Michael W. Hickson

Pierre Bayle’s 1686-88 Commentaire philosophique (CP) is widely recognized as one of the first and most radical pleas for universal religious toleration in the West (Zagorin 2003, 240-88). It also has a reputation for being a notoriously difficult text to interpret. The main interpretive issue with the CP is that the second part (CP II) seems to undermine the first part (CP I) entirely: what begins as the work of a Rationalist seems to end as the work of a Skeptic. After demonstrating the immorality of persecution, the work goes on to demonstrate that any person who is sincerely convinced they must persecute indeed has the moral obligation to persecute. The article explores two approaches that aim to address the interpretative paradoxes present in this text by Bayle, advocating for an intermediate position between the Paradoxical and Coherent readings.

In this paper I first sketch José R. Maia Neto’s case that Bayle was an Academic sceptic and Thomas Lennon’s case that this reading helps to explain the Bayle enigma. Then I raise several problems for the Academic interpretation of Bayle as it has thus far been presented by these two authors. I will then expand and defend the Academic sceptical interpretation of Bayle by applying it to the particular case of Bayle’s most controversial philosophical work, the Continuation des pensées diverses sur la comète (CPD), of 1705. It is on the basis of this work that Gianluca Mori rested the bulk of his atheistic interpretation of Bayle, which has been in turn the starting point of much of the Bayle scholarship of the past decade. My thesis is that the CPD is a work of Academic scepticism, that Bayle himself invites this interpretation early in the CPD, and that this interpretation both undermines Mori’s atheistic reading of the work, while also explaining that reading’s plausibility.

In this essay I argue that chess is not a game.?I begin by arguing the narrower point that chess is not a game in the sense of 'game' developed by Bernard Suits.?Chess is not a Suitsian game because chess lacks a prelusory goal.?Chess lacks a prelusory goal, which is a goal that is identifiable before a game is played, because no checkmate position is knowably achievable before chess is played.?Checkmate is a postlusory discovery about chess, not a prelusory goal of chess, and chess consequently has more in common with mathematics and physics than it has in common with darts, sprints, and lawn bowling. Various objections are answered.

Did Bayle write the Avis aux réfugiés? Although the long debate over this question might not be over, we are convinced that strong probability supports Gianluca Mori's position that Bayle was indeed its sole author. We are also convinced, however, that the significance that Mori assigns to Bayle's authorship gets it exactly the wrong way around, for while Mori is right that the Avis is not only consistent but also representative of the views espoused by Bayle in his subsequent work (indeed, as we see it, throughout all his work), those views are not, as Mori claims, intended to be subversive of Christianity, indeed, of all religion, but supportive of it.

Pierre Bayle’s theory of religious toleration has received much attention over the past three centuries, yet there is still little consensus surrounding the precise logic of Bayle’s argument, and even less consensus concerning whether that argument is successful or perhaps utterly inconsistent. One of the central themes in the literature concerns the role of skepticism in Bayle’s argument for toleration. Some argue that Baylean toleration is based entirely in a non-skeptical morality that is in turn based in conscience, while others argue that Baylean toleration requires a foundation of skeptical doubt. In this paper I will offer an interpretation of Bayle’s argument for toleration as it is offered in the Ninth Letter of the Nouvelles lettres critiques (1685), and I will show that skepticism plays an essential role in the argument.

Theodicy and Toleration Seem at first glance to be an unlikely pair of topics to treat in a single paper. Toleration usually means putting up with beliefs or actions with which one disagrees, and it is practiced because the beliefs or actions in question are not disagreeable enough to justify interference. It is usually taken to be a topic for moral and political philosophy. Theodicy, on the other hand, is the attempt to solve the problem of evil; that is, to explain the origin of suffering and sin in a way that does not make God a moral cause of those evils.1 While theodicy concerns the notions of good and evil, and could therefore be considered a moral topic, historical and contemporary discussions of it have ..

Pierre Bayle is perhaps most well-known for arguing in his Dictionary (1697) that the problem of evil cannot be solved by reason alone. This skepticism about theodicy is usually credited to a religious crisis suffered by Bayle in 1685 following the unjust imprisonment and death of his brother, the death of his father, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But in this paper I argue that Bayle was skeptical about theodicy a decade earlier than these events, from at least the time of his Sedan philosophy course (1675–77). I then argue that both the Various Thoughts on the Comet (1683) and Philosophical Commentary on Luke 4:23 (1686–88), which are usually read as treatments of superstition and toleration respectively, are works that also closely engage the problem of evil and demonstratethe skepticism of Bayle toward theodicy

In the Dedicatory Letter of the Meditations, René Descartes claims that he will offer a proof of the soul’s immortality, to be accomplished by reason alone. This proof is also promised by the title page of the first edition of the Meditations, which includes the words “in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated.” But in the Synopsis, and later in his replies to objections, Descartes gives a more nuanced account of the possibility of proving immortality and whether an attempt is even to be found in the Meditations. To confuse matters further, the title page of the second edition no longer mentions a demonstration of immortality but promises only to prove the distinction between body and soul. The question arises, therefore, whether the Meditations contains a purely philosophical demonstration of the immortality of the soul.