Early modern · 1647–1706
Who influenced Pierre Bayle?
Influences and legacy
His Dictionnaire's relentless footnotes made doubt a scholarly virtue.
Pierre Bayle was influenced by Michel de Montaigne, and went on to influence David Hume. That is 2 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Attributed to Louis Ferdinand Elle the Younger, Public domain See the whole map
Who was Pierre Bayle?
Pierre Bayle was a French Huguenot who fled persecution to the Dutch Republic in 1681. His Historical and Critical Dictionary, published from 1697, hid many of its boldest ideas in long footnotes and in articles on harmless-looking subjects.
He argued for religious toleration, and his sceptical philosophy fed the Enlightenment; he is seen as a forerunner of the Encyclopédistes. Leibniz wrote his Theodicy in reply to him, and Voltaire called him the greatest dialectician who ever wrote.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced Pierre Bayle?
1 direct influence on this map, earliest first.
- Michel de Montaigne 1533–1592
Who did Pierre Bayle influence?
1 thinker on this map draws directly on Pierre Bayle.
- David Hume 1711–1776
The line of teachers behind Pierre Bayle
The longest documented line of influence ending at Pierre Bayle runs 12 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
Two steps away from Pierre Bayle
Indirect influences
- Through Michel de Montaigne: Cicero, Lucretius, Seneca, Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, Erasmus
The second generation
- Through David Hume: Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham
Contemporaries of Pierre Bayle
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of Pierre Bayle, with no direct line between them.
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646–1716
- Nicolas Malebranche 1638–1715
- John Locke 1632–1704
- Baruch Spinoza 1632–1677
- Anne Conway 1631–1679
- Giambattista Vico 1668–1744
- Blaise Pascal 1623–1662
- Margaret Cavendish 1623–1673
Pierre Bayle by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 1
- Direct followers
- 1
- Thinkers upstream
- 34
- Thinkers downstream
- 109
- Wikipedia languages
- 54 — #25 of 36 among early modern philosophers
- Card rarity
- Epic
Questions about Pierre Bayle
- Who influenced Pierre Bayle?
- Michel de Montaigne.
- Who did Pierre Bayle influence?
- David Hume.
- When did Pierre Bayle live?
- 1647–1706. The map files Pierre Bayle under the early modern period.
- How rare is the Pierre Bayle card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on Pierre Bayle in 54 languages, which makes it an Epic card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More early modern philosophers
- René Descartes 1596–1650
- Immanuel Kant 1724–1804
- Voltaire 1694–1778
- Adam Smith 1723–1790
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712–1778
- Niccolò Machiavelli 1469–1527
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646–1716
- John Locke 1632–1704