Does Pierre Bayle’s argument for toleration, given the universality of hypocrisy, succeed?
For the last century or more, in many nations, toleration came to be such an accepted civic principle that we can forget how hard fought its modern achievement was, and how readily it can disappear. Arguably its greatest proponent, Pierre Bayle, is widely unknown today, whereas he was the hero of the French enlighteners, led by Voltaire, who called him “the wisest mind”, and Diderot, who argued that wherever freedom is loved, Bayle would be remembered.
Amongst the polytheistic pagans, whose gods were not jealous, toleration was a given. For the Christian millennium following Augustine in the West, the faith or ‘credo’ (I believe) that a person professed was widely considered decisive. Morality, and thus civic order, came to be thought to require a unanimity of correct or orthodox belief in ways the pagans would have found exotic.
Atheism, so widespread today, was widely considered anathema in this period of European history, on moral as well as metaphysical grounds. Even in John Locke’s 17th century defence of limited toleration, for instance — which is still sometimes lauded today — the line is drawn around atheists. Such people cannot be trusted to keep oaths, to hold trusts, or to follow any higher motivations than their own egoistic desires —even Voltaire at…