Francis Bacon (or do you prefer sausage with your rhetoric?)

“Knowledge is power.” If you’ve heard that quote before, you know Francis Bacon!

Bacon divided knowledge into several different parts. Knowledge, he argued, could be divided into theology and philosophy. Philosophy, then, could be broken down into theoretical inquiry, which studies causes, and practical inquiry, which focuses on effects.

And he didn’t stop there — he also separated the mind into different faculties or categories: reason, memory, and imagination. Reason corresponded to the genre of philosophy, memory to history, and imagination to poesy.

Bacon loved his categories.

He was also well-known for dividing the operation of intellect into four intellectual arts or “branches of logic:” inquiry/invention, judgement, memory, and delivery. Similar to the canons of rhetoric but missing “style,” it is not clear how the branches correspond with his three faculties. Still, Bacon used these ideas to define rhetoric in his own way, claiming that it applies reason to the imagination in order to move the will:

For we see Reason is disturbed in the administration thereof my three means; by Illaqueation or Sophism, which pertains to Logic; by Imagination or Impression, which pertains to Rhetoric; and by Passion or Affection, which pertains to Morality. And as in negotiation with others men are wrought by cunning, by importunity, and by vehemency; so in this negotiation within ourselves men are undermined by Inconsequences, solicited and importuned by Impressions or Observations, and transported by Passions. Neither is the nature of man so unfortunately built, as that those powers and arts should have force to disturb reason, and not to establish and advance it: For the end of Logic is to teach a form of argument to secure reason, and not to entrap it; the end of Morality is to procure the affections to obey reason, and not to invade it; the end of Rhetoric is to fill the imagination to second reason, and not to oppress it: For these abuses of arts come in but ex obliquo [indirectly], for caution. (825)

Finally, Bacon had four classes of “idols,” or false notions that “beset men’s minds”: tribe, cave, marketplace, and theater. Tribe has to do with human nature as a whole, cave focuses on individual bias, marketplace considers words and association of people, and theater means community and shared ideology. The one he considered to be the most dangerous is marketplace, because “words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion” (827). Basically, he believed that words can be slippery and confusing, which is of course correct, but he certainly uses a lot of words for someone who thinks that.

Anyone else hungry for breakfast foods all of a sudden?

Quote citation: Bizzell, Patricia. “Francis Bacon” Edited by George A. Kennedy. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston, 2020.