BAYLE, PIERRE. - Protestant philosopher and man of letters, b. at Carla (Ariège) on 18 Nov. 1647, d. at Rotterdam on 28 Dec. 1706. In 1669 he left Calvinism to embrace the Catholic faith; but, almost immediately, he returned to Calvinism. He was at Geneva, then at Paris and at Sedan as a professor at the Protestant University. When this was closed he moved to Rotterdam, where he taught at the École illustre, from 1681 to 1693. He lost his chair under the accusation of irreligion.
B. welcomed and pushed to the utmost the antithesis between reason and faith. The two terms are absolutely irreconcilable: the revealed dogmas are the perfect antithesis of the most evident truths of natural reason. The merit of the act of faith lies in the arational, volitional acceptance of the irrationality of the revealed truths. All human knowledge is subject to doubt: B. is theoretically a skeptic; and only by adherence to faith does he emerge from skepticism. The paroxysm with which he accentuated the reason-faith antithesis made people doubt his sincerity, but at bottom it expressed his tragic inner division. In dependence on his principles, B. championed religious tolerance. In ethics, since moral activity must be rational, B. affirms its independence from every religious conviction. His influence, due to the breadth of his erudition and to the open-mindedness with which he makes use of it, was very wide and deleterious. The Encyclopedism and in particular Voltaire evidently formed themselves on B.'s method and took from it as a model, above all in the struggle against the Church and revealed truth, the airy and ironic criticism and the corrosive skepticism, even in its superficiality.
His major work is the Dictionnaire historique et critique, in 2 vols., Rotterdam 1695-97, which had many editions. Mention is also made of the Nouvelles de la république des lettres, a periodical (by him and others), 1684-87; Œuvres diverses, 4 vols., The Hague 1727. All his works (Opera omnia) were repeatedly placed on the Index (v. Index libr. prohib., Rome 1948, p. 42).
Bibliography3 works
Giacomo Soleri