Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how Pierre Bayle was a philosopher during the late 16th and early 17th Century, and he was one of the first to see a place for secular reasoning. The paper describes how, as a contemporary of Locke and Spinoza, he combined some aspects of both. The paper discusses how while deeply religious, he saw how the use of religion to justify tolerance meant that it could also be used to justify intolerance. The paper also relates that he paralleled some of the scientists of the period who moved away from a doctrinaire church as well.

From the Paper:

"The Enlightenment age of the late 17th and early 18th Century saw the beginnings of tolerance in Europe (Israel, 1999, pp. 3-5). Two philosophers are often cited in discussions of tolerance, individual freedom of thought and secularism. These two individuals are of course John Locke and Baruck de Spinoza. While generally viewed in the shadows of these two men, ". . . no one saw clearer than he (Pierre Bayle) did that the traditional arguments for toleration did not lead one out of the vicious circle of intolerance. . ." (Forst, 2007, p. 27). Where others justified tolerance on largely religious grounds, which led..."

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