A Philosophical Happy Hour thinking through the challenges posed by Francis Bacon’s Idols of the Mind.
The concept of idols as a philosophical problem is one that has captured the attention of a wide variety of thinkers, from early modern philosophers such as Descartes and Francis Bacon to 20th century phenomenologists such as Jean-Luc Marion. But just what are idols? What are the habits we form that develop them? What habits should we develop to curtail their influence on our thinking? Francis Bacon (1561-1626) provided an account of the different idols of the mind in his Novum Organum (1620) detailing the importance of empirical evidence and observation over and above a priori reasoning in matters of natural philosophy.
Idols of the Tribe (Idola Tribus)
The first idols Bacon warns against are what he refers to as “idols of the tribe.” By these, Bacon curiously refers to unnamed capacities in human nature (i.e., the tribe), which posit humanity as the measure of what is true, and to conceited efforts on the part of humanity to understand more than it can reason.
The Idols of the Tribe lie deep in human nature itself and in the very tribe or race of mankind. For it is wrongly asserted that the human sense is the measure of things. It is rather the case that all our perceptions, both of our sense and of our minds, are reflections of man, not of the universe, and the human understanding is like an uneven mirror that cannot reflect truly the rays from objects, but distorts and corrupts the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.[1]
What is interesting about the first ‘idol’ is its potentially performatively contradictory nature. If what Bacon says is true about humanity’s inability to grasp the whole through its parts, it seems the same could be said for his critiques, as too ambitious of claims regarding what the ‘tribe’ falls prey to in everyday circumstances. Is there a truth to Bacon’s claim, namely that attempts to holistically understand the world, given our own particularity, is idolatrous?
Idols of the Cave (Idola Specus)
The next idols, Bacon claims, are not as widespread and are more specific to individual men: “for besides the errors common to human nature in general, each of us has his own private cave or den, which breaks up and falsifies the light of nature.”[2] These idols, Bacon tells us, are individual habits that we develop through our own individuated habits and customs. We might consider, for instance, certain news sites in which we tend to believe or certain celebrities whose opinions we take as seriously as though they were experts. These prejudices impede our genuine use of reasoning and capacity to know the world, but unlike the idols of the tribe, they are unique to our individual circumstances.
Idols of the Marketplace (Idola Fori)
The next set of idols Bacon refers to as Idola fori, or idols of marketplace dealings. These idols, Bacon states, are developed through our dealings with other people and could be understood to be ‘cultural’ idols.
There are also idols arising from the dealings and association of men with one another, which I call Idols of the Marketplace, because of the commerce and meeting of men there. For speech is the means of association among men; but words are applied according to common understanding. And in consequence, a wrong and inappropriate application of words obstructs the mind to a remarkable extent. Nor do the definitions or explanations with which learned men have sometimes been accustomed to defend and vindicate themselves in any way remedy the situation. Indeed, words plainly do violence to the understanding and throw everything into confusion, and lead men into innumerable empty controversies and fictions.[3]
Bacon seems concerned with how words are used in everyday occurrence and the impact they have upon our habits of reasoning. Certain terms that are widespread in the culture provide ground for misunderstanding or equivocation in our reasoning. Bacon cautions against using words or terms simply because they are commonplace and urges for more careful terminological adoption.
Idols of the Theater (Idola Theatri)
Finally, Bacon claims there are idols which develop because of misguided demonstrations or philosophical dogmas. Bacon has in mind in particular Aristotle’s physics and logic, which he takes to be outmoded and unhelpful in understanding the world through scientific reasoning. Metaphysics in Bacon’s view could be understood to be a collection of historically accumulated ‘theatrics’ and Bacon urges against any adoption of its principles. Bacon diagnoses the root of these idols to be in the human imagination.
The human understanding is most moved by things that strike and enter the mind together and suddenly, and so fill and inflate the imagination; and it then imagines and supposes, without knowing how, that everything else behaves in the same way as those few things with which it has become engaged. The understanding is slow and awkward at ranging over the whole field of remote and heterogeneous instances, by which axioms are tested as if in the fire, unless it is constrained to such action by strict rules and a powerful authority.[4]
Focal Questions
While Bacon’s thoughts on idols are posited in an aphoristic style and posited itself without empirical data to support its conjectures, it leaves us room to think about what our own idols are that we grapple with in our day-to-day praxis. Do any of them resemble the idols of Bacon? Do we have idols unique to our own historical circumstances that are bound up with the culture we are born into and abide? Please join our conversation this Wednesday (03 December 2025, from 5:45-7:15+ pm ET) as we contemplate the “idols” of the mind—not only those suggested to belong to the past but those we find today.
philosophical happy hour
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Come join us for drinks (adult or otherwise) and a meaningful conversation. Open to the public! Held every Wednesday from 5:45–7:15pm ET.
[1] Bacon, Francis. Novum Organum. Translated by Peter Urbach and John Gibson. New York: Open Court Publishing, 1994. pg. 54.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid, 55.
[4] Ibid, 58.
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