Beyond Conscience: Judaism in the Philosophy of Pierre Bayle

Interpretations of Pierre Bayle’s attitude to Judaism differ enormously, mirroring the more broadly divided nature of recent Bayle scholarship. It is meaningless, this essay argues, to categorise Bayle as either an ‘antisemite’ or a ‘philosemite’. Jews occupy a uniquely anomalous and complicated place in his work because they are figure centrally in his explorations of the philosophical question that most preoccupied him: the inescapable incommensurability of faith and reason. The ensnarement of Jews and Judaism is here investigated across four key areas: Bayle’s approach to the Old Testament (or Jewish Bible); his coverage of early modern Jews in his Dictionnaire; the place of Judaism in his arguments for toleration and the rights of conscience; and the persistence of Judaic themes in his most intensely contested late writings.