Historical and Critical Dictionary: Selections (Hackett Classics) download epub

The book was in excellent condition.

Excellent selection. One of my favorite books of philosophy.

I like it.

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) was a French philosopher, whose works subsequently influenced the development of the Enlightenment.

Richard Popkin’s Introduction explains, “In this day and age, can we still imagine that a biographical dictionary, a Who’s Who, could be one of the most exciting works of an age; that such a work could have summed up and exposed the Century of Genius and could have launched the Enlightenment? There has never been another work like Pierre Bayle’s ‘Historical and Critical Encyclopedia,’ and it is almost impossible to imagine today that there ever might be another such accomplishment… The work is really a ‘Summa Sceptica’ that deftly undermined all the foundations of the seventeenth-century intellectual world. The Dictionary, first published in 1697, and enlarged in the second edition of 1702, continued to grow and grow… But the headlong rush of the Enlightenment for enlightenment soon outstripped and confines of any emendation of Bayle’s Dictionary… No one man could do it by himself.”

He notes, “In the interpretation I am offering (which is in disagreement with many others, ranging from those who see Bayle as a crypto-atheist or a deist, to those who see him as an orthodox Calvinist) it is in the article ‘Bunel, Pierre’ that Bayle’s statement of faith appears… This interpretation still leaves a major problem that may be fundamental in evaluating what Bayle was REALLY asserting, namely, what extant religion best fits with Bayle’s views, or what extant religion did Bayle actually accept or believe in? A note written to a friend the day he died… says, ‘I feel that I have no more than a few moments to live. I am dying as a Christian philosopher, convinced of and pierced by the bounties and mercy of God…’ No mention is made of Jesus, of Calvinism, of Bayle’s church, of the immortality of the soul, of sin, of repentance. Was Bayle possibly not a Christian except in some vague ethical sense?... Personally, I have found the attempt to define the actual beliefs and the actual religion of Bayle quite baffling.”

Bayle wrote in his article on the biblical David, “He was alternately subject to passions and grace; a misfortune adhering to our nature ever since the sin of Adam. The grace of God guided him often; but on several occasions his passions got the upper hand, and policy silenced religion.”

In his article on Jupiter, he states, “there can be nothing more monstrous than paganism, which regarded such a god as the supreme master of all things, and which adapted to that idea the religious worship it paid to him. The Church Fathers have greatly stressed this proof of the falsity of pagan religion; and it can be said that this system was very apt to corrupt human behavior…”

He says in the article on the Manicheans, “It was fortunate that St. Augustine, who was so well versed in all the arts of controversy, abandoned Manicheanism; for he had the capability of removing all the grossest errors from it and making of the rest of it a system, which in his hands would have perplexed the orthodox.”

He is very critical of the philosopher Spinoza: “his hypothesis has been completely overthrown as has been done by even the weakest of his adversaries. It must not be forgotten that this impious man did not know that the inevitable consequences of his theory, for he made fun of the apparition of spirits, and there is no philosopher who has less right to deny it. He ought to have recognized that everything in nature thinks, and that man is not the most enlightened and intelligent modification of the universe… there are few who have understood [Spinoza’s philosophy] and have not been discouraged by the perplexities and the impenetrable abstractions that are found in it.”

Bayle explains in the “Clarifications” section at the end of the book, “I hoped in the first place that the nature of this dictionary would be considered. It is an enormous compilation, necessarily crowded with many critical details which are distasteful and tedious to the last degree for those who are not involved in such matters; and it has been necessary that I maintain in this mass of all sorts of things a dual personality, that of historian and that of commentator. There was no possible way of protecting the work from the contempt of many people, except by introducing into it many items that were unusual…. An author is therefore allowed to behave so that his book appears worthwhile to them in some respects; and if this author writes as an historian, he ought to report not only what heretics have done, but also what are the strong and weak aspects of their views… with all the impartiality of a faithful reporter.”

In the First Clarification, he notes, “it should not be considered a scandalous paradox but rather as something quite possible---that there are irreligious people who may be more strongly impelled toward a virtuous life by the springs of temperament accompanied by the love of praise and sustained by the fear of dishonor, than others are impelled by the dictates of conscience… It ought to be considered much more scandalous when it is noticed by so many people convinced of the truths of religion are yet immersed in crime.”

Even is a collection of “selections” such as this, many of the articles included are of little interest to most modern readers; and to be sure, this Dictionary contains few of the rhetorical/philosophical/scientific “fireworks” of the later Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert. Still, it is an interesting work historically, and many readers may appreciate it for other than purely “historical” reasons.

These selections from his Historical and Critical Dictionary are full of profound thoughts about the human condition, coupled with hilarious snipes at other philosophers and outlooks. His system of multi tiered footnotes is at once infuriating for its complexity, but also brilliant in the way it allows him to structurally draw distinctions and go into ever more involved tangents. I would say, however, that I prefer his "Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet". I found it both more accessible and more entertaining to read. I also prefer the format. That said, I find myself revisiting both books.

Well, he was the most widely read philosopher in France throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, so he must have said something smart. But, his fifteen minutes of fame only lasted 150 years, today's he's unknown.