Abstract
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.
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Notes
- 1.
Thomas M. Lennon, Reading Bayle (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 15.
- 2.
José Raimundo Maia Neto. “Academic skepticism in early modern philosophy.” Journal of the History of Ideas 58.2 (1997): 199–220.
- 3.
José R. Maia Neto, “Bayle’s Academic Skepticism,” in James E. Force and David S. Katz (eds.), Everything Connects: In Conference with Richard H. Popkin: Essays in his Honor (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 263–76.
- 4.
Thomas M. Lennon, “What kind of a skeptic was Bayle?” Midwest studies in philosophy 26.1 (2002): 258–279.
- 5.
Gianluca Mori, Bayle philosophe (Paris: Honoré champion, 1999). See especially chapter 5.
- 6.
Pierre Bayle, Dictionaire historique et critique (DHC), fifth edition (Amsterdam, Leyde, La Haye, Utrecht, 1740), “Chrysippe,” rem. G, 169b. All citations of the Dictionaire below will follow the standard format: “DHC” followed by volume (I-IV), article and remark (if applicable), page number, column (a or b, if applicable). All French-to-English translations in this paper are mine.
- 7.
DHC IV, 610.
- 8.
Pierre Bayle, La cabale chimerique, chapter XI, in Pierre Bayle, Oeuvres diverses (La Haye, 1737), tome II, 656a.
- 9.
Maia Neto, “Bayle’s Academic Skepticism,” 272.
- 10.
DHC III, “Pyrrhon,” rem. B, 732a.
- 11.
Maia Neto, “Bayle’s Academic Skepticism,” 273.
- 12.
Plínio J. Smith argues that Bayle’s philosophical method goes beyond reporting to include informing, explaining, understanding, assessing, and judging. See “Bayle and Pyrrhonism: Antinomy, Method, and History,” in Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century: Enlightenment, Lumières, Aufklarüng, eds. Sébastien Charles and Plínio J. Smith, 19–30 (Dordrecht : Springer, 2013), especially 28–30. Todd Ryan builds on the elements of assessment and judgment in “Ceticismo e Cartesianismo em Pierre Bayle” in Silva Filho, W. J. and Smith, P. J. (eds.), As consequências do ceticismo (São Paulo: Alameda Editorial, 2012).
- 13.
For presentation and analysis of the argumentation of the Pensées diverses see P.-F. Moreau, “Les sept raisons des Pensées diverses sur la comète,” in O. Abel and P.-F. Moreau, Pierre Bayle: la foi dans le doute (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1995), 15–30; and Michael W. Hickson, “Reductio ad malum: Bayle’s Early Skepticism about Theodicy,” Modern Schoolman 88 (3/4), 201–221, especially 207–213.
- 14.
The best presentation and analysis of the original and complex argumentation of the Commentaire philosophique is John Kilcullen, Sincerity and Truth: Essays on Arnauld, Bayle, and Toleration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 54–105.
- 15.
For an elaboration of this argument, see Michael W. Hickson, “Theodicy and Toleration in Bayle’s Dictionary,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 51:1 (2013), 49–73.
- 16.
DHC III, “Pyrrhon,” rem. A, 731a-b.
- 17.
DHC III, “Pyrrhon,” rem. B, 732a.
- 18.
DHC II, “Carnéade,” remark B, 59a.
- 19.
To my knowledge the first modern collection of essays in English devoted to the epistemology of disagreement in general (rather than to disagreements about particular topics like religious beliefs or taste or ethical beliefs) is Richard Feldman and Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Disagreement has been a central topic in Brazil for half a century, since Oswaldo Porchat gave his talk in 1968 on “The Conflict of Philosophies.” See Plínio J. Smith and Otávio Bueno, “Skepticism in Latin America,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/skepticism-latin-america/(last accessed March, 2016).
- 20.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Scepticism (Outlines), edited by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) I.iv, 4. I am claiming that Sextus defines Pyrrhonism in terms of the presentation of disagreements, but it is more accurate to say that he defines it in terms of the presentation of oppositions among things: in particular, oppositions of appearances to appearances, of appearances to judgments, and of judgments to judgments. Only the last of these is properly speaking a rational disagreement. But the former oppositions can easily be conceived as disagreements by imagining a human advocate taking up the case of, say, each of the opposing appearances, and arguing that it is true to reality. In this way the opposition, for example, of the appearance of the world to fish, and the appearance of the world to humans, can be converted into a rational disagreement over the true appearance of the world. Oppositions are the material of possible disagreements, and these latter have an important, and well-documented role in Pyrrhonian scepticism (see Diego Machuca, “The Pyrrhonian Argument from Possible Disagreement,” in Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie 93: 148–161). For a detailed case that Pyrrhonian scepticism is principally concerned with the presentation of disagreements, see Markus Lammenranta, “The Pyrrhonian Problematic,” in John Greco (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 9–33. Another author who defines Pyrrhonian scepticism in terms of disagreement is Benjamin Morison: “So, a Skeptic is someone who has the ability to find, for any given argument in favour of a proposition P, a conflicting argument (i.e., one whose conclusion is a proposition which cannot be true together with P – call it P*) which is equally convincing.” See “Sextus Empiricus,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/sextus-empiricus/(last accessed March, 2014).
- 21.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines, I.xii, 10. (tr. Annas/Barnes.)
- 22.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines, I.xv, 41. (tr. Annas/Barnes.)
- 23.
There is much more that can be said about the similarities between the uses of disagreement by the Pyrrhonians and Academics. See, for example, Plínio J. Smith, “Bayle and Pyrrhonism: Antinomy, Method, and History,” 23–24. In what follows, however, I focus mainly on the differences.
- 24.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum (ND) and Academica, translated by H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library 268 (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 2005) I.v, 15.
- 25.
Cicero, ND I.v, 15 (tr. Rackham).
- 26.
Cicero, Academica II.iii, 475 (tr. Rackham).
- 27.
As we will see, the central questions and subject matter treated in the two works is the same. Moreover, Bayle discusses ND over the span of three chapters (v–vii) right at the outset of CPD, and then frequently thereafter.
- 28.
ND III.xl, 383 (tr. Rackham).
- 29.
A classic paper on the topic is Arthur Stanley Pease, “The Conclusion of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum,” In Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association (Ginn and Company, 1913), 25–37. An excellent and more recent treatment is Joseph G. DeFilippo, “Cicero vs. Cotta in De Natura Deorum,” Ancient Philosophy 20, no. 1 (2000): 169–187.
- 30.
Foucher, Dissertations sur la recherche de la verité, contenant l’histoire et les principes de la philosophie des Academiciens avec plusieurs réflexions sur les sentiments de M. Descartes (Paris : 1698), I.ii, 12.
- 31.
Foucher, Dissertations I.vi, 30
- 32.
Foucher, Dissertations II.i, 31
- 33.
Foucher, Dissertations, 144
- 34.
Foucher, Dissertations, 143.
- 35.
Foucher, Dissertations, 114.
- 36.
Foucher, Dissertations, 123.
- 37.
Montaigne, “Apology for Raymond Sebond,” in The Complete Essays of Montaigne, translated and edited by Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), 372.
- 38.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines, III.xxxii, 216. (tr. Annas/Barnes.)
- 39.
“Atheists, without a single exception, would sincerely espouse this thesis along with the orthodox: There is a first cause that is universal, eternal, that exists necessarily, and that should be called God. Everything is fine up to that point; nobody would bother to quibble on these points. There are no philosophers who invoke the name of God in their system more often than do the Spinozists” (CPD I, ch. XX; OD III, 214a).
- 40.
CPD XI (OD III, 205a); English translation from Cicero, Pro Plancio, translated by N.H. Watts, Loeb Classical Library 158 (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 1923), chapter iv, 417.
- 41.
CPD XII (OD III, 206a). This citation applies to both quotations in the paragraph.
- 42.
CPD XX (OD III, 215a).
- 43.
CPD XX (OD III, 215b); Cicero, Academica II.iii, 475–77 (tr. Rackham).
- 44.
CPD XX (OD III, 215b).
- 45.
Cicero, Academica II.iii, 475 (tr. Rackham).
- 46.
CPD XXIII (OD III, 237a)
- 47.
See Mori, Bayle philosophe, 217–236; Jean-Luc Solère, “Bayle, les théologiens catholiques et la rétorsion stratonicienne,” in Antony McKenna and Gianni Paganini (eds.), Pierre Bayle dans la République des Lettres : Philosophie, religion, critique (Paris : Honoré champion, 2004), 129–170. Though limited space allows me to focus only on Mori’s and Solère’s readings, the reader is also encouraged to consider a third interpretation by Kristen Irwin : “La philosophie comme méthodologie : la conception sceptico-rationaliste de la raison chez Bayle,” in José R. Maia Neto and Hubert Bost (eds.), Kriterion : Revista de Filosofia, L :120 (Julho a Dezembro 2009), special issue on Pierre Bayle, 363–376, and a fourth interpretation by Plínio J. Smith, “Bayle e os impasses da razão,” in José R. Maia Neto and Hubert Bost (eds.), Kriterion : Revista de Filosofia 120: 377–390.
- 48.
See Mori, Bayle philosophe, 218–19.
- 49.
CPD CXLIX (OD III, 400b).
- 50.
See CPD LXXXV (OD III, 312b).
- 51.
Mori, Bayle philosophe, 229–230.
- 52.
Mori is referring to the article “Pyrrhon,” rem. B, where Bayle shows the conflict between core theological doctrines, like the Trinity, and rational first principles, such as “three things equal to a fourth are all equal to one another.”
- 53.
Mori, Bayle philosophe, 234.
- 54.
Mori, Bayle philosophe, 235.
- 55.
Mori, Bayle philosophe, 236.
- 56.
See Bayle, Entretiens de Maxime et de Thémiste, volume 1, chapter 5 (OD IV, 15).
- 57.
CPD 107 (OD III, 337a–b).
- 58.
The relativity of evidence is the crux of Bayle’s last debate with Jean Le Clerc, and gets an entire chapter of Bayle’s last work devoted to it. See Entretiens de Maxime et de Thémiste, volume 1, chapter 5 (OD IV, 15–16). For an analysis of the importance of the relativity of evidence in Bayle’s philosophy, especially concerning the problem of evil, see Michael W. Hickson, “Belief and Invincible Objections: Bayle, Le Clerc, Leibniz,” Studia Leibnitiana (forthcoming).
- 59.
See Solère, “Bayle, les théologiens catholiques et la rétorsion stratonicienne,” especially 134–168.
- 60.
Solère, “Bayle, les théologiens catholiques et la rétorsion stratonicienne,” 137.
- 61.
Solère, “Bayle, les théologiens catholiques et la rétorsion stratonicienne,” 137.
- 62.
Solère, “Bayle, les théologiens catholiques et la rétorsion stratonicienne,” 137.
- 63.
The principle appears numerous times in Bayle’s writings. See, for example, CPD 106 (OD III, 333b): “We cannot blame a person for not heeding to an objection that he is able to retort; for any objection that undermines the objector’s position as effectively as it undermines the upholder’s doctrine proves too much, and for that reason, proves nothing.”
- 64.
Solère, “Bayle, les théologiens catholiques et la rétorsion stratonicienne,” 170.
- 65.
Plínio J. Smith argues for much the same conclusion as the one I’ve drawn here: Bayle uses the method of “antinomy” as Smith calls it in order to arrive at probable belief. See “Bayle and Pyrrhonism: Antinomy, Method, and History,” 25.
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Hickson, M.W. (2017). Disagreement and Academic Scepticism in Bayle. In: Smith, P., Charles, S. (eds) Academic Scepticism in the Development of Early Modern Philosophy. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 221. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45424-5_14
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