The Anglo-Dutch philosopher Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) was among the most controversial figures writing in English in the eighteenth century. His satirical exploration of the nature of human sociability and economic prosperity infuriated his contemporary critics and deeply influenced the ideas of later Enlightenment philosophes. One of the most persistent questions about Mandeville's work concerns the sincerity of his declarations of Christian piety. Mandeville is commonly identified as a deist. This thesis explores the possibility that he was an atheist. The question is examined through an analysis of Mandeville’s major influences, most notably French Jansenism, Epicureanism, Scepticism, erudite libertinism, and Dutch republicanism. Key figures that Mandeville engaged with in his writings include Pierre Bayle, René Descartes, Shaftesbury, Thomas Hobbes, Pierre Nicole, and Pierre Gassendi. In the process of discussing Mandeville’s putative atheism, the methodological problem of researching and identifying atheism in early-modern Europe is explored. / Graduate

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Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) construit sa pensée tantôt en se rapprochant d’esprits contemporains, tantôt en s’en éloignant. Pour examiner sa figure complexe, nous confrontons ses textes à ceux des écrivains de Port-Royal, tels Antoine Arnauld, Pierre Nicole et Blaise Pascal, ainsi qu’à ceux de Bossuet. Notre analyse se situe au prolongement des études ayant tenté ces comparaisons, comme l’ont fait É. Labrousse, K. Nozawa et L. Simonutti pour le débat théologique, et A. McKenna et G. Mori sur le plan philosophique. Après avoir vérifié que la théologie de Bayle et celle de Port-Royal sont également fondées sur les idées thomistes de conscience humaine et de loi naturelle, nous avons précisé que la relecture des textes de Nicole permet à Bayle de reformuler le concept thomiste d’ignorance pour proposer une forme plus radicale de tolérance religieuse : tous les hommes ont le droit de suivre leur conscience – fût-elle errante. Nous avons ensuite rapproché la pensée politique de Bayle de celle de Port-Royal ainsi que de celle de Bossuet. Bayle, Arnauld et Bossuet, partisans de l’obéissance civile au pouvoir politique, condamnent Pierre Jurieu qui réclame le droit des peuples contre les souverains, au nom de la liberté de conscience. Ils s’opposent également aux traités « monarchomaques » du XVIe siècle, dont Jurieu est héritier. Cette condamnation conduit Bayle à séparer politique et religion, ainsi qu’à s’opposer à Bossuet, qui permet à Louis XIV d’imposer aux huguenots la conversion au catholicisme, y compris par la force ; Bayle s’approche ainsi de Pascal qui n’adhère pas à l’emploi de la force pour étendre le catholicisme. / Our study is aimed at emphasizing the Catholic influence on Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)’s texts. For the purpose of arriving at sweeping interpretations, we deal with the texts of writers of Port-Royal, such as Antoine Arnauld, Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal, and those of Bossuet. We follow and develop Bayle studies that have attempted these comparisons such as E. Labrousse, K. Nozawa, A. McKenna, G. Mori. At first, we confirm that the theology of Bayle and Port-Royal is based on Thomistic ideas of human conscience and natural law. And the re-reading of the texts of Nicole allows Bayle to rephrase the Thomistic concept of ignorance to propose a radical form of religious tolerance : all men have the right to follow their conscience – even if it is errant. Our next approach is toward Bayle’s political thought. For this purpose, we compare his texts with Catholic texts. Bayle, Arnauld and Bossuet, advocates of civil obedience to political power, condemn Pierre Jurieu, who demands peuples right of rebellion against a monarch in the name of freedom of conscience. They are also opposed to French Huguenot theorists at the end of the sixteenth century named « Monarchomachs », who offered to Jurieu intellectual justifications for resistance to religious persecution. This condemnation leads Bayle to separate political domain from religious domain, contrary to Bossuet’s view, that allows Louis XIV to impose on the Huguenots the conversion to Catholicism, including by force. In this context, Bayle is similar to Pascal, who disapprove of using the political force to extend Catholicism.

This study examines the constructions and uses of the figure of Ovid in French writing of the second half of the seventeenth century, and explores how they were modulated by contemporary aesthetic and cultural concerns. As the influence of Ovid’s poetry made itself felt in various ways – in the mythopoeia of the Sun-King and the fashionable galant salons – interest in the story of Ovid’s life blossomed. This, I argue, was facilitated by new forms of ‘life-writing’, the nouvelle historique and histoire galante, and fuelled in unexpected ways by the escalating querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. Research has been done on the reception and influence of Ovid’s poetry in this period, but little attention has been paid to the figure of Ovid. This thesis offers a new perspective and, informed by recent renewed interest in life-writing, argues that analysis of biographical depictions is vital for establishing a coherent picture of the uses of Ovid in the ‘Grand Siècle’. I explore a diverse range of textual descriptions of Ovid (Vies; prefatory material attached to translations and editions of his work; correspondence; dialogues des morts; biographical dictionaries and historical novels), organized according to their different, though intersecting, ways of writing about this poet. He was constructed as a historical figure, an author, a fictional character and a ‘parallèle’ – a point of identification or contrast for contemporary writers. Through close analysis of a multi-authored corpus, this thesis identifies and examines two instances of paradox: though an ancient poet, Ovid became emblematic of 'Moderne' movements and was used to explore aspects of galanterie; and, though his creative work was mobilized in the service of royal propaganda, Ovid, as a figure for the exiled poet, was also used to express anxieties about the sway of power and the machinations and pitfalls of the world of the court.

L’elaborato analizza la ricezione del pensiero di Origene di Alessandria (c. 184-c.253) nell’opera del teologo arminiano Jean Le Clerc (1657-1736), soffermandosi in particolare sulla concezione origeniana della libertà e sulle questioni che vi sono annesse. Tale analisi consente anche di chiarire alcune pratiche argomentative e dinamiche intellettuali, soprattutto riguardanti i dibattiti religiosi ed interconfessionali, nella seconda metà del XVII secolo. L’elaborato è diviso in tre sezioni. La prima, di carattere introduttivo, mira ad indagare le premesse epistemologiche di Le Clerc, nonché la sua relazione con le auctoritates religiose ed intellettuali del passato. La seconda sezione prende in esame le citazioni dirette di Origene presenti nella vasta produzione di Le Clerc, come pure i suoi rimandi all’opera dell’Alessandrino e al suo pensiero, consentendo in questo modo di delineare un quadro preciso dell’Origene letto e reinterpretato da Le Clerc. La terza sezione restringe infine il campo d’indagine allo sguardo che Le Clerc porta sulla dimensione più propriamente teologica di Origene ed in particolar modo su quel nodo di concetti che ruota attorno al tema della libertà umana (peccato originale, grazia e predestinazione, il problema del male). Questo studio mostra come, malgrado l’indubbia, e talvolta malcelata, simpatia per Origene, Le Clerc non possa essere definito tout court un ‘origenista’, dal momento che la sua visione epistemologica, scritturale e teologica lo distanzia da una acritica e piena adesione al pensiero dell’Alessandrino. / The present thesis analyses the reception of the thought of Origen of Alexandria (c. 184-c. 253) in Jean Le Clerc (1657-1736). Its particular focus is on Origen's conception of freedom and the theological doctrines related to it. The goal of this thesis is to uncover, through Le Clerc's use of Origen, some of the argumentative practices and the intellectual dynamics of the time, in particular in religious, especially inter-confessional, debates. This thesis is divided into three main parts. The first part has mainly an introductory character and looks at the epistemological assumptions of Le Clerc and his relationship with intellectual and religious authorities of the past. The second part reviews the various ways in which Le Clerc quoted, referred to or otherwise made use of the thought or the name of Origen in his vast production. This part provides a first result in that it frames, in general, Le Clerc's reception of Origen. This step is, at the same time, also preparatory for the material contained in part three. In the third part, only the material is considered which is strictly related to Origen's idea of freedom and the related theological doctrines of original sin, grace/predestination, and the problem of evil. The result of this analysis, as it appears form the examination of argumentative practices in the previous sections, is that Le Clerc was no simple "Origenist" but neither was he was fully uncommitted to the Origenian cause. A full commitment to Origen, despite this strong sympathy, was still hindered by Le Clerc's epistemological, scriptural and theological outlook.

This thesis presents a new study of Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1696), with special reference to Bayle’s polemical engagement with the theologian Pierre Jurieu. While recent years have seen a surge of interest in Bayle, there is as yet no consensus on how to interpret Bayle’s ambiguous stance on reason and religion, and how to make sense of the Dictionnaire: although specific parts of the Dictionnaire have received much scholarly attention, the work has hardly been studied as a whole, and little is known about how the Dictionnaire was influenced by Bayle’s polemic with Jurieu. This thesis aims to establish a new method for reading the Dictionnaire, under a dual premise: first, that the work can only be rightly understood when placed within the immediate context of its production in the 1690s; second, that it is only through an appreciation of the mechanics of the work as a whole, and of the role played by its structural and stylistic particularities, that we can attain an appropriate interpretation of its parts. Special attention is paid to the heated theological-political conflict between Bayle and Jurieu in the 1690s, which had a profound influence on the project of the dictionary and on several of its major themes, such as the tensions in the relationship between the intellectual sphere of the Republic of Letters and the political state, but also the danger of religious fanaticism spurring intolerance and war. The final chapters demonstrate that Bayle’s clash with Jurieu was also one of the driving forces behind Bayle’s reflection on the problem of evil; they expose the fundamentally problematic nature of both Bayle’s theological association with Jurieu, and his self-defence in the second edition of the Dictionnaire. The title of this thesis comes from Herman Melville’s novel: ‘Pierre, or the Ambiguities’.