Religious Controversy and Historical Methodology in Pierre Bayle's Critique Générale

Religious Controversy and Historical Methodology in Pierre Bayle's Critique Générale PDF Author: Jeffrey Bruce Robin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Calvinism
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Famous for his Dictionnaire historique et critique, Pierre Bayle (1547-1706) is best known as the sceptical father of Enlightenment thought. Although considered to be an atheist since the time of Voltaire, his biography reveals the likelihood of his having had a Christian outlook, at least until the last years of his life. Since about 1960 scholars have shown his Calvinist ideology to exist in his writings, particularly those predating the Dictionnaire historique et critique. An early, lessor known work, the Critique generale de l'Histoire du calvinisme reflects his Calvinist outlook. Composed to refute the Histoire du calvinisme written by the Jesuit Louis Maimbourg (1610-1686), who denounced the Protestant Reformation and justified the coercive measures of Louis XIV against the Huguenots, it contains the one of the first Protestant compositions of the Reformation as an historical phenomenon. More importantly, it contains the first mention and elucidation of historical pyrrhonism, an historiographic concept that Bayle derived from his readings of the Libertines, especially Francois de La Mothe le Vayer (1588-1672). Bayle's historical pyrrhonism is considered to be the foundation of modern historical criticism. Armed with historical pyrrhonism and an exacting dialectic, Bayle refuted Maimbourg so successfully that the name Maimbourg became synonymous with bad history, in the process helping to define the essential qualities of the historian for the eighteenth century.

Religious Controversy and Historical Methodology in Pierre Bayle's Critique Générale

Religious Controversy and Historical Methodology in Pierre Bayle's Critique Générale PDF Author: Jeffrey Bruce Robin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Calvinism
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Famous for his Dictionnaire historique et critique, Pierre Bayle (1547-1706) is best known as the sceptical father of Enlightenment thought. Although considered to be an atheist since the time of Voltaire, his biography reveals the likelihood of his having had a Christian outlook, at least until the last years of his life. Since about 1960 scholars have shown his Calvinist ideology to exist in his writings, particularly those predating the Dictionnaire historique et critique. An early, lessor known work, the Critique generale de l'Histoire du calvinisme reflects his Calvinist outlook. Composed to refute the Histoire du calvinisme written by the Jesuit Louis Maimbourg (1610-1686), who denounced the Protestant Reformation and justified the coercive measures of Louis XIV against the Huguenots, it contains the one of the first Protestant compositions of the Reformation as an historical phenomenon. More importantly, it contains the first mention and elucidation of historical pyrrhonism, an historiographic concept that Bayle derived from his readings of the Libertines, especially Francois de La Mothe le Vayer (1588-1672). Bayle's historical pyrrhonism is considered to be the foundation of modern historical criticism. Armed with historical pyrrhonism and an exacting dialectic, Bayle refuted Maimbourg so successfully that the name Maimbourg became synonymous with bad history, in the process helping to define the essential qualities of the historian for the eighteenth century.

Essays on Pierre Bayle and Religious Controversy

Essays on Pierre Bayle and Religious Controversy PDF Author: Walter Rex
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940103561X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
The solitary and erudite figure of Pierre Bayle occupies a position of particular interest in French letters; we are pleased to recognize in his thought the germ of the ideas which reached their fulfillment in the eighteenth century. His own age does not seem to have been quite ready to receive him. Forced into exile by the Catholics, he was censured and harassed by the Protestants in Holland. It is to be expected that his outspoken enemies would have declared him a danger to religion and morality; yet to his more moderate contemporaries, too, he was sometimes a "problem," and one senses an occasional reserve toward him even in his remaining friends. As for the general public, the Nouvelles de la Republique des lettres may indeed have received the "universal applause" Des Maizeaux said it had, yet there was voluminous criticism also. His marvelous Dictionary, which probably achieved the widest circulation of any of his works during his lifetime, also elicited the most attack, censure and discontent. Moreover, though Bayle had earned fame, he did not have in the eyes of his contemporaries particularly of those in France - the importance which he has for us today. Other figures seemed still grander than he in the closing decades of the seventeenth century: in philosophy and metaphysics, the e normous system of Malebranche, the last significant attempt in France to establish a synthesis of Christianity and reason, attracted far more admiration, or criticism, than Bayle.

The Specter of Skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment

The Specter of Skepticism in the Age of Enlightenment PDF Author: Anton M. Matytsin
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421420538
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Enlightenment confidence in the power of human reason was earned by grappling with the challenge of philosophical skepticism. 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.

The History of Scepticism : From Savonarola to Bayle

The History of Scepticism : From Savonarola to Bayle PDF Author: St. Louis (Emeritus) Richard H. Popkin Professor of Philosophy Washington University
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198026716
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
This is the third edition of a classic book first published in 1960, which has sold thousands of copies in two paperback edition and has been translated into several foreign languages. Popkin's work has generated innumerable citations, and remains a valuable stimulus to current historical research. In this updated version, he has revised and expanded throughout, and has added three new chapters, one on Savonarola, one on Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, and one on Pascal. This authoritative treatment of the theme of scepticism and its historical impact will appeal to scholars and students of early modern history now as much as ever.

Masters Abstracts International

Masters Abstracts International PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 960

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Pierre Bayle: The Influence of Protestant Religious Controversies on His Early Work

Pierre Bayle: The Influence of Protestant Religious Controversies on His Early Work PDF Author: Walter Edwin Rex (3d.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : French literature
Languages : en
Pages : 1030

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Book Description
Bound typescript carbon copy draft of a dissertation concerning the influence of religion on the works of Pierre Bayle, a French philosopher. Inserted througout the volume are numerous loose handwritten pages of edits and notes made by the author, possibly used for a later version.

The History of Scepticism

The History of Scepticism PDF Author: Richard H. Popkin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199880409
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
This is a thoroughly revised and expanded edition of Richard Popkin's classic The History of Scepticism, first published in 1960, revised in 1979, and since translated into numerous foreign languages. This authoritative work of historical scholarship has been revised throughout, including new material on: the introduction of ancient skepticism into Renaissance Europe; the role of Savonarola and his disciples in bringing Sextus Empiricus to the attention of European thinkers; and new material on Henry More, Blaise Pascal, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, G.W. Leibniz, Simon Foucher and Pierre-Daniel Huet, and Pierre Bayle. The bibliography has also been updated.

Revolution as Reformation

Revolution as Reformation PDF Author: Peter C. Messer
Publisher: University Alabama Press
ISBN: 081732075X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Essays that explore how Protestants responded to the opportunities and perils of revolution in the transatlantic age Revolution as Reformation: Protestant Faith in the Age of Revolutions, 1688–1832 highlights the role that Protestantism played in shaping both individual and collective responses to revolution. These essays explore the various ways that the Protestant tradition, rooted in a perpetual process of recalibration and reformulation, provided the lens through which Protestants experienced and understood social and political change in the Age of Revolutions. In particular, they call attention to how Protestants used those changes to continue or accelerate the Protestant imperative of refining their faith toward an improved vision of reformed religion. The editors and contributors define faith broadly: they incorporate individuals as well as specific sects and denominations, and as much of “life experience” as possible, not just life within a given church. In this way, the volume reveals how believers combined the practical demands of secular society with their personal faith and how, in turn, their attempts to reform religion shaped secular society. The wide-ranging essays highlight the exchange of Protestant thinkers, traditions, and ideas across the Atlantic during this period. These perspectives reveal similarities between revolutionary movements across and around the Atlantic. The essays also emphasize the foundational role that religion played in people’s attempts to make sense of their world, and the importance they placed on harmonizing their ideas about religion and politics. These efforts produced novel theories of government, encouraged both revolution and counterrevolution, and refined both personal and collective understandings of faith and its relationship to society.

The Great Contest of Faith and Reason

The Great Contest of Faith and Reason PDF Author: Karl C. Sandberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781331857242
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Excerpt from The Great Contest of Faith and Reason: Selections From the Writings of Pierre Bayle Toward the end of his life, Pierre Bayle characterized himself as one who had taken part in the "great contest of faith and reason." No phrase could more accurately describe the generation during which he wrote and thought (1680-1706), for beneath the apparent stability of the French classical age and the apparent order of the reign of Louis XIV, the Enlightenment was preparing, the arms to be used by the Encyclopedists against organized religion were being forged, and two contrary modes of thought were contesting for the minds of the intellectual community of Europe. It was a crucial period in Western thought during which the Age of Faith passed into the Age of Reason. Faith was belief in the creeds and traditions of Christianity, in a divine Providence which intervened in the affairs of the world, in a God of miracles, and in eternal rewards and punishments. The mind possessed by faith was unafraid of mysteries, the incomprehensible, even on occasion the contradictory, for all objects of belief were founded on the revealed Word of God wherein Christians found the sure answers to the questions of existence. Doctrinal differences between confessions did not change the essential image of faith, for all Christians thought alike on one point - all ultimately referred their queries to a divine authority for final answer. Since the time of St. Augustine faith had ruled as a queen over the intellectual life of Europe. Reason occupied the servants' quarters and had no other role than to defend the dogmas of the faith. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Essays on Pierre Bayle and religious controversy. [With a portrait and a bibliography.].

Essays on Pierre Bayle and religious controversy. [With a portrait and a bibliography.]. PDF Author: Walter Rex
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : fr
Pages : 271

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Book Description