[At the beginning of the new academic year, a re-visiting of the beginnings of modern philosophy.]
I vote for Francis Bacon.
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The standard answer gives the honor to René Descartes.
Descartes’s claim to the title is based primarily on his epistemology — specifically his method of doubt. The method of doubt is both a challenge to previous, more authoritarian epistemologies and a re-invigoration of a skepticism that exercises philosophers to this day.
Bacon’s reputation is also based in epistemology — his re-introduction and expansion of inductive methods. His empiricism is also a challenge to authoritarian epistemologies and grounds much of the scientific method used by investigators to this day.
How do we decide matters such as who should be considered the founder or father of modern philosophy? Let me propose four criteria.
1. Influence on academic philosophy. Descartes’s skeptical challenges have generated a huge literature in academic philosophy. Yet a huge literature has also been generated developing empirical methods in philosophy of science along lines established by Bacon. My call: a tie between Descartes and Bacon, absent a quantitative measure of the literature.
2. Influence on philosophy as used by all thinkers. Baconian epistemology has been internalized by most modern intellectuals (especially in the sciences and social sciences) and is part of their normal professional practice, and the more sophisticated inductive methods are explicitly used as guiding principles. The hardcore Cartesian skeptical challenges are rarely used outside academic philosophical discussions. My call: Bacon.
3. The positive and the negative. Descartes’s legacy is essentially negative. He digs philosophy into a skeptical hole from which many haven’t escaped. Bacon’s legacy is essentially positive. He provides tools many have used to develop new knowledge. Clearly there is still much truth to C. P. Snow’s “two cultures” thesis, in which much of the humanities is skeptical and pessimistic while much of the sciences is progressive and optimistic. My call: Absent a quantitative measure of the literature, a tie between Descartes and Bacon.
4. Chronology. Bacon’s key works were published in the first quarter of the 17th century: The Proficience and Advancement of Learning (1605), The Wisdom of the Ancients (1619), Novum Organum (1620), and The New Atlantis (1626). Descartes’s key works were written in the second quarter of the 17th century, and some were not published until the third quarter: Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1628; published posthumously in 1684), Discourse on Method (1637), Meditations on First Philosophy (written in 1641, published in 1647), and Principles of Philosophy (1644). My call: Bacon.
So by simple philosophy math, Bacon wins by two.
Before we revise the textbooks, let me ask: Are there other criteria we should consider?
I think there’s an important feature of Descartes’s philosophy that you’re leaving out, and that if included, gives him a few points. You take the method of doubt to be Descartes’s central contribution, but we could also take the cogito and its implications as a central contribution. Descartes is a skeptic about the world external to the ego, but he’s an equally vehement anti-skeptic about the activities of the ego. That set of commitments certainly involves a false dichotomy, but if you focus on the latter half, it’s also a valuable contribution. More so than Bacon, and prior to Locke, Descartes is an unapologetic defender of the value of introspection. Think, for instance, of his defense of free will (Meditation 4) or his method of grasping the need for “rules for the regulation of the mind.” Whatever else is wrong with Descartes, that part shines through. If he had an axiom, it would be “Consciousness is identification, at least about itself.”
In that sense, Descartes is arguably one of the intellectual grandfathers of two characteristically modern inventions that depend essentially on introspection–psychotherapy and the literary genre of the novel. I don’t know if that’s enough unseat Bacon, but it’s something.
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Nicely said, Irfan. That’s an important point.
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Actually, on second thought, it’s misleading of me to say that Descartes is literally a skeptic about the external world; I really mean that he provisionally countenances that kind skepticism, but rejects skepticism about the activities of the thinking self.
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