이상사회에 내재된 갈등: 『새로운 아틀란티스』를 중심으로

Abstract

This study examines both the scope and the crucial limitations of Bacon's approach to his ideal society through a detailed consideration of the New Atlantis. The New Atlantis is well known as a 'scientific utopia' and it has the assured tone of Bacon's most confident works. However, it also has an ambivalent attitude toward the way in which in practice the ideal society operates. While most commentaries have been unbalanced in their emphasis on the 'scientific' aspects of Bacon's ideal society, it is necessary to explore other aspects such as political, cultural, or religious details. Bensalem is independent and self-sufficient, receiving nor foreign aid or exchange. It is a civilization that revolves around science and relies on discoveries of the House of Salomon for success. Though the Fellows of the House of Salomon create the appearance that purpose of their activities is under the guidance of God, it is politically implied that the minority of elite scientists controls the multitude needs and maintains order and peace within society. Throughout the New Atlantis run contradictory suggestions of moral perfection and moral failure, suppression unnecessary and suppression in operation. The laws which limited the rights of those who defy patriarchal authority and marry without parental consent assumed that such defiance would and did take place. There is no nation on earth as chaste as Bensalem and yet it remains a function of the Tirsan to suppress vice in his family. Bacon admitted the moral fallibility and corruptibility of the Fellows of Salomon's House. But scientific knowledge is power and it can, as Bacon believed, alter the material conditions of society and enhance the human happiness. Bacon's failure to complete an ideal-society vision and his inability to assume the automatic integrity of the scientist still remain unresolved at the moment of the conception of modern science.