The Philosophy Career and Ideologies of Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon has been one of the most famous philosopher s during the last 400 years. The range of his interests is very wide. There are dominating such philosophical and social themes as history, government, politics, law, science, ethics, religion, as well as gardens, health, parents and children in his works. The main writing that expresses variety of his interests is his Essays, originally published in 1597, and enlarged twice before his death. These short essays, often no longer than one page, raise the major problems and give a noticeable look into the thinking of that period. For instance, his essay Of Revenge presents the notion of revenge that was common in these times and dominated in Elizabethan drama. Francis Bacon s Essays contain the rules on men, on his life and behavior, on pleasures and their uses, and on great subjects influencing people fate such as truth and death. The sentences are brief, impersonal, practical, but also witty and lively, so that some sayings have almost a proverbial meaning, such as Man fear death as children fear to go into the dark. Francis Bacon s Essays are full of sentences, expressing author s opinion towards the described things. He never writes about them individually but only collectively. The narrator is like a teacher who suggests the young men how to arrange their lives and their careers within practical and moral evaluation. There are no mentioned any particular people names in his Essays, except for the Biblical, mythological or other famous heroes (Pilate, Ulysses, Saturn, Plutarch, Augustus Caesar). Often Francis Bacon is compared to William Shakespeare and one of his character s Hamlet.  Both Bacon and Hamlet raise many philosophical questions, not every – day life worries, such as unwashed dishes or dirty clothes. They look in the life more deeply and raise other problems. Fr. Bacon believes that people are the servants of nature. The author says that knowledge is based on experiences and that the truth is not got from somebody. Francis Bacon s Essays got not only positive, but the negative reviews as well. For example, it is said that William Blake has thrown Bacon s book away and noted that these essays are Good advice for Satan s kingdom. It even can be said that the result was more important to the author than the means used to reach the aim. That is why Bacon s attitude towards some subjects may sometimes seem to be egoistic.

Bacon s essays usually have an interesting beginning that focuses reader s attention. Then it is followed by a series of practical evidences. These evidences include quotations and references from classical texts and the Bible.  For example, in the essay Of Truth , he points out some Biblical scenes:  What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer ; another scene:  it being foretold that when Christ cometh, he shall not find faith upon the earth. Many of the essays are made up of extracts, taken and combined from his other works, and put together into a new whole. He usually paraphrases the quoted authors in another way, for instance, Lucretius On the Nature of Things: It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth. Therefore, many famous people Latin sayings are used in Bacon s Essays: Illi mors gravis incubat, qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur sibi (from Seneca, Thyestes). It seems that Francis Bacon is trying to include all experience, all knowledge, in these brief texts. In his essay Of Death , Bacon focuses attention to the art of dying; in the essay Of Studies , he writes about practical process of learning.

The essay Of Truth raises the problem of the difficulty in defining lies. It is difficult to decide whether marriage is a good or a bad idea in the Bacon s essay Of Marriage and Single Life. On the one hand, the author says that unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants , but on the other hand, certainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity and single men are more cruel and hard-hearted. Some of Bacon s essays expresses the author s attitude to religion. In the essay Of Superstition he claims that atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation, all which may be guides to an outward moral virtue, though religion were not. In his essays Bacon expresses the abstract ideas in the ordinary objects. Thus, Men in great place are thrice servants, Fortune is like the market, Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. Bacon’s homosexuality is known from the two seventeenth century writers, John Aubrey and Sir Simon D’Ewes. In his Autobiography, Simon D’Ewes says of Bacon, “Nor did he ever, that I could hear, forbear his old custom of making his servants his bed-fellows so to avoid the scandal that was raised of him”. Francis Bacon’s essay Of Friendship confines itself to relations between men. His Of Beauty discusses only male examples. It is noticeable that in his essays the word men is found very often, and the author usually refers to male, not to female. Loren Eiseley in his book about Francis Bacon The Man Who Saw Through Time remarks that Bacon: ” more fully than any man of his time, entertained the idea of the universe as a problem to be solved, examined, meditated upon, rather than as an eternally fixed stage, upon which man walked.” Bacon s essays discuss not individual, but state values. He concerns the whole sphere of knowledge and claims that it is useful to the individual and beneficial to society not paying attention at politic or religion attitudes. Moreover, the narrator recognizes the need for laws and rules. He believes that human and natural world have to be observed, but not imagined. In many respects Francis Bacon can be called as one of the most outstanding and leading figure in the development of English thinking.