The Philosophy of Francis Bacon | His Critical Essays Explained - Harvard Classics HC3 Ep11

[@The_Cause]

Hope you enjoy these short essays by the tasty Bacon himself. Who else here loves both forms of BACON?

[@markrunnells5642]

* Ideology... of any kind, waters down policy, politics, Christianity and family. I am Christian. I do not follow yet another mindless ideology. I follow Christ Jesus.*

[@tomweiss9600]

These videos are the mental equivalent of my daily workout routine. Looking forward to sipping the coffee while following you in your journey over the next few months.

[@The_Cause]

Hey Tom! I just received your order. Truly appreciate you purchasing my coffee. I will have it roasted tonight or in the morning and shipped out tomorrow. Glad to hear you are enjoying the series and hopes the coffee makes the experience that much more enjoyable. Stay blessed my friend!

[@tjsurname119]

I have never been exposed to the writings of Francis Bacon before in earnest. I didn't know what I was missing. Attending to remedy this situation on a priority basis ! Thank you again dear Mr. Pirie. GOD Bless you Sir.

[@The_Cause]

Bacon is one I always hued about but I never took the time to read as well. The best part of the series is being forcefully introduced to books I would never open on my own. Haha stay blessed my friend!

[@EyeLean5280]

Glad to hear you say the idea of Bacon writing/contributing to the works of Shakespeare is "implausible," as indeed it is.

[@The_Cause]

I looked into it some after I read that and it doesn’t seem to have any evidence now days. I think long ago it may have been more accepted. I do believe they probably communicated ideas and met up some but I don’t think he had any hand in writing or ghost writing. Hope all has been well and thanks again for watching!

[@EyeLean5280]

Agree, @@The_Cause. A literature professor I knew back in the late 80s said it was an interesting hypothesis to ponder and that he looked forward to whatever concrete evidence might turn up for it, but in the decades since, none has. Same goes for the cases put forward for Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere (17th Earl of Oxford). In fact, the more scholars have looked into it, the stronger the case for Shakespeare having written the works of Shakespeare has become. It's always good to have the traditional narrative challenged, though, and I'm glad for all that we've learned in the course of investigations into each of these theories.

[@brandonhartman3368]

I just came across your channel today and have binge-watched every video. I'm loving it! I'm in a Discord group with a bunch of others who do a program from The Art Of Manliness (it's called The Strenuous Life if you want to read about it), and we've been doing a book club via Zoom calls for a while now. We started with Meditations, and most recently finished The Odyssey. Watching you talk about these books is like a stimulating conversation with the club. Coincidentally, I also enjoy a good cup of coffee while doing it, haha.

[@The_Cause]

Really happy to hear you enjoyed the videos! It’s been a pleasure making them. I have heard of the Art of Manliness but not to familiar with it. Going to have to look that program up. I m kind of winging this channel at the moment. I would like to eventually get more organized and maybe start a club or something. So many ideas but never more time! Haha Truly appreciate you watching my friend and I hope you have a great weekend. Stay blessed!

[@dennisfarris4729]

Every light shined creates shadow. Every truth disguises a consequence.

[@The_Cause]

Love that. So simple but elegant. I pondered on this one for a bit. Stay blessed my friend!

[@JackFate518]

It is absolutely insane to argue that "religion has always united us." Religions are just forms of ideology, and ideology is the most effective way of getting decent people to do horrendous things. Atheism would do much more to unite us than religions ever could. Nice series, Rob.

[@The_Cause]

I think for certain cultures, religion has united them. I think "horrendous things" occur when these cultures collide into one another. The idea that Atheism could unite us is something I would have to educate myself on further because I can not find any traces in the histories that I have read of that ever occurring. Religion and atheism are two subjects I am not well versed in so I try and tread lightly around arguments for or against. I am hoping to learn more about the two in this series though. Thanks so much for watching and I truly appreciate you thoughts and ideas. It makes me search and think as well.

[@snowwilliams1]

Nice rebuttal Rob..Love the dynamics of a good discussion, so lacking in American society today(and the poorer we are for it)

[@The_Cause]

Yes indeed! I try and just keep it respectful and talk to people as I would like them to talk to me. Seems to work most of the time.

[@williamfahey6066]

I think I understand what you mean.

[@zrx8966]

From my observations, religions do unite those who follow similar beliefs within a specified religious doctrine. History has shown many times that belonging to a group is important to human psychology and religion is one way to satisfy that need. Not sure if you are aware but some religions are considered atheistic so your statement may need to be elaborated to make your point more understandable. Would you consider that someone who is agnostic, a person who neither believes nor disbelieves in a god or religion, is more open minded and possibly creating greater unity than someone who is religious and/or atheist?

[@ProfessorFiore]

Love your clear thinking and efficient curation

[@The_Cause]

I am learning as I go so that is great to hear you enjoy the content. Thanks for watching and stay blessed my friend!

[@appujosephjose6129]

You have inspired me. Thanks

[@The_Cause]

That’s awesome to hear!! I really hope this channel is helping others as much as it is helping me. Thanks so much for watching and have a blessed new year!

[@w1zzk1dd]

#13:25 interesting because mortimer uses this same line in his book how to read a book- and he defines reading as the forth stomach which means a good reading should be well digest to the extent it nourish our actions and thinking

[@The_Cause]

I noticed that as well when I read Adler’s book. I recently did a review on that book and it was amazing. I have been listening to a lot of old Adler videos lately.

[@w1zzk1dd]

#10:40 to choose time is to save time. If we all live by this line, then it would suffice some people commonly say "let's go burn time", no we cannot burn time, time is the house we live in, either we benefit from it or not

[@thepostgradyear]

man this channel is growing really quickly congrats on 700 subs! that is a very full description The bit about people and keyboards made me laugh the comment section reminded me why a friend of mine sometimes calls good ideas "mind snacks"

[@The_Cause]

Hey buddy!! Yes, the channel is definitely picking up. Sad thing about KZbin is idk if the algorithm is just hitting for a week or so or if it will be constant. It’s growing much faster than my last channel. I have been enjoying the comment section on this one. Beginner channels usually don’t have that much hate. So it has been enjoyable to engage and learn from everyone. But eventually the trolls show up and then it’s best not to read into them as much. Hope you are hearing up to crush 2024! Good luck dude!

[@thepostgradyear]

@@The_Cause you're up more than 100 subs since I left my comment two days ago so idk what you're doing but I think you might even hit 1000 before the end of the year haha

[@The_Cause]

Dude idk either! It’s crazy. I’m hoping to hit 1,000 tonight! As long as the fair youtube winds continue blowing in my direction. They can change quickly any time though. lol

[@thepostgradyear]

well that was fast xD@@The_Cause

[@w1zzk1dd]

#14:13 many past intellectuals has the way with words and one present one said that- a sentence from the past can be explained in a book and today,a book can be sum up in a sentence

[@The_Cause]

That is very true. Bacon says so much with just a few words. Something I would love to become better at.

[@clearance-z9l]

Speaking of chewing digestion, last night 's episode on MacGyver (IonPlus) the mostest evil baddest bad guy holding in the remotest darkest prison on earth literally eats pages from Milton'Lost. 😅 Thanks to you and a classical education, I actually understood the reference !!!

[@EyeLean5280]

Very nice, as always. Thank you!

[@The_Cause]

Glad you enjoyed it! Working on the New Atlantis tonight. Hoping to release it next week. See ya in the next one!

[@waynez3885]

Very nice commentary, thanks

[@The_Cause]

Truly appreciate the feedback and thanks so much for watching. Stay blessed my friend and have a great weekend!

[@Eric-xx3mb]

Love your channel. I really admire all the things you are doing in terms of raising and educating your family and starting your coffee business. Not going into debt and living your own life by your own standards. It's admirable. Even though I have a doctorate I love the concept of being able to get a great education from books and I also feel that our educational system often does less to educate a person than critical reading and experience can. In terms of Bacon's philosophy towards atheism, I have to disagree. I feel it is the opposite. As a person becomes more enlightened they will tend towards atheism and not religion. Faith by definition is a sort of anti-enlightenment as it requires you to believe in something without evidence or rationality. I think a person reaches a higher level of philosophical learning when they choose to be an ethical person for its own sake without regards to punishments or rewards after death and most christians are motivated by the later. In reality a christian is almost as much of an atheist as an atheist is as a christian does not believe in the vast majority of gods who have ever existed. Atheists simply take it one god further. I for myself am hopeful that there is something after death, but I won't base my faith on simple fear of nothingness, society conformity, or peer pressure. In any event, thank you for being awesome! I'll be following along on your journey for sure. Can't wait to buy some coffee!

[@The_Cause]

Truly appreciate the kind words and I agree more with your sentiment. I feel I am not quite yet experienced enough to make a clear judgment on it though. My recent video on Thomas Browne brings it up again. I have to sit back sometimes and realize that these highly educated individuals keep coming to the same conclusion to include our more modern example of C. S. Lewis. I imagine Dawkins would think the opposite so here I sit and say I just simply do not know. Haha truly appreciate you watching and sharing your thoughts. Stay blessed!

[@martaamance4545]

Listening to your commentary I can see you did a good job of annotating Bacon's essays. But it is one thing to read the essays and another to think upon them and how they contribute to his basic philosophical teachings. There is a difference between reading for information (which public education teaches as a matter of rote, and reading for understanding, something like the Bible demands. One can teach knowledge easily enough but teaching understanding is significantly harder. What matters is that you are on the right track, your main "job" is to spark the listener's interest in acquiring intimacy with the great thinkers of the past.

[@The_Cause]

Yes indeed. I have a good deal to learn. I humbly admit that my education is not up to par. This series has been a blessing in terms of pushing me to read and communicate the material back. As I trek through Paradise Lost I realize what you are referring too. The meaning is so deep that even if you know the story you may not understand the point. I am hoping by the 50th volume I will be closer to understanding on a deeper level. Again I truly appreciate the deep comments provided. Thanks for watching!

[@martaamance4545]

@@The_Cause Your education is not "sub par", it is merely unrealized. Remember, every human being educations himself, not the teacher, it's not his job. The teacher's job is to show you the path, you walk it alone and there is no end destination, it never ends. You've done well "Grasshopper" to get this far. Bon voyage.

[@RobPirieCedarOtaCoffee]

Great episode Rob. How did he take his coffee with all that Bacon? I imagine with a name like that he would have to add a little flavor to his coffee. Haha

[@The_Cause]

He took his coffee black with an intellectual slab of Bacon!

[@STALLION-j7q]

Which edition of the Harvard classics do you prefer?

[@The_Cause]

I honestly like the one I got but I love the Green color of that edition. Now I ever hit the lottery I would like to get the Easton Press set. But, my old 1950 something version is great. Page quality is nice and the books hold up good. Thanks for watching and have a blessed Christmas!

[@STALLION-j7q]

@ yeah that one is a beauty. The red one you have looks sweet too. Merry Christmas to you and your family as well. Love the channel

[@clearance-z9l]

Seriously though, I have a question about this philosophy of "experience" but not sure how to frame it. Looks to me like we go all the way back to the latin just to find some common ground and then have to have some person who knows both latin and some other languages translate for us who only speak whatever current language we are using to attempt to communicate with and gain understanding in. And then there's the "before and after" in there somewhere which is all part of our experience, right ?!? I seem to remember Carl Sagan attempt to explain this in totally scientific terms of a flat surface using 2 dimensions, length and width, to explain how a 3 dimensional being would be able to transfer understanding into a 2 dimensional world.

[@adriandeltoro4640]

I thought Aristotle was the one who started the scientific method.

[@The_Cause]

I always thought that as well. I think they are referring to Bacon as being a point where they discuss science and methods in a more modern term. Thanks for watching my friend and stay blessed!

[@adriandeltoro4640]

@@The_Cause glad to be a subscriber. I’ll be starting my own channel soon

[@bart-v]

Are vegetarians allowed to read Bacon?

[@The_Cause]

In regards to taste, I think they should be in the clear. In regards to being associated with a term they may find evil or offensive, I would say they should stay away. But for those of us who love both types of Bacon, I must say they are missing out on two of the greatest things this world has to offer.

[@ss-oq2eu]

Where did you buy the books and for how much?

[@The_Cause]

I purchased mine in FaceBook market place. I purchased my set for $375. Depending on where you live you may have to wait a bit for someone close enough to you to put a set up for sale. Good luck and thanks so much for watching. Stay blessed!

[@enriquemata8558]

Didn’t Edgar Allan Poe also marry a very young girl? Please excuse me if I have misspoken.

[@The_Cause]

Just looked it up and it appears so. She was 13 and he was 27. First cousins as well. Didn’t know that. lol Thanks for watching my friend!

[@polinatchasti242]

He might have been Shakespeare

[@The_Cause]

They wrote very similar indeed! I think there is only one Shakespeare though

[@polinatchasti242]

​​@@The_Causeright but how did the son of a glove-maker know so well the life of the royalty described in such detail in his plays?

[@The_Cause]

Great point! I will have to ponder on that one. I imagine there would be some collaboration between the two. Very good point though!

[@RobinSong-o2g]

First pass: so, this guy adopted a child and then treated her like a burden ?!? Gotta say, puts a new twist on how he died from food poisoning.

[@The_Cause]

She may have read Phaedo and discovered the power abilities of hemlock.

[@RobinSong-o2g]

@@The_Cause Easy to blame bad chicken. That four hour rule. I think his fridge went out.

[@The_Cause]

Possible never worked in the first place. Doubt he could find the cord to plug it in.

[@clearance-z9l]

Wasn't that back when the ice box was still powered by , you know, ice ?!? @@The_Cause

[@willieluncheonette5843]

" Perhaps there are only three books which can be said to be really important. One is written by Aristotle. The name of the book is Organum. It means the first principle of wisdom. The second book is written by Bacon, who is the father of all modern science. His book's name is Novum Organum, new principle of wisdom. Aristotle is thought to be the father of Western logic, mathematics and related sciences, and Bacon is certainly the most important figure who has created the whole of science, the whole technology that has made the West strong, rich, affluent, healthy. And the third important book is Ouspensky's Tertium Organum, the third principle of wisdom. Lord Bacon, a great scientific mind, has written in his famous book, Novum Organum, that Pythagoras was a great fanatic. Now, this is utter nonsense. Bacon's book is really great; except for this one statement, the book is of immense value. It is said that there are three great books in the world. First is Aristotle's Organum - Organum means principle. The second is Bacon's Novum Organum - new principle. And third is Ouspensky's Tertium Organum - the third principle. And they ARE really great books, incomparable. In the West this is very significant. People go on writing books and books about whether Shakespeare ever existed or not. As if it makes any difference. The plays that Shakespeare wrote are so beautiful - why not look into the plays and love and enjoy them? This seems to be going astray to ask whether Shakespeare existed or not. And the problem arises because it is thought that Shakespeare was an uneducated man so how could he write such beautiful things? Have you ever known very educated men to write beautiful things? It is thought that it was not Shakespeare but Lord Bacon who was the real author. But I cannot trust this because I have read Lord Bacon's other books - they have nothing to compare with Shakespeare. Lord Bacon is just ordinary. He may have been a very learned man, he may have been a great scholar, but his books are ordinary, rubbish. Just because he is Lord Bacon and a very famous name, who is deceived? Have you ever heard the name of any book by Lord Bacon? Who is bothered? How could Lord Bacon write these Shakespearian plays? Under his name he has not written a single masterpiece so how could he write one under a pseudo-name? And if he can write such beautiful plays as the Shakespearian plays are, under a pseudo-name, then what was he doing when he was writing under his own name? It doesn't seem right. Thinking is like that - it goes on missing the whole point. If you really want to have any contact with reality, then thinking is not the bridge, it is the barrier. In only three hundred years science has touched great heights. And the reason? The reason is simple. The reason is that Bacon introduced experiment into the world of science. In just three hundred years so much has happened - it did not happen in three thousand years or even in thirty thousand years. It is because of one man, Bacon. He changed the whole course of science and the whole course of human consciousness just by creating a new door of experimentation. He said, "Speculation is not going to help. People have speculated down the ages and nothing has happened. They go on quarrelling about theories and those theories don't mean a thing." He introduced experiment. You will be surprised to know where Bacon got the idea of experiment from. You will not believe it! He got it from Sufism. He was a great reader of Sufi books, he was immensely interested in Sufi books, and from the Sufi ideas he got the idea that if experiment is the door to the inner world, why could it not be the door to the outer? Science owes much to Sufism because of this. If some day the right sources are searched for, then the real fathers of science will be the Sufis, not the Greek philosophers, Aristotle, Plato and others, no. They were all speculators. From where did the idea of experiment enter into the mind of Bacon? It entered from Sufism. He may have read this story or something else, but it entered from Sufism because Sufis are very insistent on experiment. And if religion is also going to grow, then experiment has to become its very foundation. Just as science has reached such a great height within such a small time limit - three hundred years - so religion can also have great possibilities if it becomes experimental. Religion has much to learn from Sufism. Sufism is the most essential religion - that's why I say it is existential, experimental, experiential."