Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) was born to a Huguenot family in a village, Le Carla, near Foix in the southwest of France. The circumstances of his life were primarily determined by restrictions on the Protestant faith resulting finally in the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685. His momentary conversion to Catholicism during his studies at the Jesuit school in Toulouse and subsequent return to the Protestant fold led him into exile, working as a tutor first in Geneva, then in Rouen, and finally in Paris, until he obtained a professorial post at the Protestant Academy of Sedan, in 1675. This academy was closed down by Catholic authorities in 1681 and Bayle took refuge in Rotterdam, where he obtained a post as a professor in philosophy and history at the Illustrious School. He was never to leave that town, where he published almost all his works, which gave him a Europe-wide reputation as an infinitely erudite journalist, a provocative Huguenot polemicist, and a very demanding philosopher, whose judgment was valued by the great thinkers of the period: Malebranche, Leibniz, Locke, in particular. His philosophical works bear mainly on the conflicting relations between superstition, faith and reason, and his doctrine of religious tolerance provoked accusations of religious indifference and atheism. His defense was based on the declaration that he was a sincere believer, but at the same time he defined faith as perfectly irrational – which gave birth to his reputation as a “skeptic” and a “fideist”. His last works all aim to refute the arguments of rationalist theology and to denounce religious fanaticism: shielded by his declaration of sincere faith, he was able to demonstrate that right reason leads to atheism and to define the basic principles of materialism.

Toleration

The traditional reading of Bayle as a skeptic (Pyrrhonian or Academic) has often implied an interpretation of his conception of religious toleration as being founded on doubt: since men cannot agree on any given truth, one can do nothing but tolerate their errors. Skepticism and toleration appear to constitute the two sides of the same philosophical posture. However, this reading neglects Bayle’s moral rationalism, which is expressed in all his works: “without exception, one must submit all moral laws to our natural conception of justice, which, like metaphysical light, enlightens all men born into this world” (Commentaire philosophique, 1686–1688). The self-evident certainty of human reason in its grasp of the basic tenets of ethics is the true foundation of his doctrine of toleration, which expresses “that general charity which we owe to all men by the indispensable laws of humanity” (La France toute catholique, 1685) and is deduced from our natural conception of “justice”. These first moral principles – and hence the “laws of civility and sociability” – are “rational” and “natural” principles; their self-evidence is assimilated to that of logical axioms of which one cannot be ignorant unless it be by “negligence” or “malice”. Ethics are thus completely independent of religious faith.

This “charity” (or this philosophy of sociability) and social order demand toleration in the field of religious convictions. Bayle then introduces a crucial distinction between the self-evidence of first principles and the uncertainty of “speculative” or “particular” truths, which are “matters of controversy” (Commentaire philosophique, II, Chap. 10). In this last field, reason cannot elaborate an “orthodox” doctrine which is preferable to any other. Men are confirmed in their beliefs by education and by habit, they adhere to them by an “inner sentiment” deeply rooted in their nature by passions and self-interest. This potentially conflictual uncertainty of their religious opinions requires toleration and a doctrine of toleration founded in reason.

Bayle’s definition of faith – or of conviction – excludes violence as a means of persuasion, since persecution is here both unjust and inefficient. Bayle holds as a self-evident principle that each man should follow the light of his own reason – his own conscience – and it is from this obligation that he deduces the “rights of the erring conscience”. However, these rights do not stretch to any kind of error: they are restricted to the field of “speculative” truths. To misconstrue self-evident moral principles is a fault, while errors concerning “speculative” truths are innocent. Thus are excluded all kinds of persecution in the name of any one interpretation of the articles of faith – persecution that Bayle denounces as a fanaticism which obscures natural light and destroys society.

Atheism and Rationalism

Since toleration is founded on a moral principle independent of any religious faith and since the very existence of the Christian God – a providential God, who rewards and punishes men’s actions and intervenes in the course of worldly events – is a “speculative” or “particular” truth of which men are convinced by an “inner sentiment” rather than by rational self-evidence, toleration of atheists is logically implied by the rights of conscience (whether erring or not). But in Bayle’s times, a declared atheist was subject to harsh civil punishment, and since he was deemed incapable of a sincere vow in the court of justice, he was excluded from Locke’s conception of toleration.

While declaring himself to hold a blind and irrational faith, Bayle constructs a solid battery of philosophical arguments in favor of “Stratonic” atheism. This position is founded on a metaphysical conception positing both the eternity of the essences of things and the eternal existence of a first (material) cause on which all worldly phenomena depend. Opposed to the Cartesian doctrine of the “creation of eternal truths”, Bayle embraces the rationalism of Malebranche (or Spinoza) and maintains the existence of “a nature of things”, uncreated, independent of divine will, and devoid of any anthropomorphic attributes. This metaphysical rationalism is the direct source of his moral rationalism and also explains his position as to the possibility of an atheist society. Bayle approaches the latter question in three stages: firstly, since the atheist is deemed to act without any moral principles, he is considered to be overwhelmed by forceful passions. On this point, Bayle retorts that “men do not act according to their principles” (Pensées diverses, §136) and he demonstrates how little the behavior of Christian believers is affected by their moral principles. Atheists thus resemble all other men: their acts are dictated by their passions which favor sociability (ambition, self-interest, affections) and by the fear of punishment (the force of law which governs social order). They can therefore be tolerated in society, since they behave just like all the other citizens. This demonstration is accompanied by a reflection on the functioning of a prosperous civil society: a perfect Christian society would soon succumb to its neighbors, who would not hesitate to wage war against it; moreover, such a society, which would practice the abstinence recommended by the Church, would soon collapse economically since money circulates in function of the citizens’ passions and appetites – a reflection adopted and developed by Mandeville in his Fable of the Bees (1714, 1724). In this sense, atheism promotes social prosperity. In any case – and this is the third stage in Bayle’s approach – the possibility of a perfectly moral conduct cannot be excluded a priori, but it is obvious that it cannot occur within the context of a positive religion admitting both contradictory articles of faith and self-interested mercenary motivations. A rational and disinterested conduct can be founded on atheism alone, which alone posits the existence of absolute values and denies the existence of reward or punishment after death.

Religion and Politics

In his pamphlet La France toute catholique and in the Commentaire philosophique, Bayle explicitly takes the defense of the Huguenots against the violent measures of Louis XIV, which forbad even the possibility of religious pluralism. However, Bayle does not challenge absolutism as such, but the persecution aiming to enforce conversion to Catholicism, which encroaches on the rights of conscience. The political act of Revocation is perfectly legal, in his view: it is not a moral act, but it is not in itself an act of persecution, since the Huguenots had “only” to leave the country, as they were invited by Christ: “But if you are persecuted in one town, go in flight to another” (Matthew, 10,23). The unjust persecution to which Huguenots fell victim was not exclusion, but, on the contrary, the ban on exile and the obligation to convert.

The “Glorious Revolution” of 1688–1689 and the fall of James II was quite another story, since the English people deposed a legitimate sovereign on the pretext that he was of a different religious persuasion. The English revolution was thus the occasion for Bayle to analyze more precisely the links between religion and politics and to take a more distanced view of Protestantism. As demonstrated in the Avis aux réfugiés (1690), Bayle was now convinced that no religion could provide a stable foundation for the State. Boldly taking sides against his fellow Protestants, he shows that Protestantism, just like Catholicism, is incompatible with toleration and feeds constantly on persecution, violations of freedom of conscience, and discrimination against minority communities.

Bayle’s attitude toward the doctrine of the political exploitation of religious beliefs is twofold. On the one hand, with the libertine tradition since Montaigne and Charron, he maintains that ecclesiastical and political imposture played an important role in the birth of religions, exploiting basic human impulses (fear of natural catastrophes, hopes of a good harvest, and desire to escape illness). On the other hand, he maintains that, in the long-term, political exploitation of religion cannot bring peace and prosperity to the State. The fact that politicians have often been happy with the religions they founded or with their implementation of existing religious convictions does not necessarily mean that such religions are really beneficial to the society: it is possible that religion is a disastrous political instrument, even if we have taken several centuries to become conscious of the disaster: “one does not always perceive the inconveniencies that an invention may entail” (Dictionnaire historique et critique, art. “Critias”, H).

Being himself a learned expert in the history of the bloody religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bayle is convinced that religion is not the real motivation for men’s actions in society: men act out of passion – mechanical passion that Bayle designates without moral judgment as part of human nature. However, while religion is incapable of inspiring human actions ex nihilo since actions initially depend on other motivations, nevertheless, in alliance with preexisting passions, religion leads men to override all barriers: it can induce men to trample on universal natural moral laws – and the established laws of a given society – in the name of the so-called divine inspiration; it can exacerbate the worst passions in man in the name of a “principle of conscience” which is held to be sacred and inviolable, whereas it is the source of crimes and violations (see Pensées diverses sur la comète, § 107–9, Dictionnaire historique et critique, art. “Critias”, H).

Bayle’s political syllogism thus reaches its conclusion: if, as Locke had declared, no intolerant or seditious doctrine may be tolerated within the State, and if religions are both intolerant and seditious, then only an atheist State, founded on purely lay principles, may guarantee social order. Thus a “Spinozist king” (i.e., an atheist) would be better than a Christian king and, for the same reason, atheists would be better citizens than Christians, who are always ready to blindly follow their priests in rebellion against the established political sovereign (Réponse aux questions d’un provincial, pt. IV, 1707). On this point, Bayle was to be followed by the most radical philosophers of the eighteenth century, such as the curé Meslier and the baron d’Holbach. He may, however, be distinguished from these later philosophes by his pre-Enlightenment or even anti-Enlightenment conviction that religion can never be eliminated: certain errors are so deeply rooted that they can never be corrected, and once a nation has embraced a religion, it can never do without it (Pensées diverses sur la comète, § 104). Bayle thus recognizes the fundamental validity of Spinoza’s intuition: to his mind, the theological-political question determines the inescapable perspective of any reflection on the foundation of civil society among men.