Gianni Paganini : De Bayle à Hume

This book is based on the conviction that understanding Pierre Bayle's philosophy requires placing it in the context of the great debates of the century. Scepticism and rationalism were not incompatible, as long as the former demanded critical reason and the latter involved research that rejected all dogmatism. The notion and method of hypothesis gained ground, promoting tolerance and sparking the polemic against the spirit of system. David Hume was one of Bayle's major readers. From the Pyrrhonian phase of the Treatise to the academic phase of the First Enquiry, Hume progressed from rejecting hypotheses to making increasingly daring conjectures in the study of body-mind relationships and in the criticism of experimental theism advanced in the Dialogues. This approach reveals the radical aspects of both Bayle's and Hume's philosophies, without oversimplifying one as sceptical and the other as empirical.