The "Four Idols" Analysis

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Francis Bacon’s “Four Idols” essay, is about how people’s habbits to not be able to critically think. In his essay he talks about how there are four idols being “Idols of Tribe, Idols of the Cave, Idols of the Marketplace and Idols of the Theatre.” Each one is a different reason and explanation for why it is getting in the way of people being able to not think for themselves. He uses conviencing examples for all of them in helping to let the audience picture what he is talking about. I agree with Francis Bacon’s theory of the four idols and how it gets in the way of us thinking for ourselves.

The Idol of Tribes is basicly about how people are affected by their surroundings and where they grew up or came from. Such as people would have a different reason for believing in what they believe in and this will surely affect the way they think about certain topics.

The Idol of Caves is about how humans are emotional beings and that this alone clouds their judgement for thinking during a certain situation. For example, we are ruled by how we think as humans by our emotions and how strongly we feel towards things.

The Idol of the Marketplace is about how we communicate and tend to trick people through the way we talk to one another. Using language is a bad way to get information because of the way we can manipulate words to mean different things.

The Idol of the Theatre is how we like to compare ourselves to others and like to think we are all able to do things that rarely occur. For example, how some people win the lottery and now everyone thinks they can win. But these people are the exception not the rule.

I agree with all the points Francis Bacon is saying about how these idols can help cloud our judgement.