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The Ethics of Motion: Self-Preservation, Preservation of the Whole, and the ‘Double Nature of the Good’ in Francis Bacon

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Francis Bacon on Motion and Power

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the appetite for self-preservation and its central role in Francis Bacon’s natural philosophy. In the first part, I introduce Bacon’s classification of universal appetites, showing the correspondences between natural and moral philosophy. I then examine the role that appetites play in his theory of motions and, additionally, the various meanings accorded to preservation in this context. I also discuss some of the sources underlying Bacon’s ideas, for his views about preservation reveal traces of Stoicism, Telesian natural philosophy, the natural law tradition, as well as late-scholastic ideas. Bacon assumes the existence of two kinds of preservation: self-preservation and preservation of the whole. The appetite through which the whole preserves itself overpowers individual appetites for self-preservation. In Bacon’s theory of motions, the primacy of global preservation – that is, the preservation of the whole – is evidenced by the way matter resists being annihilated, while self-preservation at a local and particular level is revealed through other kinds of motion. Bacon’s notion of appetite reflects a specific metaphysics of matter and motion, in which the preservation of natural bodies follows teleological patterns shared by both nature and humanity: the preservation of the whole is the highest goal, both in moral and natural philosophy. In this chapter, I argue that in Bacon’s natural philosophy different kind of things, including nature and humans, are ruled by patterns that are constitutive of correlated orders, neither of which is reducible to the other: there is no priority of the natural order over the moral, or vice versa. Thus, at a more general level, both are expressions of the same type of divinely imposed, law-like behaviour.

Translations from Latin are my own, except for Bacon’s works. Exceptions will be indicated. I would like to thank Marcelo Boeri for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bacon uses the English words conservation and preservation conterminously, and the Latin conservatio. I will use preservation to refer to all of them.

  2. 2.

    See also Bacon 1857–1874, I, 540.

  3. 3.

    See also Bacon 2000a, 77.

  4. 4.

    This parallelism is also invoked explicitly in Bacon 1857–1874, III, 194: ‘Sed cum templum sanctum ad instar mundi, mundoque ipsi quantum fieri potest parallelum et concentricum, fundandum sit, merito exemplar persequi oportet. Nam quod essentia dignum est id etiam dignum est repraesentatione’. See also Bacon 2004, 178–180. For references to the correlation between the material and the intellectual globes, see Bacon 1857–1874, I, 134; III, 584; III, 612.

  5. 5.

    The impact of the Fall--> of Adam on nature is another example of this correlation. Nature ‘falls’ with man-->, not because nature is rooted in the moral order-->, but because man and nature are correlated, a reflection of one another.

  6. 6.

    On Bacon’s ethics-->, see Wallace 1967, 142–152 and Box 1996.

  7. 7.

    See also Bacon 2000a, 136.

  8. 8.

    In Bacon 2000a, 139 this kind of good is called private or particular good.

  9. 9.

    On the history of the term suitas, see Duro 1985. I could not find --> any earlier uses of this term in the same sense as Bacon’s. As for its aftermath, Christian -->Wolff employs the same vocabulary in his classification -->of good (and evil-->), which draws upon Bacon. See Wolff 1751, 91 and 131, #114.

  10. 10.

    See Duro 1985, 56. -->This semantic --> innovation has been ignored by translators of De augmentis scientiarum, who have just rendered the entire locution as individual or self --> -good (English translation by Spedding -->, Bacon 1857–1874, V, 21) and individuel or personnel (French translation by Lasalle -->, Bacon 1799, 156) without pointing out the legal meaning of the term current in Bacon’s time.

  11. 11.

    It is also called the good of Society in Bacon 2000a, 140.

  12. 12.

    In Manzo 2013, I show that the rule of predominance of common good is in fact tacitly or explicitly assumed by many medieval and early-modern thinkers in the debate on the existence of a vacuum-->. The same holds true, more specifically, in the case of Bacon. See also Manzo 2003.

  13. 13.

    Statements like this were seen as proof of Bacon’s sincere Christian faith-->. See, for instance, the case of the Catholic monk Jacques-André Émery --> (1732–1811), who included the entire first chapter of Book 7 of De augmentis scientiarum in his compilation and translation of extracts from Bacon’s works related to religious issues (Émery 1798–1799, 15–25). On Émery’s -->vindication of Bacon as a Christian thinker against -->the Encyclopedists, see Mathews 1996, 371–372.

  14. 14.

    In the Novum organum, Book 2, Aphorism 50 (modus quartus), Bacon maintains that a lapse of time (mora) is ‘Promus et Condus Naturae’ (Bacon 2004, 434).

  15. 15.

    Jardine 1974, 112–113.

  16. 16.

    See Bacon (2004, 385, 413; 1857–1874, I, 560; 2000b, 191).

  17. 17.

    Lists of or allusions to the --> kinds of motions are to be found in Bacon (2004, 413; 1857–1874, III, 21–22, 26–27; 1857–1874, XI, 70–71; 2000b, 191; 1857–1874, I, 560; 1996, 36, 42; 108, 326).

  18. 18.

    See Bacon (2004, 412; 2000b, 196, 201, ff). Even if the lists of motions in Abecedarium novum naturae and Novum organum do not coincide, their discrepancies seem irrelevant since the motions lacking in Abecedarium can be subsumed under other motions enumerated there. As we shall see, what seems a more significant discrepancy is the way Bacon relates each simple motion to the four basic appetites.

  19. 19.

    See also Bacon (1857–1874, I, 717).

  20. 20.

    The phrase quasi perpetuo has no equivalent in the Advancement.

  21. 21.

    See also Bacon (1857–1874, I, 717; 2004, 416–417).

  22. 22.

    The acknowledgment of the possibility of exceptions to this rule of predominance (particularly denoted by the words quoted above, plerunque and quasi perpetuo) likely alludes not only to the exceptions manifested in human life-->, but also to preternatural facts. See Bacon (1857–1874, VI, 639–640; I, 497; III, 1829; 2000a, 63; 1996, 6; 98; 2004, 454–455).

  23. 23.

    Bacon 2000b, 192: ‘Itaque muniuntur corpora natura corpora ad conservationem ipsorum motibus quatuor predictis, tanquam armis defensiuis, quibus se tueantur ab annihilatione, a vacuo, a tortura, et a separatione’. The motions alluded to are antitypia, nexus, libertatis, and continuatio sui, respectively.

  24. 24.

    Bacon 2004, 385: ‘Species precipuas Motuum siue Virtutum Actiuarum’.

  25. 25.

    See Bacon (2004, 105–107; 1857–1874, III, 19–21).

  26. 26.

    See also Bacon (1857–1874, I, 610–611; III,28; 2004, 290; 1996, 274).

  27. 27.

    Wolff 1910–1913, I, 176. Fowler (Bacon 1878, 523) -->refers to Aristotle, Meteorologica, II, 8, 368a3; III, 1, 370b18- 371, a25.

  28. 28.

    In this reconstruction of the ancient -->notion of --> antitypia I am -->indebted to Jammer 1997, 23–24 and Hahm 1977, 10–11.

  29. 29.

    Plotinus, Enneades, IV, I, 26; 28 (von Arnim 1903–1905, SVF II, 315); Galenus --> , De qualitatibus incorporeis, 19.483, 13–16 (von Arnim 1903–1905, SVF II 381). It is worth noting that doxographic testimonies offer different Stoic definitions of body. Apart from the definition we have already presented, a -->narrower --> definition of body as extension in three dimensions (without antitypia) was given by Arius Didymus --> (von Arnim 1903–1905, SVF II.357), Philo (von Arnim 1903–1905, SVF II.358) and Diogenes Laertius --> (Vitae, VII.135). An alternative definition of body ascribed to the Stoics maintains that body is ‘that which either acts or is acted upon’. In fact, the notion of body as having antitypia was never attributed either to Zeno of Citium or Chrysippus. On both definitions, see Hahm 1977. On the -->doxographic controversies regarding the Stoic definitions of body and their ascriptions to members --> of early Stoicism-->, see Mansfeld 1978 and Falcon 2005, 51–54. Other -->historians suggest that the origin of the term antitypia should be looked for in --> pre-Epicurean Atomism. See Mansfeld 1978, 164.

  30. 30.

    Epicurus 1973, <24.49> 29; Plutarch, Epistola adversus Colotem, 1111e (1116d?); Sextus Empiricus, Adversus

    Pyrrhoneae hypotyposes, III, 39, 126, 152; Adversus mathematicos, I, 21, 156; X, 221–223; 239–240; 257; XI, 226.

  31. 31.

    Burley --> used this argument to --> demonstrate -->the possibility of motion in a void. This doctrine, however, did not have followers in his time. It was delivered in his commentary on the Physics, published in 1501 in -->Venice. See Grant 1981, 34. For a general survey of -->impenetrability, see Grant 1978.

  32. 32.

    On Patrizi’s notion of space and natural philosophy, see Henry 1979, 562–566; Deitz 1997 and Edelheit 2009.

  33. 33.

    Patrizi 1594, fol. 78r: ‘ -->Corporum vero antitypia, -->seu anteresis, seu dicas resistentia, unde nam fuerit? Trinam quidem dimensionem a spacio habent congenito, quod spatij primaevi, pars est quaedam. A lumine, ut sint vel lucida vel diaphana, vel etiam opaca, ut partim est ante demonstrabitur postea. A lumine, habent etiam calorem, a calore essentiam, et vires, et actiones. Antitypiam, a quonam habebunt? A re nimirum, quae resistentiam vel indere, vel inferre possit. Eam nos, fluorem, seu humorem, nominamus. Veterum multi, dixere aqua’. Other early modern auhors also discussed antitypia. William Gilbert -->, for instance, briefly mentions antitypia in the middle of an astronomical consideration in his posthumous work De mundo nostro sublunare (1651) – although it was not available to Bacon, who apparently only knew Gilbert’s De magnete (1600). See Gilbert 1661, 66: ‘Sic esto: --> fit hic Aristotelis error, crinem sive mucronem cometae esse flammam. Sit tantum luminis relatio ex refractione Solis… ut semper in adversum a Sole tendat: materiata tamen est illa via, quasi defluvium cometae, et quasi fumus egrediens, in quo refringitur lumen Solis; quae etiam ex motu in posteriora moventis laberetur. quare constat in spatio illo quocunque cometarum mucronatorum, qui post Solis occasum videntur, nullam esse renitentiam, nullam antitypian, nullum corpus est igitur vacuum-->’. Antitypia reappears later in the works of many early modern natural philosophers, including Hobbes -->, Warner -->, Glisson -->, Gassendi -->, Malebranche and Leibniz -->.

  34. 34.

    On Bacon’s corpuscularianism and antitypia as an atomic attribute, see Manzo 2001.

  35. 35.

    See also Bacon 2004, 385.

  36. 36.

    See Weeks 2007, 110–114.

  37. 37.

    See also Des Chene 1996, 49–51.

  38. 38.

    On Bacon and Telesio, see Giachetti Assenza 1980; Pousseur 1990; Margolin 1990.

  39. 39.

    In this --> exposition of Telesio’s approach to -->matter I am indebted to Schuhmann 1990, 116–120.

  40. 40.

    Telesio 1971 [1586], 65: ‘Nulla porro agendi, -->seseque generandi facultate, materia donata -->cum sit, et -->assidue a calore summam in tenuitatem, pene et in non ens agatur, et a frigore in angustius cogatur, maximeque densetur; nihil tamen eius moles, itaque nec mundo magnitudo imminui, augerive apparet unquam, quod si calori, frigorique illam, ut libet, effigendi, disponendique, non, et efficiendi, et veluti novam creandi, neque immuendi, et in non ens agendi, donata est vis’.

  41. 41.

    On Averroism--> and its influence in late medieval and early modern natural philosophy, see the classic Maier 1966, 26–52 and Des Chene 1996, 97–109.

  42. 42.

    My translation of Bacon 1996, 258: ‘transmittit, ut passivam, & tamquam ad rationem quanti potius, quam ad formam & Actionem, pertinentem’.

  43. 43.

    My translation of Bacon 1857–1874, VI, 639: “natura enim rerum omnibus viventibus indidit metum ac formidinem, vitae atque essentiae suae conservatricem, ac mala ingruentia vitantem et depellentem.”

  44. 44.

    The Latin version in De augmentis scientiarum defines this appetite as ‘receptio et fruitio rerum naturae nostrae congruentium’ (Bacon 1857–1874, I, 724).

  45. 45.

    Bacon (1857–1874, I, 722; 2000a, 139; 1857–1874, III, 229).

  46. 46.

    See also Inwood and Donini 1999, 678–680; Boeri 2012, 2013.

  47. 47.

    Cicero, De finibus --> bonorum et --> malorum, V, IX, 24: ‘Omne animal -->se ipsum diligit ac, simul et ortum est, id agit, se ut conservet, quod hic ei primus ad omnem vitam tuendam appetitus a natura datur, se ut conservet atque ita sit affectum. Ut optime, secundum naturam affectum esse possit… Ergo omni animali illud, quod appetit, positum est in eo, quod naturae est accommodatum’. See III, V, 16–17; III, VI, 20–22.

  48. 48.

    Diogenes --> Laertius, Vitae, VII, 85–86, quoted in Inwood and Donini 1999, 679.

  49. 49.

    Mulsow 1995 and 1998, 14–22. See Telesio --> 1971 [1586], 362: ‘Omnium -->spiritus, -->qualiscumque -->sit, entium, animaliumque reliquorum ritu se ipsum conservandi, propriamque operationem operandi, motus nimirum aedendi, seseque iis oblectandi, se ipsum omnino conservandi summe est appetens’.

  50. 50.

    See Clericuzio 1988, 39.

  51. 51.

    On particular and -->universal natures, with special reference to the debate on the vacuum-->, see Schmitt 1967 and Manzo 2013.

  52. 52.

    For Bacon’s references -->to Fracastoro --> see for instance Bacon 2004, 314, 332; Bacon 2000a, 93.

  53. 53.

    Mulsow 1995, 394 claims that the Stoics --> also related self-->-preservation with the preservation of the boundaries of the universe against the surrounding void.

  54. 54.

    Stoicism--> was also part of this --> tradition. See Haakonssen 1992, 884–885. On Francis Bacon and natural law, see Mc Cabe 1964.

  55. 55.

    Thomas Aquinas’ --> view in this regard is very much in keeping with -->the Stoic tradition (see Boeri 2012, 214, note 31 and 217).

  56. 56.

    Thomas Aquinas --> Summa theologiae, Ia IIae, q. 94, 2: ‘Secundum igitur ordinem inclinationum naturalium, est ordo praeceptorum legis naturae. Inest enim primo inclinatio homini ad bonum secundum naturam in qua communicat cum omnibus substantiis, prout scilicet quaelibet substantia appetit conservationem sui esse secundum suam naturam. Et secundum hanc inclinationem, pertinent ad legem naturalem ea per quae vita hominis conservatur et contrarium impeditur’. On the account of self-->-preservation in natural law -->theories, see Brett 1997, 96 and passim.

  57. 57.

    Van Drunen 2010, 134, 146, 161, 171.

  58. 58.

    On Thomas Aquinas’ influence on St. Germain, see Zuckert --> 2007, 28–29.

  59. 59.

    The Methodus studendi was published originally in 1629 as The Lawyers Light and in 1631 again as part of The English Lawyer. In this article, references will be given to the 1631 edition. On -->Doddridge, see Neustadt 1987, 42–48; Coquillette 1992, 37–38.

  60. 60.

    Conimbricenses 1594, 62: ‘constat ingenitum esse rebus omnibus sese tuendi et conservandi appetitum … Videlicet quia hunc in modum res omnes caducae ab interitu sese vindicare student’ (Part 2, Book 4, Chapter 9, q. 1, a. 3).

  61. 61.

    See Des Chene 1996, 171–177.

  62. 62.

    Conimbricenses 1594, 63: ‘unumquodque -->ens naturale ad duo conservanda obnixe contendere, nempe ad commune totius naturae, et ad suum proprium, ac peculiare bonum. Enim vero cum quaevis res Physica et ens quoddam particulare sit, si in se praecise spectetur; et simul etiam ad naturae communitatem pertineat, prout est totius universi membrum; ut quidem priori modo se habet suum privatum bonum expetit, vt posteriori commune. Quod commune quanto excellentius est, ac divinius, tanto ad ipsum vehementiori conatu aspirat’ (Part 2, Book 4, Chapter 9, q. 1, a. 3).

  63. 63.

    The commentary quotes these lines: ‘Ac mihi quidem veteres illi maius quiddam animo complexi plus multo etiam vidisse videntur, quam quantum nostrorum ingeniorum acies intueri potest, qui omnia haec, quae supra et subter, unum esse et una vi atque una consensione naturae constricta esse dixerunt; nullum est enim genus rerum, quod aut avulsum a ceteris per se ipsum constare aut quo cetera si careant, vim suam atque aeternitatem conservare possint’ (Cicero, De oratore, III, V, 20). For an English translation, see Cicero 1942: ‘And in my own view the great men of the past, having a wider mental grasp, had also a far deeper insight than our mind’s eye can achieve, when they asserted that all this universe above us and below is one single whole, and is held together by a single force and harmony of nature; for there exist no class of things which can stand by itself, severed from the rest-->, or which the rest can dispense with and yet be able to preserve their own force and everlasting existence’.

  64. 64.

    This question is beyond the scope of this paper. Bacon deals with such issues in, for instance, An Advertisement touching a Holy War (Bacon 1857–1874, VII, 28–30). On Bacon’s views on war-->, see White 1968, 86–90.

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Manzo, S. (2016). The Ethics of Motion: Self-Preservation, Preservation of the Whole, and the ‘Double Nature of the Good’ in Francis Bacon. In: Giglioni, G., Lancaster, J., Corneanu, S., Jalobeanu, D. (eds) Francis Bacon on Motion and Power. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 218. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27641-0_8

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