ABSTRACTFrancis Bacon’s works are pervaded by the firm belief that he was living in a new epoch. He thought of this epoch as based on knowledge and mechanical arts, which would permit dominion over nature. This dominion arises from mankind’s taking concrete action to improve the living conditions of humanity. Defining the nature of this action leads to individuate a plural historical subjectivity in Bacon’s thought. The different kinds of agency, and different kinds of technologies, define peoples in ethnological and (...) spatial terms. Imperiality, that is human dominion over nature, implies the necessity of improving the conditions of the whole mankind, in a manner that opens the way of thinking in which ‘backward’ peoples are subject to this action of improvement. Colonialism is strictly related to imperiality. The idea of colonialism, in the New World in particular, rests on the assumption that human race can improve its living conditions, exercising power over nature. Therefore, imperiality and colonialism are not simply a tool of a British dominion, but elements of the new epoch that Bacon is theorising. In this sense, imperiality and colonialism are part of the philosophical structure of Bacon’s modernity. (shrink)

[Future as a political problem. Francis Bacon and Giambattista Vico as matrix of modernity]. This essay shows the importance of the theme of the future as a political problem in Francis Bacon and Giambattista Vico. Bacon theorizes the possibility to control the future through experiments and the resulting natural laws. The whole construction of society has to be planned in order to achieve this end. In Vico the future appears to be a purely political problem, since the control of the (...) future deals with the possibility to establish the rules that control the actions of the social group. Considering the control of the future as the core of political modernity allows to appreciate the crucial differences between Bacon and Vico, on one side, and Hobbes, who represents the “canonical” political modernity, on the other side. Hobbes’ Leviathan presents the social contract as the closure of political temporality. The theme of the future as a political problem allows then to understand the plurality of modernity, as it emerges from the different proposed solutions: a technical-scientific one in Bacon, a contractualistic one in Hobbes and a mythopoetic one in Vico. (shrink)