Pierre Bayle

Da Pirrone a Rorty, passando per Socrate, Carneade, Cicerone, Giovanni di Salisbury, Guicciardini, Montaigne, Sorbière, Pascal, Bayle, Hume, Nietzsche, Russell, Rensi, Oakeshott e Popper: il volume offre per la prima volta un quadro completo della storia dello scetticismo politico, rappresentato da alcune delle figure intellettuali più influenti del pensiero occidentale ma ritenute politicamente “scomode” per la loro incessante critica alle ideologie, ai dogmatismi dei partiti, ai paradigmi normativi e ai mezzi di persuasione diversi da quelli improntati al buon senso, alla prudenza e alla moderazione. L’autore dimostra che a unire tutti gli scettici politici è uno “stile” che privilegia il saggio al trattato, l’ipotesi alla certezza infallibile, il pluralismo al monismo, la verità conversazionale alla soluzione finale. Benché quasi tutti siano stati additati dai loro contemporanei come infedeli, reprobi, esiliati e gretti, le loro posizioni si sono rivelate essenziali non solo per la teoria politica in senso proprio, ma anche per l’affermazione di idee “altre” di libertà, tolleranza e convivenza civile.

A collection of fifty essays on Descartes and his influence in the seventeenth century. The first section is devoted to various aspects of Descartes’s philosophy (biography, epistemology, metaphysics, natural philosophy (science), mathematics, philosophical theology, etc.). The second section is devoted to Descartes’s influence, especially Cartesians and the Cartesian movement, in France, the Netherlands, Italy, England and elsewhere. The third section is devoted to the critics and opponents of Descartes and Cartesianism.

We often judge past moral philosophers in terms of our present normative theories and moral categories. This essay traces a different type of moral philosophy-common throughout the seventeenth century-that stressed philosophical sects, the importance of an exemplary life and practices for attaining such a life. The rise and fall of this framework is considered in the works of four philosophers:

In this paper the author presents and philosophically analyses how, respectively, Spinoza in the TTP, Bayle in the Commentaire philosophique, and Locke in the Epistola de tolerantia and other texts, conceive of the possible metaphysical reasons for religious toleration. The comparison will show that although all three authors argue for toleration in religious matters, they do this on essentially different metaphysical bases so the apparent resemblance between their theories is limited to the 'surface.'

Examining the birth and development of early modern atheism from Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670) to d’Holbach’s Système de la nature (1770), this study considers Spinoza, Hobbes, Cudworth, Bayle, Meslier, Boulainviller, Du Marsais, Fréret, Toland, Collins, Hume, Diderot, Voltaire, and d’Holbach, and positions them in a general interpretive scheme, based on the idea that early modern atheism is itself an unwanted fruit of early modern metaphysics and theology.

Introduction to a section comprising seventeen articles on skepticism in the modern world. Attention is given to historical and cultural background that shaped, and was shaped by, skepticism, including globalization, the Reformation, and the rise of modern science.

Leibniz’s claim that this is the best of all possible worlds has been subject to numerous criticisms, both from his contemporaries and ours. In this paper I investigate a cluster of such criticisms based on the existence, abundance or character of worldly evil. As several Leibniz-inspired versions of optimism have been advanced in recent years, the aim of my investigation is to assess not just how Leibniz’s brand of optimism fares against these criticisms, but also whether optimism as a philosophy has the resources to meet these challenges. I show that none of the criticisms considered has sufficient force to pose a threat to Leibniz’s version of optimism or to one modelled on it.

In Das Kapital lesen schreibt Althusser, dass "die Philosophie Spinozas eine theoretische Revolution anstößt, die in der Geschichte der Philosophie keine Vorläufer hat und wahrscheinlich die größte philosophische Revolution aller Zeiten ist, weil wir Spinoza aus philosophischer Sicht als den einzigen direk-ten Vorfahren von Marx betrachten können."Jedoch, so fügt er hinzu, "ist diese Revolution unter Schichten der Nacht begraben worden", insofern als es Marx selbst nicht gelang-außer in oberflächlicher Weise-, das Denken Spinozas zu verstehen. Das Ziel dieses Buches ist es, das diesen "Schichten der Nacht" zugrundelie-gende Muster zu rekonstruieren, indem die komplexe Entstehungsgeschichte jenes Vorurteils dargelegt wird, das in der deutschen Philosophie und Kultur den Namen "Spinoza" angenommen hat. Die vier Sektionen der Arbeit sind Leibniz und Spinoza, der Spinoza-Renaissance, dem Idealismus und Spinoza sowie dem Marxismus und Spinoza gewidmet und untersuchen die Haupt-probleme dieser Geschichte.

In Leggere Il Capitale Althusser scrive che «la filosofia di Spinoza introduce una rivoluzione teorica senza precedenti nella storia della filosofia e, proba-bilmente, la più grande rivoluzione filosofica di ogni tempo, al punto che pos-siamo considerare Spinoza, dal punto di vista filosofico, l'unico antenato diretto di Marx». Tuttavia, aggiunge, questa rivoluzione «è stata seppellita sotto strati di notte», tanto che Marx stesso non riuscì a comprendere, se non in modo superficiale, il pensiero di Spinoza. Lo scopo di questo libro è rico-struire la trama determinata di questi «strati di notte», offrendo la complessa genealogia di quel pregiudizio che nella filosofia e nella cultura tedesca ha preso il nome di "Spinoza". Le quattro sezioni, dedicate rispettivamente a Leibniz e Spinoza, alla Spinoza-Renaissance, all'idealismo e Spinoza, infine al marxismo e Spinoza, indagano i nodi principali di questa storia.

Nell’autunno del 1825 Leopardi scrive il Frammento apocrifo di Stratone da Lampsaco, testo che avrebbe visto la luce solo con l’edizione postuma delle Opere (Firenze, Le Monnier, 1845). Composto a circa un anno dal Cantico del Gallo silvestre, che concludeva il manoscritto del ’24, il Frammento ne recupera la cornice fittizia (un presunto manoscritto ritrovato) e si pone come conclusione filosofica e non più poetica per il libro delle Operette. Lo spunto per la scelta di Stratone è stato individuato dalla critica nel Dictionnaire di Bayle (che alla voce Spinoza annoverava proprio il ‘fisico’ allievo di Teofrasto, come un possibile precursore del filosofo moderno). Tuttavia, il vaglio delle possibili fonti non risulta sufficiente a rendere conto della più ambiziosa operazione condotta da Leopardi, che in quei mesi appare alla ricerca di una saldatura tra i dati offerti dalle testimonianze antiche (Cicerone, Diogene Laerzio, Plutarco) e le moderne riletture del materialismo stratoniano, in particolare settecentesche. A partire dal Preambolo all’operetta, il presente saggio si propone di indagare il nesso tra l’incompiuto progetto dei Moralisti greci e la coeva produzione leopardiana, proponendo alcuni riscontri che documentano la tendenza a un’interpretazione almeno strumentale dei testi classici.

Between 1466 and 1467 about twenty men and women from Poli (in Lazio) and Maiolati (Marche) were tried with the accusation of adhering to the heresy of the fraticelli. The examination repeatedly insisted on the “barilotto” (keg) accusation: more or less promptly confirmed by the accused – who were subject to torture – it regarded the incestuous orgies, the ritual infanticides and the acts of cannibalism in which the heretics would have indulged in their nocturnal meetings. From the accusations against the early Christians, medieval heretical groups and the Jews, the elements of this hostile stereotype had a long tradition, in which gender discrimination (the sexual unruliness typical of witches) met with class discrimination, since the barilotto was also a typical element of satire against peasants. After having recalled the accusation’s genealogy, the essay aims to interpret its strategical reasons. These connect to the theological and ecclesiological evolution of fifteenth-century papacy, which was by then disinterested towards compromise with the ideals of evangelical poverty, and, after the end of the Schism, less and less willing to tolerate whatever could jeopardize its hierarchical structure. The article examines the stereotype’s effectiveness, which was due to the wide reach of the pastoral activity of the minoritic Observance, that aimed at discrediting the fraticelli, whose ideals of Christian perfection were in competition with it. The article also analyses the literary fortune of this stereotype, from the historiographical and polemical literature of the Reformation and Counterreformation up to Bayle’s Dictionnaire.

plus ou moins élaborée. C'est le cas de La Mothe le Vayer, qui écrit «à l'imitation des anciens»; de Huet, qui insère dans son Traité philosophique de la faiblesse de l'esprit humain une esquisse d'histoire du scepticisme; de Simon Foucher, qui est l'auteur d'une Apologie des académiciens (1686) dont il se présente comme l'héritier. Ce retour du scepticisme sous des formes diverses mais toujours en relation avec son passé fut remarqué également par les adversaires des sceptiques, comme l'attestent dès leurs titres les ouvrages de Pierre de Villemandy, auteur du Scepticismus debellatus […] adversus scepticos quosque veteres ac novos (1697) 2 , et de Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, qui publie en 1733 un épais Examen du Pyrrhonisme ancien et moderne 3 .

Lettere, in gran parte inedite, di Timpanaro a Girolamo De Liguori, sul materialismo sette-ottocentesco, sul materialismo antico, sullo Stratone leopardiano, su Spinoza e Bayle, su Rensi, Gramsci, Croce, Gentile, Garin e altri studiosi. Discussioni sul positivismo. Discussioni sull'attualità politica (1970-1973), sul PCI e sul PSIUP. Ne emerge una fondamentale e chiara impostazione filosofica antihegeliana ed antiidealistica.

The study traces the development of the notion of luxury in religious discourse and the literature of ideas from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. The topic is considered against a background of general movements in post-Renaissance thought (examining in particular the influence of Augustinianism on both clerical and lay moral discourse) and is linked to the social, political and economic factors that significantly affected attitudes to luxury.

Although its origins stem from theological debates, the general will would ultimately become one of the most celebrated and denigrated concepts emerging from early modern political thought.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau would make it the central element of his political theory, and it would take on a life of its own during the French Revolution before being subjected to generations of embrace or opprobrium.  James Farr and David Lay Williams have collected for the first time a set of essays that track the evolving history of the general will from its origins to recent times.  These essays include attention to the general will’s theological, political, formal, and substantive dimensions with a careful eye to the concept’s virtues and limitations as understood by its expositors and critics, among them Pascal, Malebranche, Locke, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Constant, Tocqueville, Adam Smith, and John Rawls.

Pierre Bayle, historien de la philosophie : un sondage * Élu à un poste de professeur à l'académie de Sedan en 1675, Bayle y est chargé d'un cours de philosophie, qu'il rédige péniblement au fur et à mesure pendant les premiers mois de sa prise de fonctions. Le concours pour ce poste avait consisté en une dissertation sur le temps et on peut se faire une idée de la contribution de Bayle par sa Dissertation sur le jour, publiée pour la première fois sous forme d'article dans le Projet et fragments d'un dictionnaire critique en 1692 : il y pose des questions paradoxales, telles que : quel âge aurait quelqu'un qui marcherait autour de la terre dans le sens opposé du soleil après vingt ans de promenade, etc. C'est amusant, mais ce n'est pas là qu'on trouvera la clef de sa conception de la philosophie. À cette date, il a lu Descartes, Gassendi, Malebranche, Spinoza, Richard Simon, Guillaume Lamy, mais ce n'est pas dans son cours qu'on saisira au mieux sa position philosophique, car son cours magistral est tout à fait traditionnel, fondé sur une synthèse de celui qu'il avait suivi sous la direction du jésuite Pierre Rome à Toulouse (cours récemment redécouvert par Jacob Schmutz), renforcé par la lecture de ceux de Pierre de Villemandy à Saumur et d'Emmanuel Maignan à Toulouse, avec des ajouts tirés de Rohault : c'est un Système abrégé de philosophie conventionnel, fondé sur les quatre parties de la discipline : Logique, Morale, Physique, Métaphysique, où Bayle fait le professeur au sens tout à fait courant du terme 1. Sa correspondance ne peut guère servir de clef non plus, malgré sa déclaration lors de la suppression de l'Académie de Sedan : Le cartésianisme ne faira pas une affaire, je le regarde simplement comme une hypo-thes ingenieuse qui peut servir à expliquer certains effets naturels, mais au reste j'en suis si peu enteté, que je ne risquerai pas la moindre chose pour soutenir que la nature se reigle et se gouverne selon ces principes là. Plus j'étudie la philosophie, plus j'y trouve d'incertitude : la différence entre les sectes ne va qu'à quelque probabilité de plus ou de moins : il n'y en a point qui ait frappé au but et jamais on n'y frappera appa-remment, tant sont grandes les profondeurs de Dieu dans les oeuvres de la nature, aussi bien que dans celles de la grace. Ainsi, vous pouvez dire à Mr Gaillard que je suis un philosophe sans entetement et qui regarde Aristote, Epicure, Des-Cartes, comme des inventeurs de conjectures que l'on suit ou que l'on quitte selon que l'on veut chercher plutot un tel qu'un tel amusement à l'esprit. (Lettre 190, mai 1681)

Eighteenth-century Epicureanism is often viewed as radical, anti-religious, and politically dangerous. But to what extent does this simplify the ancient philosophy and underestimate its significance to the Enlightenment?

Through a pan-European analysis of Enlightenment centres from Scotland to Russia via the Netherlands, France and Germany, contributors argue that elements of classical Epicureanism were appropriated by radical and conservative writers alike. They move beyond literature and political theory to examine the application of Epicurean ideas in domains as diverse as physics, natural law, and the philosophy of language, drawing on the work of both major figures (Diderot, Helvétius, Smith and Hume) and of lesser-known but important thinkers (Johann Jacob Schmauss and Dmitrii Anichkov).

La conception malebranchiste de la liberté est originale. Malebranche ne croit pas en une liberté d’indifférence absolue, c'est-à-dire en une capacité d’opérer un choix indépendamment de toute motivation. Il ne croit pas non plus que nous puissions indifféremment choisir entre deux motivations de force inégale : au moment où on se détermine, le bien le plus grand (du moins selon l’apparence) l’emporte. La liberté réside seulement dans le fait que l’on n’est pas obligé de se déterminer : nous pouvons toujours suspendre notre consentement. Cette conception est exposée à des objections que Pierre Bayle a formulées et qui tentent de la mettre en contradiction avec d’autres thèses de Malebranche : son occasionalisme, sa théorie de la création continuée, l’obscurité de l’âme à elle-même, sa théologie des voies de l’action divine. Nous discuterons ces objections et verrons si Malebranche est en mesure de leur résister.

Review Article:
Anton M. Matytsin, The Specter of Skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2016. Pp. 362; Let There Be Enlightenment: The Religious and Mystical Sources of Rationality, ed. Anton Matytsin and Dan Edelstein. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2018. Pp. 304; Anton Matytsin and Jeffrey D. Burson, The Skeptical Enlightenment: Doubt and Certainty in the Age of Reason). ‘Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment’, Liverpool University Press on behalf of the Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 2019. Pp. 236

This paper discusses the canonical contemporary reading of modern skepticism. Such reading, when associated with the Cartesian «paradigm of certainty», reduces the problem to an epistemological obstacle. However, this traditional interpretation fails to analyze the reception of modern skepticism in other writers from the same era. Especially noticeable is the case of Pierre Bayle, who in his Historical and Critical Dictionary (1696) recovers the richness and potential benefits of the specific philosophical inquiry originally proposed by Pyrrhonism. Thus, I shall argue that it is no longer possible to speak of modern skepticism as a homogeneous movement of ideas after recognizing different perspectives on skepticism at that time.

La diffusion ou la divulgation de ce document et de son contenu via Internet ou tout autre moyen de communication ne sont pas autorisées hormis dans un cadre privé. © 2017. Classiques Garnier, Paris. Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites. Tous droits réservés pour tous les pays. © Classiques Garnier RÉSUMÉ -Dans la seconde moitié du XVIII e siècle, le Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697) de Pierre Bayle était devenu le texte le plus immanquablement présent dans les bibliothèques particulières françaises. Cet article nous parle de l 'influence du Dictionnaire dans les débats savants de cette période, et examine plusieurs projets de dictionnaires concurrents qu'il met en rapport avec les arguments de Bayle. Il nous parle également des liens entre les querelles religieuses et philosophiques de l 'époque et la popularité croissante des dictionnaires en tant que format. ABSTRACT -Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique became the most widely owned text in French private libraries in the second half of the eighteenth century. This article describes the influence of the Dictionnaire on scholarly controversies in the eighteenth century, exploring various competing dictionary projects in relation to Bayle's arguments and the connection between the religious and philosophical controversies of the period and the increasingly popular dictionary format.

It is usually acknowledged that the core contribution of the Enlightenment is pri-marily twofold: the first being the introduction of reason and science as judgmental principles, and the second being the belief in the future progress of humankind as a shared destiny for humanity. This ‘modern’ reason—an exclusively human prerogative among creatures—could be applied to create a better society from the political, civil, educational, scientific, and religious points of view. What is usually less known is that for most of the Enlightenment thinkers, this philosophical and cultural step was the prerogative of European or Western-educated thinkers, which implied a gradual exclu-sion of extra-European civilizations from human progress as a natural phenomenon. Thus, with the exception of a few French libertines, the creation of a better society was due to reason and critical thinking absent in other civilizations, who could, at most, inherit this ‘rational power’ from Western education. This exclusion, which is usually attributed to the violence of the colonialist period, is already implied in the arguments of several Enlightenment thinkers. Our investigation will follow three steps: an exposi-tion of the three Western historical paradigms in which Eastern civilizations were in-serted between the 17th and 18th century; a comparison between the attitude toward China and Buddhism of two very distant philosophers of the Enlightenment—i.e. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) and Johann Jacob Brucker (1696–1770)—and a brief reflec-tion on the Enlightenment from an ‘external/exotic’ point of view that will suggest the necessity of a ‘new skeptical Enlightenment’ for inducing actual intercultural dialogue.

This is a draft of a chapter I have been commissioned to write for the Cambridge History of the Papacy on the Myth of Pope Joan. The final chapter is due at the end of the summer. The version uploaded here still has some rough edges, and the notes are a mess. (Important works of secondary literature still need adding.)

I'd be grateful for any thoughts and comments especially from medieval and Enlightenment historians, when I'm veering away from my sixteenth- and seventeenth-century heartlands.

It is worth flagging that the chapter, at 8,000 words excluding notes, is about the right length. So suggestions for lengthy additions or expansion may be received with some weariness, but all thoughts, comments, queries are welcome.

The ancient Greek philosophy of Pyrrhonian skepticism spread across a wide spectrum of disciplines in the 1600s, casting a shadow over the European learned world. The early modern skeptics expressed doubt concerning the existence of an objective reality independent of human perception. They also questioned long-standing philosophical assumptions and, at times, undermined the foundations of political, moral, and religious authorities. How did eighteenth-century scholars overcome this skeptical crisis of confidence to usher in the so-called Age of Reason?

In The Specter of Skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment, Anton Matytsin describes how skeptical rhetoric forced philosophers to formulate the principles and assumptions that they found to be certain or, at the very least, highly probable. In attempting to answer the deep challenge of philosophical skepticism, these thinkers explicitly articulated the rules for attaining true and certain knowledge and defined the boundaries beyond which human understanding could not venture. Matytsin explains the dialectical outcome of the philosophical disputes between the skeptics and their various opponents in France, the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, and Prussia. He shows that these exchanges transformed skepticism by mitigating its arguments while broadening the learned world’s confidence in the capacities of reason by moderating its aspirations. Ultimately, the debates about the powers and limits of human understanding led to the making of a new conception of rationality that privileged practicable reason over speculative reason.

Matytsin also complicates common narratives about the Enlightenment by demonstrating that most of the thinkers who defended reason from skeptical critiques were religiously devout. By attempting either to preserve or to reconstruct the foundations of their worldviews and systems of thought, they became important agents of intellectual change and formulated new criteria of doubt and certainty. This complex and engaging book offers a powerful new explanation of how Enlightenment thinkers came to understand the purposes and the boundaries of rational inquiry.

Scholarship continues to identify the Enlightenment with secularization, despite the theological tenor of much of the movement's canonical literature. This article proposes an explanation for such a dissonance, before addressing the matter more directly through the work of Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle. The claim is that scholars have been unduly dependent upon theological commentary in reaching the fixed verdict of secularization, inferring ‘atheism’ and disenchantment from the polemical utterances of a privileged orthodoxy rather than the primary sources themselves. Seen apart from such controlling anathemas, icons of the radical Enlightenment such as Spinoza and Bayle emerge as deeply spiritual thinkers, challenging the theocratic assumptions of their age with theological certainties of their own, interrogating orthodoxy with a resolutely biblical rationality. The final section suggests the continuity of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment of Voltaire, Kant and Mary Wollstonecraft with the spiritual rationalism of the seventeenth century. If so many of the Enlightenment's landmark thinkers were inspired by religious ideas, the concept of a secular modernity must be open to revision.

sono riservati. Nessuna parte di questa pubblicazione può essere fotocopiata, riprodotta, archiviata, memorizzata o trasmessa in qualsiasi forma o mezzoelettronico, meccanico, reprografico, digitale -se non nei termini previsti dalla legge che tutela il Diritto d'Autore. Per altre informazioni si veda il sito www.mulino.it/edizioni/fotocopie I lettori che desiderano informarsi sui libri e sull'insieme delle attività della Società editrice il Mulino possono consultare il sito Internet: www.mulino.it INDICE Introduzione. I paradossi di Pierre Bayle sulla religione, trecento anni dopo, di Marco Geuna e Giambattista Gori PARTE PRIMA: SOCIETÀ E ATEISMO DA HOBBES A BAYLE Religione e politica in Pierre Bayle: la «società di atei» tra mito e realtà, di Gianluca Mori Bayle e l'ateo virtuoso. Origine e sviluppo di un dibattito, di Lorenzo Bianchi Teoria scettica della politica e statuto civile dell'ateo: Hobbes e Bayle, di Agostino Lupoli Hobbes, Bayle et la médiocrité du mal, di Luc Foisneau Hobbes the Atheist and His Deist Reception, di Patricia Springborg PARTE SECONDA: I PHILOSOPHES E LA SOCIETÀ DI ATEI Montesquieu e la «necessità» della religione. Un approccio laico e comparativo al problema religioso nelle società politiche, di Marco Platania «Siamo uomini prima di essere cristiani». Religione ed Encyclopédie, di Mariafranca Spallanzani «Compelle intrare». Bayle e Voltaire tra religione e politica, di Maria Laura Lanzillo Inquietudine religiosa e relativismo critico: l'iconografia di Bernard Picart, di Luisa Simonutti 5 p. 7 41 61 81 121 145 167 199 237 257 Morale, politica e religione in alcuni testi della letteratura filosofica clandestina, di Guido Canziani D'Holbach e la società atea, di Giovanni Cristani Religione del cuore e religione della città. Rousseau, Bayle e i repubblicani inglesi, di Miryam Giargia PARTE TERZA: MORALE E RELIGIONE DA MANDEVILLE A HUME La società senza morale. Ateismo e religione nel pensiero di Mandeville, di Mauro Simonazzi Critica del fanatismo e tolleranza civile. Ramsay tra Fénelon e Saint-Hyacinthe, di Marialuisa Baldi Hutcheson nei Dialoghi sulla religione naturale di Hume, di Luigi Turco I fenomeni irregolari della natura e l'origine della religione: Hume, Smith, De Brosses, di Alfonso Maurizio Iacono Società e religione in Thomas Chalmers, di Cristina Paoletti PARTE QUARTA: UNA SOCIETÀ SENZA RELIGIONE? Kant, Bayle e l'idea di autonomia morale, di Piero Giordanetti Hobbes, Hume e la morale senza religione come cemento della società politica, di Eugenio Lecaldano Cristianesimo, ateismo e ruolo sociale della religione, di Maria Cristina Bartolomei Un possibile indulgente ateismo, di Carlo Augusto Viano 6 p. 301 323 353 393 421 449 489 503 521 541 559 581 MARCO GEUNA E GIAMBATTISTA GORI INTRODUZIONE. I PARADOSSI DI PIERRE BAYLE SULLA RELIGIONE, TRECENTO ANNI DOPO

According to most scholars, the Enlightenment was a rational awakening, a radical break from a past dominated by religion and superstition. But in Let There Be Enlightenment, Anton M. Matytsin, Dan Edelstein, and the contributors they have assembled deftly undermine this simplistic narrative. Emphasizing the ways in which religious beliefs and motivations shaped philosophical perspectives, essays in this book highlight figures and topics often overlooked in standard genealogies of the Enlightenment. The volume underscores the prominent role that religious discourses continued to play in major aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thought.

The essays probe a wide range of subjects, from reformer Jan Amos Comenius’s quest for universal enlightenment to the changing meanings of the light metaphor, Quaker influences on Baruch Spinoza’s theology, and the unexpected persistence of Aristotle in the Enlightenment. Exploring the emergence of historical consciousness among Enlightenment thinkers while examining their repeated insistence on living in an enlightened age, the collection also investigates the origins and the long-term dynamics of the relationship between faith and reason.

Providing an overview of the rich spectrum of eighteenth-century culture, the authors demonstrate that religion was central to Enlightenment thought. The term "enlightenment" itself had a deeply religious connotation. Rather than revisiting the celebrated breaks between the eighteenth century and the period that preceded it, Let There Be Enlightenment reveals the unacknowledged continuities that connect the Enlightenment to its various antecedents.

Contributors: Philippe Buc, William J. Bulman, Jeffrey D. Burson, Charly Coleman, Dan Edelstein, Matthew T. Gaetano, Howard Hotson, Anton M. Matytsin, Darrin M. McMahon, James Schmidt, Céline Spector, Jo Van Cauter

Dans plusieurs fables sur l'astrologie, La Fontaine récuse l'idée de destin et esquisse une cosmologie fondée sur le hasard. Or, il s'agit moins d'une position directement métaphysique que de l'effet d'un questionnement rhétorique et herméneutique : La Fontaine ramène le problème du destin à une réflexion sur l'interprétation, les signes et leur statut. Le Ciel est-il un texte ? Comment et pourquoi fait-on d'un événement un signe ? Quelle sémiotique déploient les astrologues ? Ces questions entrainent une analyse de l'autorité que s'arroge l'herméneute astrologue et des mécanismes par lesquels l'opinion donne sa créance à ces mauvais herméneutes. Mais il n'est pas indifférent que cette réflexion se formule par apologues, fictions dont le fabuliste prétend déchiffrer le sens de toute son autorité éthique et herméneutique. On s'en convaincra devant les perturbations que présentent ces fables : loin d'être un thème comme un autre, la question du destin et de sa lisibilité engage la rhétorique de ce genre lui-même oraculaire.

In the Huguenot refugee community in The Netherlands, known as a hotbed of the early Enlightenment, literary interest in Judaism was ubiquitous, yet actual Dutch Jews were relegated to a marginal position in the exchange of ideas. It is this paradoxical experience of cultural participation and social exclusion that a major unpublished source allows to depict. The ex-converso Abraham Gómez Silveyra (1651-1741), a merchant endowed with rabbinic education and proficiency in French, composed eight manuscript volumes of theological reflections in Spanish literary prose and poetry. This huge clandestine series, which survives in three copies, shows the author's insatiable curiosity for Christian thought. While rebutting Isaac Jacquelot's missionary activity, he fraternizes with Pierre Jurieu's millenarianism, Jacques Basnage's historiography, and Pierre Bayle's plea for religious freedom. Gómez Silveyra, however, being painfully aware of his voicelessness in the public sphere, enacts Bayle's utopian project as a closed performance for a Jewish audience.

SUMARIO


ARTÍCULOS

R. SALLES
Condicionales, tautología y analiticidad en la lógica estoica

J. C. LAURSEN
Pierre Bayle: el pirronismo contra la razón en el Commentaire philosophique

F. BAHR
Los escépticos modernos y la génesis del cogito cartesiano

N. LAVAGNINO
Salvando el abismo. Lenguaje y realidad en filosofía de la historia después de Hayden White


ESTUDIO CRÍTICO

F. Bravo
Nota crítica sobre G. Marcos y M. E. Díaz, El surgimiento de la phantasía en la Grecia clásica


COMENTARIOS BIBLIOGRÁFICOS

B. S. VAN FRAASSEN
Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective (A. Spehrs)

D. LESERRE
La comprensión del lenguaje en la Crítica de la razón pura de I. Kant (I. Beade)

R. DESCARTES
Meditaciones Metafísicas acerca de la Filosofía Primera en las cuales se demuestran la existencia de Dios y la distinción real del alma y del cuerpo del hombre (M. Marey)

G. HURTADO y O. NUDLER
El mobiliario del mundo. Ensayos de ontología (G. Satne)

J. PADILLA GÁLVEZ
Verdad y demostración (S. Schultz)

F. ANKERSMIT, E. DOMANSKA y H. KELLNER (eds.)
Re-figuring Hayden White (M. I. La Greca)


CRÓNICA

A. CASSINI
Roberto Torretti en su octogésimo aniversario

The Atelier Montaigne presents
Isabelle Moreau (IHRIM/ENS Lyon), La Paresse en héritage : Montaigne, Pascal, Bayle (Champion, 2019).
Videoconference and roundtable with Emily Butterworth (King's College London) and Emiliano Ferrari (Lyon 3/LabEx Comod).

https://univlyon3.webex.com/univlyon3/j.php?MTID=ma9d6d9aa5b5f431767b6a7028ee31540

Según afirma Hugh Trevor Roper, ningún proceso de persecución política puede ser llevado a cabo sin la connivencia explícita, o al menos la omisión, de quienes conforman una sociedad humana. Retomando esa afirmación, y aplicándola a las disputas confesionales ocurridas en Francia durante los siglos XVI y XVII, la intención de este trabajo es presentar, analizar y comprender los argumentos filosóficos de dos actores de la época que, enfrentándose a la opinión común, defendieron la libertad de la conciencia en materia de religión: Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) y Sébastien Castellion (1515-1563).

This paper traces the history of the philosophical and political justification of religious
tolerance from the late 17th century to modern times. In the Anglo-Saxon world,
John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) gave birth to the doctrine of the
separation of Church and State and to what is now called secularization. In France,
Pierre Bayle refuted, in his Philosophical Commentary (1685), the justification of intolerance
taken from Saint Augustine. Following him, Voltaire campaigned for tolerance
following the Calas affair (1763), and the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) imposed
religious freedom which, a century later, resulted in the uniquely French notion of
laïcité, which denies religion any supremacy, and any right to organize life in its name.
Equality before the law takes precedence over freedom: the fact of being a believer does
not give rise to the right to special statutes or to exceptions to the law.