17
Montaigne also characterizes reason itself and the human understanding as sources of
illusions.
42
For the same reason, it seems to us that Plato could not be regarded as the source
of this doctrine — unless by virtue of irony or some skeptical reading. It is true that, in
The advancement of learning (1605), Bacon explicitly refers to Plato’s Allegory of the
Cave in order to illustrate how personal expressions and habits engender everlasting
mistakes and false opinions, and offer, therefore, a kind of sketch of the forthcoming
idola specus. But he stresses, in a footnote, that he did not have the intention of giving
these considerations the meaning Plato himself gave to the metaphor.
43
On the other
hand, although he admits in the
Novum organum that this philosopher should be held
responsible for the introduction of acatalepsia, he takes him as a model of the class of
“superstitious” philosophers.
44
Finally, in line with these considerations, though Bacon
set the idols created by human nature against the ideas exclusively found in divine
understanding,
45
it is worth remembering that he never employs the term idolum in the
ordinary sense of the word, as “false gods”,
46
not to mention his insistence on the
distinction between natural science and theology.
47
If it is worth following the
see them). O God, what fallacies and miscalculations we would find in our wretched science! Either I am quite
mistaken or our science has not put one single thing squarely in its rightful place, and I will leave this world
knowing nothing better than my own ignorance...” Also Sanchez regards traditional philosophical explanations as
fictions, as, for instance, when he criticizes the Platonic identification of knowing and remembering: “[...] But with
apologies to this otherwise brilliant thinker, this is a quite baseless fiction (leve admodum figmentum) not
supported by experience or by rational argument — like many other dreams he dreamed concerning the soul, as I
shall demonstrate in my Treatise on the Soul.” (SANCHEZ, 1988, 17)
42
“I call reason our ravings and our dreams, under the general dispensation of Philosophy who maintains that even
the fool and the knave act madly from reason, albeit from one special form of reason” MONTAIGNE (1993), p.
94 (translation slightly changed)
43
Cf. Sp. I, 396. According to Spedding, Bacon adds marginally to the Allegory: “missa illa exquisita parabolae
subtilitate” (leaving aside the subtleties of this allegory)
44
See respectively I, §67; I §65
45
N.O. I, §23, Sp. 60
46
As remarked by Spedding (cf. Sp I, p. 89). Yet there seem to be three exceptions noted by LE DOEUFF (1985, p.
43), whose authority is, nevertheless, doubtful, as she herself recognizes.
47
See for instance Sp. 132, I, §§65, 68. Le Doeuff presumes that the doctrine of idols contains a hidden theological
sense. (cf. op. cit. p. 43) However it seems to us that her interpretation fails as it tries to project an “epistemo-
18
indications given by the author himself, would the elements mentioned above not be
safer and philosophically more relevant by pointing out the affinities between the
doctrine of the idols and skepticism?
However, there are long-standing problems upon which these speculations seem to
depend, and that might be crucial to the development of our analysis: what are the
skeptical sources that Bacon really employed? How did he understand them? Without
exhausting the theme, we intend here to suggest some ideas that might be useful for a
deeper approach.
Firstly, though the problem of determining the exact sources of Bacon’s text is
particularly delicate (amongst other reasons because, in line with the literary codes of
that period, he never identifies them), a text that we already mentioned reveals that
Bacon is, to some degree, quite aware of the diversity of the skeptical sources, and even
differentiates sceptici and academici. Besides, however much he tends, in general, to
treat these skeptical approaches together, according to the conceptual bias of his own
criticism, there are texts in which he takes into account some differences that tell those
schools apart. In aphorism 67 of Novum organum, after a brief account of the position
of those who professed acatalepsia, which was introduced by Plato against the Sophists
and then transformed into a tenet by the New Academy, he writes:
and though their’s is a fairer seeming way than arbitrary decisions, since [these
philosophers] say that they by no means destroy all investigation, as Pyrrho and the
Ephetics, but allow of some things to be followed as probable, though of none to be
maintained as true...
48
theologial” status on the Baconian concepts (like “hope”), since it conflicts with the distinction Bacon clearly
wants to keep between science and theology. (ibid, p. 38, 42) This does not mean that we could not recognize some
aspects in Bacon’s philosophical reflexion as being completely in harmony with theological themes invoked by
him, so long as we take care not to confuse these two domains that he himself keeps apart.
48
N.O. I, § 67, IV 69, slightly modified; cf. I, 178: “[...] Quae [acatalepsiam tenere] licet honestior ratio sit quam
pronuntiandi licentia, quum ipsi pro se dicant se minime confundere inquisitionem, ut Pyrrho fecit et Ephetici, sed
habere quod sequantur ut probabile, licet non habeant quod teneant ut verum...”