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Article: Pierre Bayle (1647-1706). (Great Minds).(Biography)
- Article from:
- Free Inquiry
- Article date:
- June 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Pierre Bayle was one of the most famous and thoroughgoing skeptics of his day This fact is difficult to reconcile with his professed Calvinism, the sincerity of which is anybody's guess. Some commentators maintain that it was completely genuine. Frederick the Great and Voltaire thought that it was a cover so that Bayle could live and write in peace. Simon Blackburn, in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, takes the same view, quoting Bayle's remark, "I am most truly a Protestant; for I protest indifferently against all systems and all sects." In any event it is his skepticism, his defense of the independence of morality from religion, and his advocacy of complete ...