MACARIA AND THE PURITAN ETHICS OF DIRECT PARTICIPATION IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORLD
MACARIA AND THE PURITAN ETHICS OF DIRECT PARTICIPATION IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORLD

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores a particular way in which the Baconian reformation of knowledge can be seen as providing conditions of possibility for the emergence of Puritan ethics in the mid-seventeenthcentury England. Macaria, along with other works belonging to the Puritan literature, shares the concern for moral and cognitive reformation of the human being, as well as the desire to continue some of the unfinished projects and writings of Francis Bacon, developing a specific type of ethics, the Puritan ethics of direct participation in the transformation of the world. I will show that the Puritan ethics developed in Macaria is a response to the Baconian “quest for knowledge” and a continuation of Bacon’s providentialist views on the history of humankind.

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