The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers

This chapter begins with a summary of philosophy between Aristotle and the Renaissance. Durant blames the decline of philosophy following Alexander the Great on the “spirit of apathy and resignation” (108) which reigned in Greece as the Hellenistic period waned. The dueling schools of Stoicism and Epicureanism, which Durant calls “the apathetic acceptance of defeat, and the effort to forget defeat in the arms of pleasure” (108) were then appropriated by the Romans, who had no philosophic school of their own. Durant finds the Roman philosophy of Epictetus or Aurelias to be dull and depressing, although its somber spirit would find nobility when adopted by later Christian mystics.

With the fall of Rome and the rise of Christianity, the Catholic Church confined all philosophic inquiry within its doctrine. Access to Arabic translations of Aristotle helped the Scholastics reconcile philosophy with faith, but Durant finds them capable only of “subtlety, not wisdom” (116). At long last, philosophy began to bloom again as greater knowledge of the outside world prompted a new round of scientific inquiry. According to Durant, it was Francis Bacon who revived genuine philosophy in Europe after almost two millennia in relative abeyance.

Bacon was a child of Elizabethan England, a period of great dynamism and discovery. At a young age, Bacon joined the staff of the ambassador to France, which inspired a lifelong search for practical knowledge that could improve the lives of his fellow human beings. A political actor as well as philosopher, he “could not quite make up his mind whether he liked more the contemplative or the active life” (122), as some learning was designed for practical use and other for the sake of purely intellectual enjoyment.

Bacon is an Epicurean, at least insofar as he opposes the Stoics in their hostility to pleasure, and he admires Machiavelli’s moral system that cares more for the consequences of actions than their conformity to divine law. One of Bacon’s great contributions is to psychology, particularly the effects of age, friendship, and marriage, along with the different effect such factors have on men and women. Family life will help restrain the passions typical of a younger man, and good friends will learn more about themselves through their ability to confess their thoughts and feelings to one another. While opposed to political revolutions, he recognizes that their causes lie within social structures, and that the best guardian against upheaval is “an equitable distribution of wealth” (130), albeit among various classes rather than across society.

Bacon aimed to produce a corpus of philosophic knowledge across a range of subjects in a manner worthy of Aristotle, but also exceeding Aristotle in that it pointed toward a single practical goal for philosophy to achieve. Bacon originated the famous phrase “knowledge is power” (133), and literally meant that philosophic inquiry could lead to social change. One cannot achieve great things without an extensive body of knowledge, and to achieve this knowledge human beings need to overcome a mass of physical and psychological obstacles. Unearthing the secrets of nature requires an extraordinary amount of trial and error, and social mores often frustrate the blunt inquiries of science into how things really do and ought to work.

Bacon agrees with Plato on the importance of self-knowledge, while breaking from the Greek master in arguing that knowledge of self requires knowledge of others, due to the inherent sociability of human beings. This principle extended into scientific and philosophic inquiry, so that its practitioners learned through dialogue with one another and not only in their remote study. Proposing an international society of scientists and philosophers to King James I, Bacon proposed nothing less than “the victory of art over nature in the [human] race” (141).

For Bacon, philosophy had been too long in thrall to its idols, and so had failed to make progress. Conventional wisdom presents an “idol” (143) of wisdom, an image representing itself as the real thing, but is in fact only an image. People must at every moment be willing to challenge their assumptions, and be wary of new insights that confirm old suspicions. The only proper way to learn is through “induction” (147), the accumulation of data that ultimately arrives at a logical conclusion. The grand vision animating Bacon’s pursuit is displayed in The New Atlantis, an early version of science fiction in which sailors arrive at an island entirely devoted to scientific pursuits, maintaining just enough contact with the outside world to refine their knowledge considering others’ experiences.

Durant concedes that Bacon’s philosophy may not be original, and certain elements of modern science (especially Einsteinian physics) have invalidated his findings. Nevertheless, Durant finds him singular in advancing the idea of a unified science in which many fields would integrate into a single body of collective knowledge. His own life ended in sadness and obscurity, but his influence is felt among whomever believes that “everything is possible to man” (157).