Ethics and politics in the New Atlantis

Abstract

The New Atlantis is a text about natural philosophy which seems to offer connections at almost every point with moral and political philosophy. The celebrated description of Salomon’s House raises the question of the place of the scientist in society and the allusion to Plato’s Critias and Timaeus in the work’s title suggests an engagement with that philosopher’s description of the ideal state. Furthermore, a reference to More’s Utopia, together with the recognisably ‘utopian’ framework of the narrative, promises responses to other ‘best state’ exercises, perhaps including Andreae’s Christianopolis (1619) and Campanella’s Civitas Solis (1623). Bacon’s own political activities are well known, and in successive editions of the Essays, as well as in his speeches and pieces of advice, he had shown himself willing and able to treat what he considered the most pressing issues of political and ethical theory and practical negotiation. Nor was this engagement halted by Bacon’s disgrace in 1621: in the years after his fall from office, he wrote a series of works which could be read as attempts to regain favour and political influence; the New Atlantis could