Philosopher
Pierre Bayle
Overview
Pierre Bayle (; French: [pjɛʁ bɛl]; 18 November 1647 – 28 December 1706) was a French philosopher, author, and lexicographer. He is best known for his Historical and Critical Dictionary, whose publication began in 1697. Many of the more controversial ideas in the book were hidden away in the voluminous footnotes, or they were slipped into articles on seemingly uncontroversial topics. Bayle is commonly regarded as a forerunner of the Encyclopédistes of the mid-18th century.
A Huguenot, Bayle fled to the Dutch Republic in 1681 because of religious persecution in France. Bayle was a notable advocate of religious toleration, and his skeptical philosophy had a significant influence on the subsequent growth and development of the European Age of Enlightenment.
Leibniz's Théodicée was formed in response to Bayle. Voltaire called Bayle "the greatest dialectician to have ever written." The English translation of The Dictionary was identified by American President Thomas Jefferson to be among the one hundred foundational texts to form the first collection of the Library of Congress.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Philosophers who discussed Pierre Bayle
- Nicolas Malebranche
- Sextus Empiricus
- Xenophanes
- Pietro Pomponazzi
- Ralph Cudworth
- Jean Bodin
- Baruch Spinoza
- Ludwig Feuerbach
- Strato of Lampsacus
- Hugo Grotius
- Cesare Cremonini (philosopher)
- Arnold Geulincx
- John Major (philosopher)
- Franciscus Patricius
- Uriel da Costa
- Gómez Pereira
Ideas Pierre Bayle discusses
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Geneva
- Philosophy
- Isaac Newton
- Jesuits
- John Locke
- Nicolas Malebranche
- Library of Congress
- Manichaeism
- Philosophical skepticism
- Paris
- René Descartes
- Protestantism
- Rotterdam
- Christian theology
- Thomas Hobbes
- Thomas Jefferson
- Age of Enlightenment
- Voltaire
- Religious tolerance
- Baruch Spinoza
- Zoroastrianism
- Literary criticism
- Dutch Republic
Place in the tradition
Part of Deism.