Pierre Bayle e il futuro: un'antropologia del tempo tra profezia e passioni

This article examines Pierre Bayle’s conception of the future through an analysis of the relationship between prophecy, passions, and temporal experience. Starting from Bayle’s critique of the metaphysical understanding of time, it argues that his philosophy opens the way to an anthropology of temporality, centred on the ways human beings perceive and experience the future. Drawing on the Pensées diverses sur la comète and the Dictionnaire historique et critique, the article investigates prophecy not primarily in terms of its truth or falsity, but in terms of its efficacy. By mobilising passions such as hope and fear, prophetic discourse acts upon the present and may contribute to bringing about the very events it predicts. This performative dimension reveals the temporally stratified character of human passions, whose different rhythms and durations constitute what may be described as a “geology of the passions”. The future thus emerges not as a temporal dimension separate from the present, but as one of the multiple temporal layers that constitute it. Finally, the article shows how Bayle’s critique of religious prophecy exposes the political implications of appropriating the future, opposing the religious claim to a single, predetermined future with the plurality of possibilities embedded in the present.