Prolongatio Vitae and Euthanasia in Francis Bacon

Abstract

In this paper, I am not going to discuss the themes of prolongatio vitae and euthanasia in the full context of Bacon’s natural philosophy, addressing his doctrines of the trichotomy of the spirits, plica materiae and the manifold qualities he attributes to the spiritus: branching, continuous, vital, and so on. On all of these issues, the reader should rather refer to Graham Rees’s general and specific introductions to the volumes of the ‘Oxford Francis Bacon’ and to the sources, cross-references and commentaries provided therein. Instead, I shall address the themes in reverse, as it were: I shall deal with euthanasia first, that is, and then prolongatio vitae, because the former issue undoubtedly stems from the latter; but I shall finally return to euthanasia at the close.