Pierre Bayle

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Pierre Bayle, portrait by Pierre Savart (1774)

Pierre Bayle [ pjɛʁ bɛl ] (born November 18, 1647 in Le Carla, today: Carla-Bayle , Département Ariège ( Occitania ); † December 28, 1706 in Rotterdam ) was a French writer and philosopher who, together with the 10 years younger Fontenelle is considered a central figure in the Enlightenment . His most important work is the Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697).

Life and work

Bayle was born in a Pyrenean village as the son of a Huguenot preacher Jean Bayle († 1685) and his wife Jeanne Bayle, b. de Bruguière († 1681) was born as the second son of two siblings. He grew up in an Occitan linguistic environment. From 1666 he studied at the Protestant Academy of Puylaurens ( Département Tarn ), Académie de Montauban et de Puylaurens . There he had to improve his competence in the standard French language .

In 1669 he moved to the Jesuit College of Toulouse , where he was granted a scholarship and on March 16, 1669 he converted to Catholicism . After graduating from school in August 1670, however, he left Toulouse. 18 months later he reversed his conversion and fled as a relaps ( renegade ) to Calvinist Geneva . A recidivist of being relapsed was subject to sanctions, so from 1663 there was a threat of a fine, from 1665 then banishment and from 1669 even an expropriation of property.

In the Calvinist city ​​of Geneva with its changing history in modern times, he hired himself from September 1670 to June 1674 as a tutor , précepteur and dealt with philosophy, especially that of René Descartes . Then he went, also as a tutor, to Rouen and Paris , where there were even larger Reformed churches at that time. He remained there in his activities until June 1681.

In 1675 he became a philosophy professor at the Protestant Academy Sedan , Académie de Sedan in Champagne. When the academy was closed in 1681 as part of the increasing constriction of French Protestantism by France, Bayle, like so many Calvinist French intellectuals, went to Holland and received a professorship for philosophy and history at the newly opened city high school, schola illustris, in Rotterdam in October 1681 .

He helped his former friend Pierre Jurieu , whom he knew from his teaching days at the Académie de Sedan , to become a professor of theology at the schola illustris . Jurieu, too, had expressed himself critically and because he feared persecution because of his work La Politique du clergé de France, which was in print , he finally preferred an appointment to Rotterdam.

In 1682 the Enlightenment published his first book: Lettre sur la comète de 1680 ("Letter about the comet of 1680 "), which was expanded in 1683 as Pensées diverses sur la comète de 1680 ("Different thoughts on the comet of 1680"). In this, Bayle first refutes the superstitious notions associated with comets, and he promotes the idea that all knowledge must be constantly and critically checked. Bayle verbally defends the Christian faith against the unbelief that began to spread during this time, but at the same time drafts the foundations of a non-religiously determined morality or ethics, whereby - contrary to the general opinion at the time - he assumes that an atheist does not necessarily have to be immoral and act immorally.

From 1684 to 1687 Bayle was with the help of the printer Henri Desbordes (1649-1722) the editor and major contributor of the literary and scientific journal Nouvelles de la République des Lettres ("News from the Republic of Education"), which is based on that about the whole Europe aimed at a scattered intellectually interested audience who mastered French as the language of literature, philosophy and science. The magazine was published in Rotterdam. With the publication of the magazine, Bayle embodied the new type of science organizer and journalist who made communication as such a profession.

When, on October 17, 1685, Louis XIV repealed the Edict of Tolerance issued by Henry IV (the famous Édit de Nantes ) and thus caused the flight of over 200,000 Protestants from France, Bayle responded with two critical writings: Ce que c'est que la France toute catholique sous le règne de Louis le Grand (“What the most Catholic France is under the rule of Louis the Great”, 1686), where he denounces religious intolerance and the amalgamation of state and church, and Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jésus-Christ “Contrains-les d'entrer” (“Philosophical commentary on the words of Christ 'Need them to come in” ”, 1687), where he calls for freedom of conscience, also for people of different faiths and atheists, and not just as a moral principle but as a commandment of reason. He wanted to separate the areas of the state from those of religion.

In the same year his brother Jacob (1631–1685) was arrested and sent to Bordeaux to prison, where he died after six months.

Since the Pensées , Bayle was not only suspicious of Catholics, but also of many Protestants, who viewed his rationalist and liberal stance on questions of denomination and faith as disguised deism , if not atheism. From the Protestant side, especially by Pierre Jurieu , a former colleague from Sedan, he was therefore violently attacked when he was credited with the anonymous Avis important aux réfugiés ("Important advice to the refugees", 1690) , probably not without good reason , which warns against the activities of the agitators among the emigrated Huguenots who tried to drive Holland and England into a war of revenge against Louis XIV.

Bayle lost his professorship in 1693 and devoted himself entirely to work on his Dictionnaire historique et critique (2 vols. 1695/96, 4 vols. 1702), which a Dutch publisher had ordered and financed in advance. This was originally supposed to be an improved version of the Grand Dictionnaire historique (1674 etc.), an encyclopedia of names and persons by the Jesuit Louis Moréri , but developed into a new type of reference work. Bayle did not limit himself to taking stock of contemporary knowledge about historical persons and figures (especially those from the Bible ), but tried beyond and above all a critical examination of this knowledge. To this end, he introduced as a groundbreaking innovation that he kept the actual articles short and limited to the factual, but added detailed footnotes , sometimes several columns long , in which he cited sources and authorities, often those who contradict each other, with what he forced the reader to question apparently documented facts and to think and decide for himself. Bayle demonstrated that historiography does not consist, as was usually tacitly assumed previously, in the mere collection and presentation of facts, but the facts themselves are problematic and their critical reconstruction and interpretation constitute the core task of historical research. According to Ernst Cassirer , Bayle thus became the “real creator of historical meticulousness”.

First edition of the Dictionnaire historique et critique published in Rotterdam (1697)

Due to his rationally based, skeptical arguments, Bayle made a strict distinction between belief or opinion and knowledge. He denied the possibility of absolutely true knowledge, but emphasized his personal belief in the ultimately incomprehensible Christian religion.

As a basis for this third clarification, I first set out this undeniable principle:
Christianity belongs to a supernatural order, and its foundation is the supreme authority of God, who tells us mysteries not so that we may understand them, but so that we may believe them with all the humility we owe to the infinite being, who neither deceive nor be deceived can.

On this basis, he stated:

That I never propose as my personal opinion any doctrine which goes against the articles of the Creed of the Reformed Church in which I was born and to which I profess.

Bayle's Lexicon had more than 10 editions by 1760. It became the first critical and educated summary of the lessons learned from the early Enlightenment. A German translation, written by several anonymous employees under the direction of the well-known writer Johann Christoph Gottsched , was published in Leipzig in 1741–44 as “Peter Baylen's historical and critical dictionary” .

Bayle himself, however, no longer lived to see his recognition. He spent the last years of his life writing defenses against the accusations that his lexicon brought him, and in polemics against Pierre Jurieu and other Reformed theologians. His autographs are kept in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library , among others .

Since 1699 he was a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences .

Works

  • Pensées diverse, écrites à un docteur de Sorbonne, à l'occasion de la comète qui parut au mois de decembre 1680. Leers, Rotterdam 1683–1694.
    • Critical edition: A. Prat and P. Rétat (eds.): Pensées diverses sur la comète . Cornély, Paris 1911–12, new edition: 1984, 1994.
    • German as: Johann Christoph Gottsched (translator), Johann Christoph Faber (Hrsg.): Various thoughts about the comet, which were communicated to a doctor of the Sorbonne and which appeared in December 1680 (= Reclam's Universal Library, Volume 592). Publishing house Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1975.
    • English as: Robert C. Bartlett (translator and essay): Various Thoughts on the Occasion of A Comet . State University of New York Press, Albany 2000, ISBN 0-7914-4547-X .
  • Addition aux pensées diverses sur les comètes. Rotterdam 1694 ( books.google.de ).
  • Continuation des Pensées diverses ... Rotterdam 1705 ( Volume 1 , Volume 2 ).
  • Dictionnaire historique et critique . 2 volumes, Leers, Rotterdam 1697, many editions.
  • Martine Pécharman (introduction): Supplément du Commentaire philosophique (= YC Zarka, F. Lessay and J. Rogers (eds.): Les fondements philosophiques de la tolérance . Volume 3). Presses Univ. de France, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-13-052206-8 .
  • Roland Oberson (introduction): Personnages de l'affaire Abélard et considérations sur les obscénités . L'âge d'homme, Lausanne 2002, ISBN 2-8251-1632-7 .
  • Elisabeth Labrousse et al. (Ed.); A. McKenna (introduction): Correspondance de Pierre Bayle . several volumes, The Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 1999ff.
  • Jean-Michel Gros and Jacques Chomarat (introduction): Pour une histoire critique de la philosophie. Choix d'articles philosophiques du Dictionnaire historique et critique . H. Champion, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-7453-0422-4 .
  • Antony McKenna (Ed.): Pierre Bayle, témoin et conscience de son temps . H. Champion, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-7453-0313-9 .
  • Sally L. Jenkinson (ed. And transl.): Political Writings . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 0-521-47094-3 .
  • Jean-Michel Gros (Ed.): De la tolérance. Commentaire philosophique . Presses Pocket, [Paris] 1992, ISBN 2-266-04763-9 .
  • F. Charles-Daubert and P.-F. Moreau (Ed.): Pierre Bayle, Écrits sur Spinoza . Berg Int. Ed., Paris 1983.
  • Pierre Bayle: Tolerance - A Philosophical Commentary . Edited by Eva Buddeberg and Rainer Forst. Translated from the French by Eva Buddeberg with the assistance of Franziska Heimburger. Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp, ​​2016. Suhrkamp pocket book science 2183. ISBN 978-3-518-29783-4 .
Pierre Bayle around 1675, a painting by Louis Ferdinand Elle Sr.

literature

  • Hubert Bost: Pierre Bayle . Fayard, Paris 2006.
  • Hubert Bost (ed.): Pierre Bayle, citoyen du monde. De l'enfant du Carla à l'auteur du Dictionnaire. Actres du colloque du Carla-Bayle (13-15 September 1996) . Paris 1999.
  • Hans Bots (ed.): Critique, savoir et érudition à la veille des Lumières. Le "Dictionnaire historique et critique" de Pierre Bayle (1647–1706). Actes du colloque international Nimègue octobre 1996 . Amsterdam 1998.
  • Theodor G. Bucher : Between Atheism and Tolerance. On the historical impact of Pierre Bayle (1647 - 1706). In: Philosophical Yearbook . 92nd volume, 1985, p. 353 ff. (PDF 1.3 MB) .
  • Wiep van Bunge (ed.): Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), Le philosophe de Rotterdam. Philosophy, religion, and reception. Selected papers of the tercentenary conference held at Rotterdam, 7 - 8 December 2006 . Brill, Leiden [u. a.] 2008 (Brill's studies in intellectual history; vol. 167).
  • Ernst Cassirer : The Philosophy of Enlightenment . Tübingen 1932, reprint: Darmstadt 1973, p. 269ff.
  • Alain Deligne: Pierre Bayle as Républicain des Lettres. About the project of his critical dictionary (1692) . In: Martin Fontius and Werner Schneiders (eds.): The philosophy and the Belles-Lettres . Berlin 1997, pp. 83-101.
  • Paul Dibon (Ed.): Pierre Bayle. Le philosophe de Rotterdam. Etudes et documents . Amsterdam [et al.] 1959.
  • Ludwig Feuerbach : Pierre Bayle. A contribution to the history of philosophy and humanity . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1989. As Volume 6 of Ges.Werke (Leipzig 1848) online at archive.org .
  • Lionel Gossman: Marginal Writing. 1697: The Philosopher Pierre Bayle Publishes His Dictionnaire historique et critique in Holland . In: Denis Hollier (Ed.): A New History of French Literature . Cambridge (Mass.) And London 1989, pp. 379-386.
  • Theo Jäger: Pierre Bayle's philosophy in the “Réponse aux questions d'un Provincal” . Marburg 2004.
  • Herbert Jaumann : Early Enlightenment as Historical Criticism. Pierre Bayle and Christian Thomasius . In: Sebastian Neumeister (Ed.): Early Enlightenment . Munich 1994, pp. 149-170.
  • Lothar Kreimendahl (ed.): The philosophy in Pierre Bayle's "Dictionnaire historique et critique" . = Education. Interdisciplinary yearbook for research into the 18th century and its history . Volume 16, Hamburg 2004.
  • Elisabeth Labrousse : Pierre Bayle . Volume I: Du Pays de Foix à la cité d'Erasme . Volume II: Hétérodoxie et rigorisme . La Haye, Nijhoff, 1963-64. Volume 2 in a new edition by Albin Michel, Paris 1996.
  • Erich Lichtenstein: Gottsched's edition of Bayles Dictionnaire: a contribution to the history of the Enlightenment , Heidelberg 1915, online at archive.org .
  • Marie-Hélène Quéval: JC Gottsched and Pierre Bayle, a philosophical dialogue. In: Gabriele Ball, Helga Brandes and Katherine R. Goodmander (eds.): Discourses of the Enlightenment, Luise Adelgunde Victorie and Johann Christoph Gottsched . Wolfenbütteler Forschungen series N ° 112, Wiesbaden 2006, pp. 145–168.
  • Walter Rex: Essays on Pierre Bayle and Religious Controversy . The Hague 1965.
  • Andreas Urs Sommer : Triumph of the episode over universal history? Pierre Bayle's Liquids of History . In: Saeculum. Universal History Yearbook . Volume 52, 2001, pp. 1–39.
  • Nicola Stricker: The Masked Theology of Pierre Bayle . Berlin and New York 2003.
  • Friedrich Stumm: At the beginning of the French Enlightenment. Pierre Bayle's comet book from 1683 . Marburg 2010.
  • Ruth Whelan: The Anatomy of Superstition. A Study of the Historical Theory and Practice of Pierre Bayle . Oxford 1989.

Web links

Commons : Pierre Bayle  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wikisource: Pierre Bayle  - Sources and full texts (French)
Wikiquote: Pierre Bayle  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard van Dülmen, Sina Rauschenbach: Worlds of thought around 1700: ten intellectual profiles. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-4120-7102-1 , p. 15
  2. ↑ Irene Dingel, Herman Selderhuis: Calvin and Calvinism: European Perspectives. Vol. 84 Publications of the Institute for European History Mainz - Supplements / Dept. of Western Religious History - Dept. for Universal History, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 3-6471-0106-0 , p. 254
  3. ↑ P. Daniel Bourchenin: Étude sur les académies protest antes en France aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Grassart, Paris 1882, p. 431 [1]
  4. ↑ Irene Dingel, Herman Selderhuis: Calvin and Calvinism: European Perspectives. Vol. 84 Publications of the Institute for European History Mainz - Supplements / Dept. of Western Religious History - Dept. for Universal History, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 3-6471-0106-0 , p. 254
  5. ↑ "For with the exception of a few notables and some semi-scholars or even some of you, you gentlemen of the law, all the world among us Christians believe the mystery of the Incarnation, the death and dying of Jesus Christ, his ascension, his presence on our altars , Last Judgment, Resurrection of the Bodies, Hell and Paradise ”. [Bayle: Different thoughts about a comet . P. 452. Digital Library Volume 2: Philosophy, p. 20407 (cf. Bayle thoughts, p. 323)]
  6. ↑ “Pierre Bayle not only prepared materialism and the philosophy of common sense for their acceptance in France through the skeptical dissolution of metaphysics. He announced the atheistic society, which should soon begin to exist, by proving that a society of all atheists exist, that an atheist can be an honorable person, that a person is not through atheism, but through superstition and the Demeaning idolatry. ”[Marx / Engels: The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism . P. 254 f. Digital Library Volume 11: Marx / Engels, p. 1085 f. (see MEW vol. 2, p. 134 f.)]
  7. ↑ a b Ralph Bröer: Cross-border scientific discourse in Europe in the early modern period. The learned letter in the 17th century. In: Wolfgang U. Eckart and Robert Jütte (Hrsg.): The European health system. Similarities and differences from a historical perspective. Franz Steiner Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-515-06485-0 , p. 113 f.
  8. ↑ Jacob Bayle. In: spinozaweb.org. Retrieved February 3, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Pierre Bayle; Günter Gawlick and Lothar Kreimendahl (transl. And ed.): Historical and critical dictionary. A selection . Scientific Book Society, [Darmstadt] 2003; Third clarification, p. 623.
  10. ↑ Pierre Bayle; Günter Gawlick and Lothar Kreimendahl (transl. And ed.): Historical and critical dictionary. A selection . Scientific Book Society, [Darmstadt] 2003; IV. General preliminary remark on the clarifications, p. 569.
  11. ^ Johann Gustav Droysen: History. Lectures on encyclopedia and methodology of history. (edited by Rudolf Huebner). 3rd edition R. Oldenbourg Munich 1958 (Jena 1936). P. 94
  12. ↑ Rudolf Walther: Persecuted by the French king and the Catholic Church. The philosopher died 300 years ago in exile in Rotterdam . In: The time . December 7, 2006
  13. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter B. Académie des sciences, accessed on September 16, 2019 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Bayle, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French philosopher and writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1647
PLACE OF BIRTH Le Carla, today: Carla-Bayle , Ariège department , France
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 1706
Place of death Rotterdam