Epicurean Research Articles

Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics

Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics

Horace, Philodemus and the Epicureans at Herculaneum

Scholars have often included Horace among the students of the Epicurean philosopher and poet Philodemus of Gadara. Around 70 B.C., Philodemus moved from Greece to the area of Naples, where he spent the rest of his life2). Philodemus and Siro (Vergil's celebrated teacher) organized there an Epicurean school that attracted some of the most famous Romans of the day; some have assumed that Horace was one of them. Since Christian Jensen edited Philodemus* On Poems3) and Augusto Rostagni the Ars Poetica*), many scholars have followed their suggestion that Philodemus was Horace's mentor5). In this paper, however, I propose to show that recent papyrological discoveries have left this hypothesis without support. Horace may well have met Philodemus in his lifetime, but now there is less evidence than ever that he ever spent any prolonged period with him as his student. The assumption that Horace studied under Philodemus in his youth (and, in fact, during the years Vergil himself was studying under Siro) is quite old, but gained a special significance in the late nineteenth century, when two relevant papyrus fragments were dis-

Fluctus Irarum, Fluctus Curarum : Lucretian Religio in the Aeneid

Fluctus Irarum, Fluctus Curarum: Lucretian Religio in the Aeneid Julia T. Dyson Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. (De Rerum Natura 1.101) Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem. (Aeneid 1.33) More than formal similarity unites these lines. 1 Lucretius points out the folly of religio, epitomized in Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his own daughter to appease an indifferent goddess; Virgil emphasizes the hardship of founding Rome in the wake of a goddess’s very real persecution. That is, what Lucretius derides as foolish fantasy, Virgil weaves into the fabric of his epic. 2 I argue here that Virgil continually brings to life Epicurean caricatures of religio—that the vengeful gods and fearful mortals whom Lucretius ridicules become the chief actors in the Aeneid. One of Lucretius’ most “revolutionary” inversions of conventional language and assumptions is his paradoxical assertion that religio and pietas are opposites (see Summers 1995, 33). This paradox underlies his philosophical system: men are unhappy and wicked because of their superstitious fear of the gods (religio), and to free them from the “constricting knots of religion” (artis religionum nodis, 4.6–7) is his passionately stated purpose. He asserts that the gods are sublimely indifferent to human affairs and defines pietas as the equanimity that comes from recognizing this indifference, that is, from seeing the folly of conventional religio: O genus infelix humanum, talia divis cum tribuit facta atque iras adiunxit acerbas! quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque nobis vulnera, quas lacrimas peperere minoribu’ nostris! nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri [End Page 449] vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras nec procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota, sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri . (DRN 5.1194–1203) For the Epicurean, happiness, wisdom, and pietas all consist in surveying the world with a “peaceful mind.” Virgil shows us a world in which such ataraxia is impossible because the central assumptions of Epicureanism are wrong; in particular, the behavior of Aeneas and of the gods illustrates what Lucretius says should not or cannot happen. Aeneas has long been recognized as a sort of proto-Stoic, struggling with variable success to achieve self-control and obedience to Fate. 3 At the beginning of his journey, however, he momentarily resembles an Epicurean philosopher even as he engages in an act of conventional pietas. When his attempts to uproot a small tree to deck his altar twice cause the bark to drip blood (3.24–29), he tries to discover the hidden cause of this bizarre phenomenon: “mihi frigidus horror membra quatit gelidusque coit formidine sanguis . rursus et alterius lentum convellere vimen insequor et causas penitus temptare latentis ; ater et alterius sequitur de cortice sanguis. multa movens animo Nymphas venerabar agrestis Gradivumque patrem , Geticis qui praesidet arvis, rite secundarent visus omenque levarent.” (Aen. 3.29–36) These lines have a peculiar resonance with one of the most important and controversial passages in the Georgics (2.475–512). In this passage the poet first longs for the ability to explain natural phenomena (like Lucretius), then concedes that if cold fear should prevent him from attaining to this knowledge, he would settle for bucolic seclusion and rustic religio: sin has ne possim naturae accedere partis frigidus obsteterit circum praecordia sanguis , rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes, [End Page 450] flumina amem silvasque inglorius. o ubi campi Spercheosque et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis Taygeta! o qui me gelidis convallibus Haemi sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra! felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas , atque metus omnis et inexorabile fatum subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari; fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestis , Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores . (Geo. 2.483–92) It may seem strange that this passage should have anything to do with Aeneas in Thrace, but the verbal echoes and parallels of thought are striking: an image of chilled blood is followed first by a desire to know the underlying causes of things, then, failing that, by an appeal to rustic religio, symbolized (among other things) by rural nymphs. Most readers see a reference to Lucretius in the line felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas (see Dyson 1994...

Gassendi's ethics: freedom in a mechanistic universe

This is the first book to explore the ethical thought of Pierre Gassendi, the seventeenth-century French priest who rehabilitated Epicurean philosophy in the Western tradition. Lisa T. Sarasohn's discussion of the relationship between Gassendi's philosophy of nature and his ethics discloses the underlying unity of his philosophy and elucidates this critical figure in the intellectual revolution. Sarasohn demonstrates that Gassendi's ethics was an important part of his attempt to Christianize Epicureanism. She shows how Gassendi integrated ideas of human freedom into a neo-Epicurean ethic where pleasure is the highest good, yet maintained a consistent belief in Christian providence. These views challenged what were then the new systems of philosophy, Hobbesian materialism and Cartesian rationalism. Sarasohn places Gassendi in his historical and intellectual context, considering him in relation to contemporary philosophers and within the patronage system that conditioned his own freedom. She investigates the links between his ethical thought and philosophy of science and makes sense of his attacks on astrology. Finally, her work clarifies Pierre Gassendi's considerable influence on seventeenth-century ethical and political philosophy, particularly on the work of John Locke-and thus on the whole English liberal tradition in political philosophy.

Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy: Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World.

Part I. Theology and the Philosophy of Nature: 1. Divine power and divine will in the Middle Ages: historical and conceptual background 2. Baptizing epicurean philosophy: Gassendi on divine will and the philosophy of nature 3. Providence and human freedom in Christian epicureanism: Gassendi on fate, fortune and divination 4. Theology, metaphysics, and epistemology: Gassendi's 'Science of Appearances' 5. Eternal truths and the laws of nature Part II. The Theological Foundations of Descartes' Philosophy of Nature: 6. Gassendi and Descartes in conflict 7. Introduction: theories of matter and their epistemological connections 8. Gassendi's atomism, an 'empirical' theory of matter 9. Mathematizing nature: Descartes' geometrical theory of matter 10. Conclusion: theology transformed and the emergence of styles of science.

The Linguistic Naturalism of Theophrastus Redivivus (1659?)

Summary This paper deals with the linguistic subjects in Theophrastus redivivus (1659?), an anonymous masterpiece of French Free-thinkers movement. Attention is paid, firstly, to the criticism of the concept of god, whose existence is denied mainly on linguistic grounds; secondly, to the anti-Cartesian discussion of the alleged ‘primacy’ of humans, which also is denied with the argument that all animals share both reason and extrinsic discourse, although in forms different from ours. Particular attention is given to the argumentative structure of TR, which reveals an original fusion of Epicurean epistemology and of suggestions borrowed from the ancient Naturalism, notably as found in Aristotle’s Historia animalium

Gassendi's modified Epicureanism and British moral philosophy

L'A. defend la these selon laquelle la theorie morale developpee par Gassendi dans son ouvrage intitule «Epicuri Syntagma» offre une synthese de l'hedonisme epicurien et du providentialisme stoicien. L'A. montre que la vulgarisation de l'epicurisme et des vertus stoiciennes par Gassendi a influence la philosophie morale du XVII e siecle en Angleterre, ouvrant la voie a l'utilitarisme classique et a l'individualisme des Lumieres

Epicurean ethics: katastematic hedonism

The fundamental problem of Epicurean philosophy is understood as the problem of being human in a mechanical universe, which brings out the philosophical importance of Epicurus and guards against treating him as a museum piece. This interpretation of Epicurean ethics is developed against the background of a critical discussion of earlier interpretations. Although the whole range of the tetrapharmakos is covered in the book, as well as the Epicurean social philosophy of justice and friendship, the argument focuses on Epicurus' understanding of the nature of pleasure, and pain and on the distinction between kinetic and katastematic pleasure.

The Marxism of Marx's Doctoral Dissertation

The Marxism of Marx's Doctoral Dissertation JOHN L. STANLEY ALTHOUGH THE AMOUNT OF SCHOLARSHIP on Marx's doctoral dissertation is small in comparison to what has been done in regard to his later writings, interpretation of this earliest systematic work is not inconsequential for our understanding of the controversies surrounding his later texts. Completed in 1841 , the dissertation, Diff erenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie, ~is relevant , not only for studies of Democritus and Epicurus, but for the debate over the question of freedom versus determinism in Marx. Generally speaking, that debate is between commentators who are intent on seeing Marx as primarily a "humanist" thinker stressing the free self-constitution of man against the "materialism " of the more old-fashioned Marxists who have stressed Marx's inevitable laws of development. 2 The present study will address the issue of freedom3 and attempt to show that the interpreters of the dissertation have generally underestimated the extent to which its author is already a materialist whose 1Marx-Engels Werke, Ergiinzungsband, First Part (Berlin: Dietz, 1973). Hereafter cited as MEWE. Dissertation, ~57-373; Heft., 13-~55. The English translation, which I shall generally follow, is Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, and is by Richard Dixon and Dirk and Sally Struik in: Marx and Engels, CollectedWorks, Vol. 1 (New York: International , 1975). Hereafter cited as CW x. Dissertation, a3-1o7; the 1839 Notebooks, 4o3-5o9 . The work was planned as part of a larger study which was never completed. The original manuscript has been lost. The extant copy, by an unknown hand, lacks Parts 4 and 5 of the first part, most of the appendix and some notes. ' For a depiction of these two general tendencies, see Alvin W. Gouldner, The Two Matxisms (New York: Oxford University Press, 198o). 3There are already extensive discussions of the validityof Marx's interpretation of Epicurus and Democritus. See especially Jean-Marc Gabaude, Le jeune Marx et le maWtmlisme antique (Toulouse: Privat, x97o). See also Cyril Bailey, "Karl Marx on Greek Atomism," Classical Quarterly 2~ 0928): ~o5-~o6, and Rolf Sannwald, Marx und die Antike (Zurich: Polygraphischer Verlag, 1957), Ch. 4. While Sannwald says that Marx has made a valuable contribution, but is wrong in details, Gabaude is more critical, arguing that Marx exaggerates the difference between the two thinkers (7l). 134 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33: i JANUARY 1995 view of praxis is based on the idea (later espoused by Engels) that freedom is the appreciation of necessity.4 Briefly stated, Marx's thesis is that Epicurus's doctrine of freedom, derived from an analogy with the atomic "swerve," opposes the strict causality and necessitarian "positive science" of Democritus--even though the views of the two thinkers had long been held to be virtually identical. In interpreting this treatise, on the one hand those whom we shall loosely call the "humanist" writers have for the most part sided with Kolakowski's view that the idea of the free acting subject implicit in Marx's "Promethean" anthropocentrism and epistemology of praxis, is not the same as the supposedly passive subject implicit in Engels's deterministic "positivism." These same interpreters have then projected this distinction back to the dissertation: For Kolakowski, Marx sides with the Epicurean doctrine of the free subject which, not passively submissive to the existing facts, contains "the germ" of the concept of praxis.5 For Thomas that doctrine of freedom opposes Democritian "positivist" determinism in much the same way that Marxian praxis opposes Engels's "billiardball atomism.''6 On the other hand, it is argued by Sannwald,7 and by an otherwise disparate group whom we might generally identify as the "proto-historical materialist " interpreters of the thesis, such as Cornu and Gabaude,8 that the Marx of the dissertation asserts the dialectical polarity between freedom and necessity, which Marx accuses Epicurus of failing to overcome, and points toward the materialist conception of history. However, these interpreters have not only generally resisted the positivist caricature of them by "humanists"; they also agree with the humanists that the pre-I84I Marx remains, in Gabaude's 4Cf. Frederick Engels, Anti-D~ring (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959), 157ff...

New Readings in the Demostheneia Inscription from Oinoanda

The inscription with which these notes are concerned relates to the institution of a musical festival at Oinoanda in northern Lycia by C. Iulius Demosthenes in the A.D. 120S. Carved on a block of limestone measuring 1·87 m. (height) × c. 1·05 m. (width) × 0·25 m. (depth), it was discovered in June 1967 by J. Borchhardt at Kemerarası, an ancient site below the hill of Oinoanda on its northern side, just across the river (the upper Xanthos or Seki Çay). The stone had been reused in the construction of a fountain, as was shown by the presence of two large holes containing the remains of lead water-pipes. The text informs us that the inscription was set up in the stoa in front of the provision market (ἀγορὰ βιωτική) given to the Oinoandans by Demosthenes, and, whilst the precise location of the market with the three stoas (of which two were one-storeyed, one two-storeyed) facing it has not been established, there is no doubt at all that it was in Oinoanda itself, and that the Demostheneia inscription, like at least three blocks of the inscription of the Epicurean philosopher Diogenes, was brought down to Kemerarası in late antiquity, perhaps when the hill-top site was abandoned after the failure of the water-supply system.

After “The Darkness at Noon”: A Biographical Study of Marxism as Critical Theory

Rethinking Marxism after the Cold War includes the task of reconstructing its genesis, beginning with the role of left Hegelianism in Marx′s development of historical materialism. Reviews the debates within the Hegelian school at the time of Marx′s “conversion” to it, in order to situate his dissertation project (1838‐41) on the difference between the Democritean and Epicurean philosophy of nature. A standard view has Marx writing from the perspectives of his mentor, Bruno Bauer, with whom he later broke in “On the Jewish Question” (1843). Argues that this view is incorrect. Instead, Marx constructs an analogy, according to which Democritus is to the Old Hegelians as Epicurus is to the Young Hegelians. The Epicurean “atom” then becomes a cryptogram of Bauerian Selbstbewusstsein. Although Epicurus has his sympathy, Marx is ultimately critical of him. Epicurean freedom is abstract and theoretical, but the liberation Marx aims towards is concrete and effective.

Virtue and Knowledge: An Introduction to Ancient Greek Ethics

This book focuses on the concept of virtue, and in particular on the virtue of wisdom or knowledge, as it is found in the epic poems of Homer, some tragedies of Sophocles, selected writings of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers. The key questions discussed are the nature of the virtues, their relation to each other, and the relation between the virtues and happiness or well-being. There has been renewed interest recently in the concept of virtue. The value of William Prior's book is that it provides the background and interpretive framework to make classical works on ethics, such as Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, accessible to readers with no training in the classics.

Aspects of Epicurean Theology

L'A. s'interroge sur la theologie d'Epicure en soutenant que pour lui les dieux avaient une existence reelle, qu'ils n'etaient pas le fruit d'une «transition» (une sublimation des qualites humaines). Il etudie en particulier ce qu'en disent les philosophes grecs et romains du 1 er siecle avant Jesus Christ et il recherche dans les textes d'Epicure toute indication sur les caracteristiques divines

Lucretius on Death and Anxiety: Poetry and Philosophy in De Rerum Natura

In a fresh interpretation of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things, Charles Segal reveals this great poetical account of Epicurean philosophy as an important and profound document for the history of Western attitudes toward death. He shows that this poem, aimed at promoting spiritual tranquillity, confronts two anxieties about death not addressed in Epicurus's abstract treatment--the fear of the process of dying and the fear of nothingness. Lucretius, Segal argues, deals more specifically with the body in dying because he draws on the Roman concern with corporeality as well as on the rich traditions of epic and tragic poetry on mortality. Segal explains how Lucretius's sensitivity to the vulnerability of the body's boundaries connects the deaths of individuals with the deaths of worlds, thereby placing human death into the poem's larger context of creative and destructive energies in the universe. The controversial ending of the poem, which describes the plague at Athens, is thus the natural culmination of a theme developed over the course of the work. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

“Vivi nascosto”: riflessi di un tema epicureo in Orazio, Ovidio, Seneca

An analysis of the Epicurean theme λάθe βιώσας in Horace, epist . 1.17.10 and 1.18.102; in Ovid, Trist. 3.4.25 (criticizing Horace); in Seneca’s writings (and in Pseudo-Seneca’s Octavia ); and in AL 407-408 Riese2 = 403-404 Shackleton Bailey, in fact a single elegiac poem possibly written by Seneca himself.

Prosopography of Roman Epicureans from the Second Century B.C. to the Second Century A.D.

Contents: Identification of adherents of the Epicurean philosophy at Rome between the second century B.C. and second century A.D. - Evaluation of ancient testimony naming Romans as Epicurean - Adaptation of Epicurean Doctrines to Roman culture.

Kant and English Nature Poetry

UNDERLYING THIS PAPER is a methodological issue. I am a student of British poetry, in particular British from Milton in about 1650 to Wordsworth up to about 1830. My study aims to achieve the general intel ligibility that arises from connecting particular poems into a historical nar rative set within a broad cultural context. To create this simultaneously connective and interpretive narrative, I need a language with some special capacities. It has to bring out issues that are perceptibly important to the particular poems I have chosen to write about. It must be applicable with enough consistency over a historical range of poems to establish a continu ity against which changes take on significance. And it must let a reader glimpse a background that gives depth and scope to whatever is at stake in particular poems. The methodological question is whether I may legitimately draw any or all ofthat language from Kant. Here are some arguments against doing so. 1. While Kant wrote in this historical period, he did not know the English poetic tradition, and hence, he cannot be responding to its specific concerns. Moreover, the poet I am interested in, Wordsworth, did not read Kant and cannot have been supported by Kant in whatever thinking goes on in his poetry. Using Kant as part of a historical argument will force me to postulate a Zeitgeist that will remain obscure and amorphous and will fail to meet the criteria of precision, concreteness, and clear instantia tion that govern historical writing. 2. Apart from the historical issue, Kant is a philosopher. Philosophy weighs the truth of ideas by formulating them precisely and examining arguments for and against them. Even when is explicitly a poetry of ideas, it works by bringing out the potential of ideas to serve as the sub stance shaped into forms a reader can perceive with satisfaction. If Lucre tius's De rerum natura is a brilliant poem ?and it is ?that counts neither for nor against Epicurean philosophy. If I use Kant's concepts to describe even philosophical poems, I will cancel what is specifically poetical about them. At the same time, I will illegitimately force the poems to answer questions they did not ask.

Epicurean Illusions

Illusions play a central part in Epicurean philosophy. One of its fundamental assumptions is that men are the victims of a certain grand illusion and, as long as they remain so, can never aspire to a happy life. This is the illusion that pleasures can be increased in intensity without limit. It is as a result of this that men go to enormous lengths to enlarge their capacity to procure more pleasure, struggling in pursuit of goals that can rarely, if ever, be achieved. But here mankind has made a disastrous mistake: the limit of pleasure is reached with the removal of pain, and after that point it cannot be increased, only varied. The illusion has therefore led to a tragic state of affairs, a sad history of fruitless war, struggle and ambition and it is a vital part of Epicurus’ programme to rid men of this evil by teaching them the true limits of pleasure.

The Concept of Becoming in Marius the Epicurean

The Concept of Becoming in Marius the Epicurean

Aspects of Scholarship and the Library in Ptolemaic Alexandria

In a papyrus fragment we have a passage of an Attic comedy of the third century B.C., The Phoenicides by Strato, in which the cook is represented as using archaic, Homeric words for common everyday things, and his exasperated master is obliged “to look through the books of Philitas for their meaning”. This is a farcical application of the new trend of research which the scholar Philitas of Cos initiated in language studies and introduced into Alexandria early in the third century B.C. This new movement took root in Alexandria and was maintained by a distinguished line of scholars, members of the Mouseion. The results of their research soon crossed over to the other shores of the Mediterranean. Thus we have the bitter and rather envious reaction of Timon of Phlius, a poet residing at Pella in Macedonia who, as the representative of a more conservative attitude, resented “modern” intellectual developments and attacked, not only contemporary Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, but also scholars of the Alexandrian Mouseion, “Many are feeding in populous Egypt, scribblers on papyrus, ceaselessly wrangling in the bird-cage of the Muses”.