., eds., Pierre Bayle, le philosophe de Rotterdam (Amsterdam 1959). e. labrousse, Pierre Bayle (The Hague 1963–64).

[r. h. popkin]