ABSTRACT
Kierkegaard’s connection with the French philosopher Pierre Bayle will not be remembered as a very strong or intense one. All in all, the way the Dane dealt with the French philosopher has two main characteristics. On the one hand, he makes use of Bayle’s famous Historical and Critical Dictionary, of which he owned a German copy. On the other hand, he occasionally refers in his notebooks to Leibniz’s famous discussion with Bayle on the problem of theodicy, while commenting upon his reading of Leibniz’s chief work, Essais de théodicée (1710). Shedding some more light on this (rather instrumental) relation between Kierkegaard and Bayle cannot be done without first providing some more information on this skeptical thinker and the discussions he was involved in, or without shedding some more light on his most important work. In investigating the relation between Kierkegaard and Bayle, I can fall back on Niels Thulstrup’s article, “Kierkegaards Benyttelse af Bayle,” which up to now is the only article that directly treats Kierkegaard’s relation to the French philosopher.1
