Certainty and Law in Francis Bacon

MANZO, SILVIA

Montreal

Conferencia; Séminaire interuniversitaire montréalais en histoire de la philosophie,; 2010

Université du Québec à Montréal, Départament de Philosophie - Chaire de recherche du Canada en théorie de la connaisance.

Se trata de una revisión de un trabajo presentado en otros eventos durante 2009. El objetivo es publicarlo, después de ponerlo en consideración entre distintos especialistas en la materia.The aim of this paper is to find out the notions of certainty assumed in Bacon‟s jurisprudence. Accordingly, the first part of the paper deals with the concept of the certainty the of law entailed in Bacon‟s law reform project, and exhibits how he put his attempts to make law certain into practice. The second part of the paper provides a survey of Bacon‟s perspectives on the certainty about facts and looks for their vestiges in his practices as a lawyer. In doing so, I try to answer the following questions: Are laws and facts thought to be “certain” in the same sense? What are the practices laying behind the notion(s) of legal certainty? What I want to do here is to share with you the very first results of a wider research which aims to answer more general questions like “do Bacon‟s notions of legal certainty have any continuity with the kinds of certainty assumed in his natural history (facts) and his natural philosophy (laws)?”