At the Crossroads of Faith and Reason, An Essay on Pierre Bayle (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 93 expressions in thought as well as in other manifestations of mind and soul. Such an investigation of the typically Muslim consciousness will have to be carried out not so much by a comparison with other civilizations or religions as the ultimate standard, but rather by a search for the meaning of such expressions for the Muslims themselves, be they actively or passively involved. A final pressing question remains when we appreciate the present study: how in a given society can the freedom of human existence be brought into the open by philosophical thought ~ The task, role, or function of a philosophy entering into existential problems in a world which isstructured by religion is quite important. An investigation into the history of Muslim philosophy, as it is presented by Muslim scholars in this work and as it may be pursued in collaboration with others, is itself a step in the direction of such philosophical research. Unlver~ity of Utrecht JACQUES WAARDENBURG At the Crossroads of Faith and Reason, An Essay on Pierre Bayle. By Karl C. Sandberg. (Tucson: Univ. of Ariz. Press, 1966. Pp. x+125. $6) In recent years there have been many books and articles on Bayle suggesting that he should be re-evaluated and should be studied in terms of his 17th century context. The result of this has been a "revisionist" interpretation of Bayle, claiming that the Enlightenment reading of him as the founder of their movement, as an atheist or irreligious sceptic, does not do justice to the historical Bayle, and that he can best be understood in the light of his Calvinist milieu and the Christianscepticism of the seventeenth century. Bayle insisted he was a "true believer," a genuine Calvinist, attacking reason and elevating faith. The "revisionists"--including W. F. Barber, Harry Bracken, Craig Brush, Paul Dibon, Erich Haase, Elisabeth Lahrousse, Walter Rex, and myself--have taken his statements of his position seriously and have offered various readings of Bayle in terms of his professed fideism and his seventeenth-century milieu. Professor Karl C. Sandberg is possibly the most extreme of the revisionists in holding that Bayle was within the Calvinist position until he wrote The Dictionnaire historique et critique and that "Bayle remained religious to a great degree to the end" (p. 113). Sandberg makes his case in this small volume by a careful examination of Bayle's views up to the time of the Dictionnaire. Surveying Bayle's career and writings from 16821697 , Sandberg shows that Bayle's double conversion, his Cartesianism, his attacks on superstition, his "defense" of atheism, his arguments for toleration, his criticisms of the Catholic polemicists, and his war against the Calvinist liberals and the Calvinist orthodox fanatics, especially Pierre lurieu, can all be intelligibly seen in the context of the late seventeenth-century Calvinist world and in terms of Bayle's personal religious struggles. Throughout the development of his skeptical critique of rational philosophy and theology, his criticism of actual Christian moral practices, his critical analyses of Scripture, Sandherg argues, Bayle was still holding to a position within the Calvinist world of the seventeenthcentury French Reformed Church. After tracing Bayle's spiritual Odyssey from his double conversion in Toulouse to his life of exile in Rotterdam where he wrote the works which were to have such an effect on the next century, Sandberg asks, "Was he an orthodox believer in The Reformed Church7" and answers "that the overwhelming weight of facts indicates that Bayle at least thought himself to be an orthodox believer" (p. I08). While Sandberg has amassed an impressive array of facts, one can question some of his interpretations of them. I think the heart of the matter is reached when one asks, what might Bayle have actually believed by the lime he wrote the Dictionnaire7 Jurieu, who knew and hated him, claimed that he believed nothing at all. Sandberg, who is quite vague at the end, sees Bayle's "faith" mainly in terms of strong moral convictions. It seems to me---as I have said in my edition of selections from Bayle's Dictionary, in the article "Bayle" in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and in my reply to D. P. Walker in...