Abstract

That the immediate forebears of Descartes, the "Father of Modern Philosophy," were not the victims of parricide is generally acknowledged. It is a disputed question, however, whether Descartes's fatherhood amounts in its essentials to a continuation of the bloodline of late scholasticism. The traditional view is that Descartes's is a thoroughgoing but also somewhat mediated modernity, as D'Alembert's "Discours préliminaire" to the Encyclopédie attests. D'Alembert, speaking for several generations of readers, had no doubts about Descartes's debt to scholastic theology. However, he also argued that it was Francis Bacon who was the true "father of lights." Rousseau, for all his differences with D'Alembert, seems to have agreed with him on that point at least. Against those who would downplay the novelty of modernity, and in keeping with this traditional assessment of its origin, Robert Faulkner urges a careful reconsideration of the work of philosophy's only Lord Chancellor. Faulkner's intention is not merely to set the historical record straight, however. As he states at the outset, he hopes more generally "to contribute to efforts at prudent discrimination and philosophic rethinking" of modernity as we now live it. Reading Bacon is for Faulkner an exercise in self-understanding.