Pierre Bayle in the light of new research : faith and reason in the classical age

Titre du fascicule : Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century / Fondation Voltaire, Theodore Besterman Voltaire Foundation Oxford"Celebrating the tricentenary of Pierre Bayle's death in Rotterdam (28 December 1706), this paper insists on Bayle's rationalism, as opposed to ihe scepticism and 'fideism' with which he is generally credited in historical manuals. Bayle rejects blind faith in so far as the formulæ by which it is expressed have no meaning: in short, it reduces to popular superstition. Nor does Bayle's rationalism lead him to an alliance with Arminians or Socinians: he insists on the unending difficulties which face the philosopher in the definition of the basic articles of religious faith. Bayle was a moral rationalist and a philosopher of tolerance, isolated in his refusal to admit any possible form of alliance between reason and religious faith, as also in his refusal of any alliance between religious faith and political power.