Born at Le Carla, Bayle studied philosophy at Puylaurens and Toulouse before teaching at the Protestant Academy of Sedan and finally at the École Illustre of Rotterdam. He is best known for his Dictionaire historique et critique (1st ed., 1697; 2nd ed., 1702) and for several philosophical works: Pensées diverses sur la comète (1682) against superstition, Commentaire philosophique (1686–88) on religious toleration, and Entretiens de Maxime et de Thémiste (1707) on the problem of evil (to which Leibniz responded in his Theodicy). Bayle died in Rotterdam.

Cartesian themes run throughout Bayle's writings, but he devoted only three early works (ca. 1680) explicitly to elements of Descartes’ philosophy: the Dissertatio (1964–, 4:109–32), in which the account of body in terms of res extensa is defended (see extension); the Theses philosophicae (1964–, 4:132–45) on twelve diverse topics; and the Objectiones (1964–, 4:146–62) to Pierre Poiret's 1675 Cogitationes rationales, in which Poiret grounded Christian theology on Cartesian metaphysics. In several articles of his Nouvelles de la république des lettres of 1684–87 (1964–, vol. 1), Bayle also engaged in the debate between the Cartesians Malebranche and Arnauld. It is notoriously difficult to discern Bayle's intentions in these or any of his works, such that it is now common to speak of the “Bayle enigma” (see Lennon 1999). Not surprisingly, then, the literature presents various approaches to understanding the general relationship between Bayle and Cartesianism.

Paganini (2008) argues as follows that Bayle's skeptical arguments contributed to the demise of Cartesian metaphysics. In remark B of the article “Rimini” in the Dictionaire, Bayle commented on a discussion in the Second Replies. Descartes was informed that the fourteenth-century theologian Gregory of Rimini taught that God could deceive, if only to bring about a good effect. Bayle argued that Descartes’ reply effectively conceded Rimini's thesis and concluded that Descartes’ metaphysics, relying on absolute divine veracity, was thereby “ruined.” Moreover, in his discussions of the problem of evil (e.g., Dictionaire, “Manichéens” and “Pauliciens”), Bayle sought to demonstrate the impossibility of theodicy, thereby undermining Descartes’ Fourth Meditation (see error, theodicies of).