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Politics and science: Francis Bacon and the true greatness of states*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2010

Markku Peltonen
Markku Peltonen
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
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Abstract

The main aim of the article is to question the widely held view that Francis Bacon's different writings form a single great project. His numerous writings on the greatness of states were not part of his scientific programme. Since Bacon's scientific writings do not provide us with the context in which we should place his texts on the greatness of states, the attempt is made to place them in their contemporary political context. These texts, it is argued, addressed the issue of the union of England and Scotland as well as the question concerning England's possible intervention in the European war in early 1620s. Several scholars have also claimed that, in accordance with Bacon's scientific project, his idea of the greatness of states was an essentially modern programme. Nevertheless, the article attempts to show that as far as his writings on civic greatness are concerned Bacon's moral and economic ideas could be classified as classical republican. James Harrington's analysis of Bacon offers a historical point of departure for reading of his writings on the true greatness of states.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 279 - 305
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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104 The issue of king's power occurred towards the end of TGKE where Bacon remarked that ‘it is in the power of Princes, or Estates, to adde Amplitude and Greatnesse to their Kingdomes’. This was done ‘by introducing such Ordinances, Constitutions, and Customes, as we have now touched’. Essayes, p. gg.

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107 History of the reign of Henry VII, in Works, VI, p. 95; TGKE, in Essayes, pp. 90–3Google Scholar.

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111 Advancement of learning, in Works, III, p. 313Google Scholar. For Bacon's source see Wolff, Emil, Francis Bacon undseine Quellen (Berlin, 1913), II, pp. 27–8Google Scholar. Cf. Considerations touching a war with Spain, in Letters, VII, pp. 482–3, 495Google Scholar.

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116 TGKE, in Essayes, p. 95.

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123 Essentially the same argument was used e.g. by Craig, Thomas, De unione regnorum Britanniae tractatus, ed. Terry, C. Sanford (Edinburgh, 1909), pp. 329–53, especially pp. 330–1, 344, 351–2, 437–45Google Scholar.

124 Bacon in parliament 17.2.1606/7, in Letters, III, p. 309Google Scholar.

125 TGKE, in Essayes, p. 94; De augmentis, VIII, iii, in Works, v, p. 83Google Scholar.

126 Of nobility, in Essayes, p. 41. See also TGKE, in Essayes, p. 92. Cf. Digges, Thomas, Foure paradoxes, pp. 89–90Google Scholar.

127 Maxims of the law, in Works, VII, pp. 343, 345Google Scholar. Cf. De augmentis, VII, i, in Works, v, pp. 7–15Google Scholar; A view of the differences in question betwixt the King's Bench and the Council in the Marches [1607], in Letters, III, p. 379Google Scholar; Character of Julius Caesar, in Works, VI, pp. 341–5Google Scholar.

128 Essayes, pp. 89–90. Cf. Advancement of learning, in Works, III, pp. 278–9, 310Google Scholar; Of fortune, in Essayes, p. 123. Onini, , Bacone e Machiavelli, pp. 109–17. See, however, Of wisedome for a mans selfe, in Essayes, pp. 74–5Google Scholar.

129 Charge touching duels, in Letters, IV, p. 401; Of honour and reputation, in Essayes, p. 165Google Scholar.

130 Bacon to the Earl of Essex, n.d. [1599], in Letters, II, p. 131Google Scholar.

131 Bacon to George Villiers, 12.8.1616, in Letters, VI, p. 6Google Scholar.

132 Advancement of learning, in Works, III, p. 456Google Scholar. Cf. De augmentis, VII, ii, in Works, v, p. 18; Of honour and reputation, in Essayes, p. 165Google Scholar.

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135 Reading on the statute of uses, in Works, VII, p. 407Google Scholar. See in general Clark, Stuart, Francis Bacon: the study of history and the science of man. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge (1970)Google Scholar.

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138 The refutation of philosophies, in Farrington, Benjamin, Tht philosophy of Francis Bacon, p. 115Google Scholar; I have modified Farrington's translation, see the original, in Works, III, p. 569Google Scholar. Cf. Advancement of Inning, in Works, III, p. 335Google Scholar; Charge touching duels, in Letters, IV, p. 404Google Scholar. See in general Fischer, Kuno, Francis Bacon of Vtrulam. Realistic philosophy and its age (London, 1857), p. 288Google Scholar.

139 Cf. Marwil, , Trials of counsel, especially pp. 57–8, 66–70, 94–7, 105, 123–4, 134–5, 173Google Scholar.

140 De augmentis, VI, iii, in Works, IV, p. 455Google Scholar. For Bacon's conception of rhetoric see e.g. Wallace, Karl R., Francis Bacon on communication and rhetoric or: the art of applying reason to imagination for the better moving of the will (Chapel Hill, 1943)Google Scholar; idem, ‘Bacon's conception of rhetoric’, in Historical studies of rhetoric and rhetoricians, ed. Howes, Raymond F. (Ithaca, 1961), pp. 114–38Google Scholar; Harrison, John L., ‘Bacon's view of rhetoric, poetry and imagination’, The Huntington library quarterly, xx, (1957). 107–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

141 Tinkler, John F., ‘The rhetorical method of Francis Bacon's History of the reign of Henry VII’, History and theory, xxv (1987), 17–34Google Scholar. For a different interpretation see Berry, Edward I., ‘History and rhetoric in Bacon's Henry VII’, in Seventeenth-Century prose. Modem essays in criticism, ed. Fish, Stanley E. (New York, 1971), pp. 281–308Google Scholar. It is worth noting that in Certain considerations touching the plantation in Inland, in Letters, IV, p. 120, Bacon used the common argument of deliberative rhetoric declaring that ‘[a]ll men are drawn into actions by three things, – pleasureGoogle Scholar, honour, and profit.’

142 Steadman, John M., ‘Beyond Hercules: Bacon and the scientist as hero’, Studies in literary imagination, IV (1971), 3–47Google Scholar; cf. Wiley, Margaret L., ‘Francis Bacon: induction and/or rhetoric’, Studies in literary imagination, IV (1971), 65–79, who found extensive similarities between rhetoric and Bacon's new inductionGoogle Scholar.

143 De augmentis, in Works, IV, p. 434Google Scholar. Aristotle, , Nicomachean ethics, 1094b26–8Google Scholar.

144 De augmentis, in Works, IV, pp. 457–8Google Scholar.

145 Advancement of learning in Works, III, p. 411Google Scholar.

146 Of the colours of good and evil, in Works, VII, p. 77Google Scholar.

147 Valerius Terminus, in Works, III, p. 223Google Scholar; Of the interpretation of nature, in Letters, III, p. 84Google Scholar; Of honour and reputation, in Essayes, p. 164. It is worth pointing out that Bacon was ready as the occasion required to change even the hierarchy of honourable civil actions. An offer to the king of a digest to be made of the laws of England, in Letters, VII, p. 358Google Scholar; Observations on a libel, in Letters, I, p. 157Google Scholar.