Improving the Self: Francis Bacon's Essays and the Cultural Logic of Agrarian Capitalism

Abstract

This article argues that Bacon’s Essays follow the evolving logic of agrarian capitalism by positing in each individual a stock of capacities that can be induced to expand. The article shows how the successive editions of the book make an initial investment in moral maxims and aphorisms which are then subjected to a process of incremental development and growth. Economic and ethical discourses of improvement function in Bacon’s work as overlapping and mutually reinforcing practices, laying the foundations for the “active human subject” of neoliberalism.