Pierre Bayle

Pierre Bayle.

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Pierre Bayle (November 18, 1647 – December 28, 1706) was a French philosopher, skeptic, and writer.

Biography

Pierre Bayle was born at La Carla (near Brive-la-Gaillarde) in southwestern France on November 19, 1647. His family was of modest means, and strictly Calvinist - in fact, Bayle's father was a Calvinist minister. After studying at the local school and spending some time educating himself, Bayle took up studies at the Protestant academy in Puylaurens in 1668. Shortly thereafter, Bayle (secretly) transfered to a Jesuit college in Toulouse. While there, Bayle briefly converted to Catholicism, only to convert back to Calvinism after receiving his Master's degree. French law, however, forbade conversions from Catholicism, and Bayle had fled to Geneva by 1670. Bayle continued his studies in Geneva, until accepting a position as Professor of Philosophy at the Protestant Academy in Sedan (near the present-day border of France and Belgium). Bayle taught at the academy for five years, leaving only when it was officially closed in 1681. He moved to Rotterdam, where he taught at the École Illustre for the remainder of his life.

Bayle's first publications date from soon after his arrival in Rotterdam. These began with his anonymous Lettre sur la Comète (Letter concerning the comet) in 1682. Though the work superficially concerned the nature of comets, Bayle's real purpose was to argue that humans could behavor morally even without any religious beliefs - so that even atheists could maintain a moral society. The implication was that mere considerations of the stability of morality and society were not sufficient to justify persecution based on religious beliefs. This basic theme appeared consistently elswhere in Bayle's work, and has clear roots in his experience of Huguenot persecution by French authorities under Louis XIV.

Through the mid-1680s, Bayle edited a journal entitled Nouvelles de la République des lettres, which published reviews of recent work in nearly all areas of learning. The creation of such journals was a significant factor in the development of the Enlightenment, and the success of the Nouvelles journal did much to advance the trend.

Bayle published a number of other philosophical, political and theological works in the years that followed, yet his most significant publication is the Dictionnaire historique et critique, first published in 1696. While the majority of its material is devoted to non-evaluative information concerning nearly every known philosopher and theologian, the most striking feature of the work is found in footnotes to the main articles. These footnotes were to be tremendously influential with respect to the philosophies of such figures as Berkeley, Leibniz, Hume, and Voltaire.

Bayle died peacefully on December 28, 1706.

Editions

Historical and Critical Dictionary (1695-1697; 1702, enlarged; best that of P. des Maizeaux, 4 vols., 1740)
Les Œuvres de Bayle (3 vols., The Hague)
des Maizeaux, Vie de Bayle
LA Feuerbach, Pierre Bayle (1838)
Damiron, La Philosophie en France au XVIII' siècle (1858-1864)
Sainte-Beuve, “Du genie critique et de Bayle" (Revue des deux mondes, December 1, 1855)
A. Deschamps, La Génèse du scepticisme erudit chez Bayle (Liege, 1878)
J. Denis, Bayle et furleu (Paris, 1886)
Ferdinand Brunetière, La Critique littéraire au XVIII' siècle (vol. 1, 1890), and La Critique de Bayle (1893)
Émile Gigas, Choix de to correspondance inédite de Pierre Bayle (Paris, 1890, reviewed in Revue critique, December 22 1890)
de Budé, Lettres inédites adressées a J. A. Turretini (Paris, 1887)
J. F. Stephen, Horae Sabbaticae (London, 1892, 3rd ser. pp. 174192)
A. Cazes, P. Bayle, sa vie, ses œuvres, etc. (1905).

Reference

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

External links

Persondata
NAME	Bayle, Pierre
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	French writer and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH	November 18, 1647
PLACE OF BIRTH	Carla-le-Comte, near Pamiers (Ariège)
DATE OF DEATH	December 28, 1706
PLACE OF DEATH	Rotterdam

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