France: Pierre Bayle

John Gehl sends us this bio of the French rationalistic and skeptical philosopher Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), who was a caustic advocate for religious toleration, best remembered for his well-known Historical and Critical Dictionary. Published in 1697, the dictionary presented critically annotated biographies that provided Bayle with a platform to expose the narrow dogmatic thinking he found so prevalent in the religious, philosophical and historical writings of his era. Bayle's method was to present orthodox positions and then to use quotations, anecdotes, commentaries and clever annotations to slyly discredit them in favor of more tolerant views. His style of subversive criticism would later be adopted by the encyclopaedists of the 18th-century enlightenment. Bayle was even-handed in his opposition to dogmatic thinking, rejecting opinions not only if he thought them overly emotional but also if they were solely intellectual.
Bayle was born near Foix, in southeastern France. Although his father was a French Huguenot minister, Bayle was schooled by the Jesuits and became a Roman Catholic for a short time as a young man, before reverting
to Protestantism, and later becoming a religious skeptic. From 1675 until 1681, Bayle was a tutor and teacher of philosophy at the Protestant Academy of Sedan. In 1681 he moved to Rotterdam where he taught philosophy and
history at the Ecole Illustre. In 1682 he published anonymously his reflections on the comet of  1680, deriding the superstition that comets presage catastrophe. After that he began to publish writings in his own name that openly questioned a wide variety of Christian traditions, gradually giving rise to the suspicion that he was an atheist, especially after he advocated that religious toleration be extended even to atheists. Then in 1693 Bayle was deprived of his Rotterdam professorship, leaving him little else to do but to continue working on his dictionary, which he had begun the previous year. He turned it into an outlet for his extensive criticism of orthodox Christian beliefs, and upon its completion in 1697 Bayle was thoroughly condemned by both the French Reformed Church and the Roman Catholic Church of Rotterdam.

Bayle's dictionary was to become a favorite reference work of Voltaire, who called him "the greatest master of the art of reasoning." Certainly Bayle was rightly hailed for his dialectical skill, the accuracy of his work, and his encyclopedic knowledge. Continuing controversies with leading theologians marred his later years, but to the end of his life he remained convinced that the only certainty is that everything is uncertain. In 1702 he brought out a new edition of his dictionary, and 1704 he published the Continuation of Diverse Thoughts, in which he attempted to demonstrate the impossibility of answering the atheists objections to orthodox theology. Bayle died in Rotterdam in 1706, affirming his faith in the goodness and mercy of God, and the virtue of religious tolerance.