Pierre Bayle as a Teacher of Philosophy

Abstract

As a teacher of philosophy at the Protestant Academy of Sedan (1675–1681), Pierre Bayle composed a course arranged according to the usual quadripartite schema of the curriculum, logic, ethics, physics, metaphysics. Bayle’s Systema totius philosophiae, however, was not an ordinary textbook in philosophy. Instead of being predetermined by the curriculum requirements, its inner structure was strictly commanded by an original perspective on philosophical training in the post-Cartesian period. The central objective was to teach a ‘disputational’ physics, leading by the use of the logical patterns of Scholastic dialectic to the destruction of the Aristotelian legacy in natural philosophy. Taking into account the context and genesis of Bayle’s course of philosophy, the present paper outlines the methodological decision supporting its composition. The originality of Bayle’s academic introduction to natural philosophy, it notes, does not consist only in applying the Scholastic style of argumentation to defend anti-Scholastic physical principles. For Bayle, in addition to being the most valuable ally in the promotion of the mechanical philosophy, the technical framework furnished by Scholastic logic is able to satisfy a ‘conceivability’ criterion of Cartesian inspiration.