Libertinism: Philosophy and Writing
René Pintard in his fundamental study Le libertinage érudit dans la première moitié
du XVIIe siècle already highlighted the difficulty in distinguishing between the
illustration of a sincere fideism and that of a strategic fideism, expressed in order to
disguise otherwise risky affirmations. The authors that Pintard defines as “erudite
libertines” of the seventeenth century, a period when, like everyone else, even
atheists and sceptics died “well confessed and having received Holy Communion”,
were masters of hypocrisy by necessity. The same also went for the thought of the
following century, the century of Reason and the Enlightenment, in which freedom of