Philosophy According to Tacitus: Francis Bacon and the Inquiry into the Limits of Human Self-Delusion

Bacon belonged to a cultural milieu that, between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, proved to be especially receptive to influences coming from such continental authors as Machiavelli, Bodin, Duplessis-Mornay, Hotman, and, through Lipsius, a particular brand of Stoicism tinged with Tacitean motifs. Within the broader question of Tacitus’ influence on Tudor and Stuart culture, this article focuses on the issue of how Bacon’s characteristic insistence on the powers of the imagination (fingere) and of belief (credere) in shaping human history may have influenced his view that human beings suffer from an innate tendency to self-delusion.