Description:

Aaron Greenberg
Doctoral Student, English Department
Graduate Affiliate, MH&B Program
Northwestern University

The Project of Life-Prolongation in Francis Bacon’s History of Life and Death

In the early seventeenth century, Francis Bacon undertakes an astonishingly comprehensive study of longevity in order to “consider by what meanes the Life of man may be prolonged.” He writes from within a culture that was deeply hostile to the project of life-extension—for theological reasons, because “Christians aspiring to Heaven,” for example, should be indifferent to the length of earthly life; and for ethical reasons, for instance, because preoccupation with life-extension prevents one from coming to terms with mortality and actually living in the first place. This talk examines Bacon’s negotiation of these traditions and his case for life-prolongation, which are increasingly relevant today in light of redoubled efforts in medicine and biotechnology to lengthen the human lifespan. Bacon’s text will help us tackle two principal questions: First, what were the meanings of “life” in early modern England such that it might be measured and lengthened? And second, if we can lengthen life, should we do so, and under what conditions?