Les idoles, de Montaigne à Bacon

Bacon is one of the first philosopher to attempt a systematic psychological etiology of the attachment of the human mind to error. I identify here some of the features by which the Baconian « idols » tie up with certain skeptical themes of Montaigne’s Essays. For both thinkers, although in different senses, the error is due to a natural anxiety of human mind, which in return requires a form of discipline through an attachment to the data of experience.