The Political Philosophy of Francis Bacon is a remarkable contribution to the study of modernity. Laurence Berns uniquely centers Bacon’s thought on foreign policy, clarifying and deepening the great thinker and statesman’s overall philosophy: the “Baconian project” of joining together knowledge and power in order to extend the bounds of human empire over nature.
In this posthumously-edited version of his dissertation, Berns reveals how Bacon understood his scientific-technological project to surpass both the classical thinkers and Machiavelli in wisdom and ambition. He gives clear accounts of both the many successes of Bacon’s modern project, and the many problems that arise because of the increase in humanity’s scientific-technical knowledge. For those interested in understanding the political philosophy of one of the founders of modern science, along with coming to terms with some of the philosophical problems associated with that science, Berns’s book is indispensable.
Laurence Berns (1928–2011) was Richard Hammond Elliott Tutor emeritus at St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD. His BA and PhD, both from University of Chicago, culminated in his dissertation on Francis Bacon jointly supervised by the prominent international relations theorist Hans Morgenthau and the prominent political philosopher Leo Strauss, and the basis for our present volume. Berns’s Politics, Nature, and Piety: On the Natural Basis of Political Life, ed. Alex Priou (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2022) contains fifteen interrelated essays on Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Bacon, Hobbes, Adam Smith, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger et al. Berns is also co-translator, with George Anastaplo, of Plato’s Meno (Focus Philosophical Library / Hackett, 2004). At the time of his untimely death, Berns was completing a translation of Aristotle’s Politics; and a Festschrift, The Companionship of Books: Essays in Honor of Laurence Berns, ed. Alan Udoff, Sharon Portnoff, and Martin D. Yaffe (Lexington Books, 2012), was being compiled in his honor.
Nathan Dinneen (BA and MA, University of North Texas; PhD, Northern Illinois University) is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rochester Institute of Technology. His research and teaching interests focus on the intersection of political theory and international relations, often with an emphasis on the politics associated with science and technology. His journal publications have appeared in International Studies Quarterly; Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought; Environmental Politics; Perspectives on Political Science; Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy; and Politics and the Life Sciences.
Martin D. Yaffe (BA, University of Toronto; PhD, Claremont Graduate Center) is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at University of North Texas. His scholarly inquiries concern political philosophy and Jewish thought. He is author of Shylock and the Jewish Question (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) and of Leo Strauss on Moses Mendelssohn (University of Chicago Press, 2012); co-translator of Thomas Aquinas, Literal Exposition on the Book of Job (Scholars Press/Oxford University Press, 1989); editor of Judaism and Environmental Ethics: A Reader (Lexington Books, 2001); and translator of Benedict Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise (Focus Philosophical Library / Hackett, 2004). He is also co-editor of Emil Fackenheim—Philosopher, Theologian, Jew (Brill, 2008); The Companionship of Books: Essays in Honor of Laurence Berns (Lexington Books, 2012); Reorientation: Leo Strauss in the 1930s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Civil Religion in Modern Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Tocqueville (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020); and Emil Fackenheim’s Post-Holocaust Thought and its Philosophical Sources (University of Toronto Press, 2021).
