Essays - Softcover

Along with Shakespeare's works, Bacon's "Essays" is the supreme achievement of the English Renaissance. Philosopher, statesman, author, Bacon made all knowledge his province, and in the "Essays" is to be found more worldly wisdom than in any other book. "My essays come home, to men's business and bosoms." And Pope penned the epitaph, "If parts allure thee think how Bacon shined, The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." As terse as Emerson is expansive, Bacon's "Essays" are perhaps the most truly Classical (in spirit) prose in the English language. Fans of the Leo Strauss school should have a fieldday reading between the lines of the essays "On Atheism" and "On Superstition"; for the rest of us, nobody can come away from even one of these essays without gaining invaluable insights. Though Bacon is rightly heralded for the radical newness of his pragmatic methods, he is steeped in history--those mindful of Napoleon's dictum that history is the only true philosophy will certainly respond enthusiastically to Bacon's approach. From the post-Machiavellian insights of "Of Empire" to the pre-Enlightenment ethics of "Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature", one will find in reading Bacon's prose what the youth of Athens must have found in following Socrates: the presence of a benevolent, worldly-wise, supremely rational mind determined to show you the order of the world.

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution. Bacon has been called the creator of empiricism. His works established and popularized inductive methodologies for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method, or simply the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today. Bacon was knighted in 1603, and created both the Baron Verulam in 1618 and the Viscount St. Alban in 1621; as he died without heirs, both peerages became extinct upon his death. He famously died by contracting pneumonia while studying the effects of freezing on the preservation of meat.