Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), le philosophe de Rotterdam, Philosophy, Religion and Reception: Selected Papers of the Tercentenary Co

This book contains 15 essays by philosophers, theologians and historians from the Netherlands, France, Italy, England and the United States on Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), the French Protestant who found refuge in Rotterdam just before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). From the early 1680s onward, Bayle published a series of seminal works, culminating in his Dictionaire historique et critique (1697), that is generally regarded to have served as the ＂arsenal＂ of the Enlightenment. Over the last few decades, Bayle has been rediscovered as one of the key authors of the early Enlightenment, but experts have found it extremely difficult to come to any agreement concerning his ultimate position, most notably concerning the relationship between faith and philosophy. In this volume both Bayle’s philosophy and his theological views are assessed as well as his impact on the Enlightenment and beyond.

Contributors include: Hubert Bost, Hans Bots, Wiep van Bunge, Justin Champion, Jonathan Israel, Eric Jorink, Lenie van Lieshout, Antony McKenna, Gianni Paganini, Marie-Hélène Quéval, Todd Ryan, Adam Sutcliffe, Rob van der Schoor, Theo Verbeek, and Jan de Vet.

Wiep van Bunge, PhD. (1990) in Philosophy, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, is Professor in the History of Philosophy at the Erasmus University. His publications include From Stevin to Spinoza (Brill, 2001). He (co-)edited Disguised and Overt Spinozism around 1700 (Brill, 1996) and The Early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic (2003).

Hans Bots, PhD. (1971), University of Nijmegen. Since 1976 professor in Nijmegen in the History of Intellectual Relations between the West-European Countries in the Early Modern Period. Author and editor of many publications on the history of the Republic of Letters, learned correspondences and journalism of the 17th and 18th centuries. He coedited Les Grands intermédiaires culturels de la République des Lettres (Paris: Champion, 2007).