Pierre Bayle (Wikipedia, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
"I am a good Protestant, and in the full sense of the term, for from the bottom of my soul,
I protest against everything that is said, and everything that is done."
I protest against everything that is said, and everything that is done."
Important Publications:
Various Thoughts on the Occasion of the Comet (1682
Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary) (1697)
(This work is an important predecessor of the more famous Enlightenment Encyclopédie
published by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert between 1759 - 1772)
Bayle's father was a Calvinist in France, but Bayle had embraced Catholicism while being educated by the Jesuits. After his schooling, Bayle re-embraced Calvinism.
In 1675 he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at the Protestant Academy of Sedan in north-eastern France. In 1681 the university at Sedan was suppressed by the government in action against Protestants (Louis XIV overturned the Edict of Nantes in 1685). Just before that event, Bayle had fled to the Dutch Republic, where he almost immediately was appointed professor of philosophy and history at the École Illustre in Rotterdam. He taught for many years, but became embroiled in a long internal quarrel in the college. It resulted in Bayle being deprived of his chair in 1693.
His most important contribution to the Enlightenment is his writings on religious toleration, which he maintained even atheists were entitled to. God may punish you in the afterlife, but to be a good citizen only needed to act morally on principles of calculated self-interest. Man doesn't need commandments. All that was needed to live a decent, honest life, was wholly transparent to all humankind. Bayle believed that a whole society of atheists could be a virtuous.
(Remember: Sebastian Castellio (1515 - 1563) - In response to the burning of the Spanish polymath Michael Servetus in 1553, Castellio claimed only the existence and goodness of God can be certain, so executing heretics for other offenses (e.g. denying the Trinity) is wrong.)
The French philosophe Voltaire, in the prelude to his Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne called Bayle the greatest dialectician to have ever written. ("le plus grand dialecticien qui ait jamais écrit").
Comets as a premonition of disaster
Why would the God of the Bible, who denounced idolatry, send comets as messages which would be taken by pagans in a way not intended? Would they not increase sacrilegious practices among non-Christians?
Advancement of religious toleration
Bayle argued that those of errant faith often do so out of mistaken beliefs, and to make a mistake is no sin. Therefore, it is improper to punish someone who has made a mistake of faith in good conscience.
Bayle rejected the use of scripture to justify coercion and violence: "One must transcribe almost the whole New Testament to collect all the Proofs it affords us of that Gentleness and Long-suffering, which constitute the distinguishing and essential Character of the Gospel." He did not regard toleration as a danger to the state, but to the contrary:
"If the Multiplicity of Religions prejudices the State, it proceeds from their not bearing with one another but, on the contrary, endeavouring each to crush and destroy the other by methods of Persecution. In a word, all the Mischief arises not from Toleration, but from the want of it."
The Problem of Evil
(Reason can show us how to behave morally, but it cannot explain the mysteries of God (e.g. why God allows good and evil)
1) If the universe is the work of God, why are people drawn to evil/tempted by sin?
2) If God is infinite and omnipotent, why does he let evil exist?
3) If Christianity is so good and pure, why do Christians engage in bad behavior more than non-Christians? (what evidence was this based on?)
Bayle's controversial “doctrine” on the problem of evil that caused so much commotion was carefully summarized by Bayle himself in three points:
1. The natural light and revelation teach us clearly that there is only one principle of all things, and that this principle is infinitely perfect;
2. The way of reconciling the moral and physical evil of humanity with all the attributes of this single, infinitely perfect principle of all things surpasses our philosophical lights, such that the Manichean objections leave us with difficulties that human reason cannot resolve;
3. Nevertheless, it is necessary to firmly believe that what thee natural light and revelation teach us about the unity and infinite perfection of God, just as belief by faith and submission to divine authority the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation. (OD III, 992b-993a)
Mostly Bayle held that reason could not answer the problem of evil.
Bayle's views were challenged by subsequent philosophers like Gottfried Leibniz, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant.
The "Bayle Enigma"
Because Bayle would rigorously argue both sides of an argument in his work, scholars debate what his actual position was on many issues. It has been argued that Bayle was:
1) a complete skeptic about all human knowledge, or...
2) just a religious skeptic, or
3) he just employed doubt (a la Descartes) to vindicate his positions. He has been taken as a serious Judaeo-Christian thinker to an atheist and and many positions in between. Whatever his views actually were, he was mostly influential on the Enlightenment figures who took aim at religion and church authority (e.g. Voltaire).
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