I found Lawrence Casse's comments on recent Descartes scholarship very
helpful. I also found myself in agreement with this assessment of his:
>Because they do not know how to read Descartes, the real
>influence of Bacon as the spiritual predecessor of
>Descartes is not understood. Bacon is today neglected
>and ignored in philosophy departments... The neglect of
>Bacon is particularly striking in Heidegger given
>his emphasis on technology as the consumation of modern
>metaphysics.
As Descartes' Baconianism becomes more evident, Heidegger's own account
of the origins of modernity comes to seem more incomplete. On the other
hand, it would be interesting to subject Bacon himself to a Heideggerian
reading. I suspect there would be a number of interesting themes that
would emerge from Bacon's "art of interpreting nature," but I'm not
aware of anyone who has undertaken a study along these lines.
Such a study would no doubt need to include an examination of the
"other" school of Greek physics--not the eidetic physics of Aristotle,
but the atomic physics of Democritus and Epicurus. Bacon sometimes
seems to think of his project as one of reviving this physics while
ordering it to a new end (the conquest of nature). It would be
interesting to see an interpretation of ancient atomic physics as a
variant manifestation of the ontology of presence--but again, I'm not
aware of anyone who has done this.
-- Phil Miller
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helpful. I also found myself in agreement with this assessment of his:
>Because they do not know how to read Descartes, the real
>influence of Bacon as the spiritual predecessor of
>Descartes is not understood. Bacon is today neglected
>and ignored in philosophy departments... The neglect of
>Bacon is particularly striking in Heidegger given
>his emphasis on technology as the consumation of modern
>metaphysics.
As Descartes' Baconianism becomes more evident, Heidegger's own account
of the origins of modernity comes to seem more incomplete. On the other
hand, it would be interesting to subject Bacon himself to a Heideggerian
reading. I suspect there would be a number of interesting themes that
would emerge from Bacon's "art of interpreting nature," but I'm not
aware of anyone who has undertaken a study along these lines.
Such a study would no doubt need to include an examination of the
"other" school of Greek physics--not the eidetic physics of Aristotle,
but the atomic physics of Democritus and Epicurus. Bacon sometimes
seems to think of his project as one of reviving this physics while
ordering it to a new end (the conquest of nature). It would be
interesting to see an interpretation of ancient atomic physics as a
variant manifestation of the ontology of presence--but again, I'm not
aware of anyone who has done this.
-- Phil Miller
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------