Humanist Dissemination of Epicureanism

Abstract

Renaissance humanists first studied Lucretius, and the Epicurean content in Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, as part of their broader project to restore political stability to Italy and Europe by reconstructing the philosophical roots of classical Roman virtue. Transformation of the texts over time gradually expanded the study of Epicureanism, from a fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century audience interested primarily in philology and moral philosophy, to a later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century audience more interested in natural philosophy, medicine, and ontology. While many prominent scholars of Epicureanism faced persecution for their beliefs, the charges levied against them were not related to Epicureanism but to diverse heterodoxies of the day, from syncretism to Protestantism. This, and the preponderance of anti-Epicurean writings, reveals that most Renaissance scholars treated Epicurus less as a teacher than as a foe or gadfly, developing fruitful and often radical new ideas in opposition to Epicureanism, or appropriating some Epicurean concepts while rebutting others.