Salvete,
I've been a lurker here for a while, I was introduced to Epicurus in Happiness: a philosopher's guide by Lenoir, Frédéric in 2017. Long story short, studying Epicurus has helped me deal many childhood abuses and continues to help me today.
I look forward to, hopefully, engaging with y'all.
You are very welcome here, Randall. These teachings can be like a lighthouse in a hurricane.
Display MoreEpicurus is not mentioned in Rucker's book, although I find his text even more Epicurean then "The Art of Frugal Hedonism."
Am reminded of the early post-apostolic Christian Justin Martyr: "Those, therefore, who lived according to reason (logos) were really Christians, even though they were thought to be atheists, such as, among the Greeks, Socrates, Heraclitus and others like them."
Well, I wouldn't want to push that too far, but still:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
(William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)
Speaking of Shakespeare, in a recent dive into DRN, I discovered quite a few occasions where Shakespeare shamelessly appropriates Lucretian imagery. Also, the same for Chaucer, Spenser, and Wordsworth.
Outside of Shakespeare, I'm finding explicit instances of DRN being a source of inspiration (or the target of theft) from, at least, Rousseau, Deleuze, Nietzsche, Bergson, Santayana, Gassendi, Machiavelli, Holbach, Descartes, Galileo, Locke, Hobbes, Spinoza, Freud, Horace, Dryden, Diderot, Voltaire, Frederick II, La Mettrie, Marx, Pope, Botticelli, Virgil, Jefferson, Erasmus Darwin, Shelley, Lord Byron, Newton, Halley, Tennyson, Hume, Kant, Milton, Goethe, and Bacon. (I'm currently getting high on the idea that Lucretius is the most significant individual poet of all.)
"Epicurus taught YOLO but not the YOLO That You Are Familiar With." -- added per suggestion from Don - thanks
Good one. 
In keeping with Cassius new thread:
Epicurus taught YOLO but not the YOLO That You Are Familiar With.
I realized after typing "YOLO" that is is both thematically perfect, and also, connotatively antithetical to my message, so my bad for throwing out that adjective (and I'll use this as an opportunity to further demonstrate that nouns are more powerful than adjectives, and a good noun should spare us the expense of having to buy an adjective).
I'm really just a fan of our philosophy just being "Hedonism" (sans adjective). I want to force the other "Hedonists" to defend their "brand" of Hedonism with apologetic adjectives, like, "Unrestrained Hedonism", or "YOLO Hedonism".
I am responding without reading the context surrounding that quote, so I apologize if this is not a direct response.
I think that Epicurus' promotion of rational, non-mystical thinking is most necessary for those enmeshed in a powerfully anti-science environment. We observed this during the Italian Renaissance and Revolutionary France: the dissonance Lucretius offered inspired the founders of modern science and provided a lighthouse in a religious storm.
That observation may seem much less poignant to we, contemporary, urban people, enmeshed in a power grid of modernity. Even Christians who "claim" to have adopted the Christianity that Jesus taught still walk around with computers in their pockets that were invented by disbelievers on the principle of particle physics.
In a way, we are all Epicurean, whether or not reactionary minds are willing to recognize their own context. When Nietzsche said "God Is Dead", he didn't mean, "Atheists Have Killed the Sacred Spirit of the Christians", he meant, "Our medieval mythology has dried-up like a drippy puddle in this, the Summer of Science".
The observation that the Sun is not a conscious deity is also a pretty mundane observation for modern peoples, but only because we were already taught this information. If the majority of American adults were still confused about the basic operations of the sun, this observation would prophetic, threatening, inspiring, and life-changing.
Ultimately, though, whether we are introducing Atomism to a culture that sees shades of infinitely divisible elements, or Heliocentrism to a Geocentric culture, or telling a gay kid in rural Mississippi in 2023 that his feelings are totally natural, it is people who have been neglected scientifically who benefit most from these things.
I guess my thesis is this: Science might seem "oversold" in cultures that are already scientific, but a culture like Afghanistan under the Taliban, for example, DESPERATELY needs a Lucretian revolution of thought. Flat-Earthers might not believe in satellites in outer space ... but they sure do use them a lot when they make phone calls.
Display MoreAs literal as possible:
ὁ τῆς φύσεως πλοῦτος "The wealth of nature..."
καὶ ὥρισται* καὶ εὐπόριστός ἐστιν, "is the best and easily procured...
ὁ δὲ τῶν κενῶν δοξῶν (kenōn doxōn "empty beliefs/principles/doctrines") εἰς ἄπειρον ἐκπίπτει. "But that of empty opinions runs onto infinity."
*πλοῦτος ploutos. Ex., plutocracy. Wealth, riches.
**ὥρισται is, according to LSJ, a contraction of ὁ ἄριστος (o aristos) from which we get aristocracy. So, it literally means "best, finest; best in its kind, and so in all sorts of relations, serving as Sup. of ἀγαθός (agathon "good"). I'm wondering if the "limited" translation is from the idea of oligos as in oligarchy as in rule by a few or limited number. If I've misunderstood ὥρισται I am more than open to correction!
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BD%A4…%84%CE%BF%CF%82
PS. There is ὁριστός from ὁρίζω (horízō, “separate, delimit”) but ὥρισται with its sense connected to "the good" seems to me to make sense here.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%84…2#Ancient_Greek
I would be curious to get Eikadistes 's take.
I agree with this expression of KD15.
I think in Book III Lucretius, in an attempt to disprove the idea of an immortal soul, entertains the possibility of a bodiless soul, or a soul that is simply disembodied, but is afforded all other qualities of the soul besides its embodiment and then supposes how such an existence would differ from being literal void (I might not be remembering Lucretius completely accurate, but the example still hold). Even in this (impossible) scenario in which a post-mortem soul can cast judgments (i.e. identifying pleasure vs. pain), it requires some sensible experience upon which to cast judgment, therefore, without sensation (even if, somehow, the soul could still "feel" but not sense) judgment is void.
Here, I think Epicurus is explicitly referring to the technical stimulation of sensory organs (or, rather, the lack thereof).
ANAISTHETEI - ANAIΣΘHTEI - ἀναισθητεῖ - /aːnaɪs.thεː'teɪ/ - related to αναίσθητος (anaîsthetos, “insensate”, “unfeeling”)from ἀν- (ἀn-, “without”) + αισθητός (aisthetós, “perceptibility”, “sensibility”) meaning “devoid of sensation”, “unconsciousness”, “no sense-experience”, “absence of sensation”, “lacks awareness”, “no feeling”, “no perception”.
DIALYTHEN - ΔIAΛYΘEN - διαλυθὲν - /diːa.lyː'then/ - from διαλύω (dialūō) from δια- (dia-, “through”) + λυθὲν (luthén), the third-person, plural, aorist, passive indicative infection of λύω (lúō, adjectival suffx) meaning “loosened”, “released”, “dissolved”, “destroyed”, “dispersed”, “disintegrated”, “broken down into atoms”.
I have been translating sections of De Rerum Natura (and plan to continue), and I found something interesting I wanted to share, upon which I will likely build later. Lucretius discusses the difficult task of translating scientific Greek vocabulary into Latin metaphors, and I feel that (overwhelmingly) most translators gloss over Lucertius' specific innovations by employing the word "atom" or "atoms", which can be misleading for several reasons.
Instead, I found that (usually) Munro best preserves Lucretius' linguistic innovations without resorting to contemporary scientific jargon or reducing the poetic flavor to the tone of a textbook.
Latin Words For ATOMI (found in DRN I-VI):
CORPORA — “first bodies” (Munro)
CORPORA MATERIAI — “elements of matter” (Munro)
CORPORA PRIMA — “first bodies” (Munro)
CORPORIBUS PRIMIS — “first bodies” (Munro)
CORPORIS — “first body” (Munro)
CORPVSCVLA MATERIAI — “the minute bodies of matter” (Munro)
ELEMENTA — “elements” (Munro)
ELEMENTAQUE PRIMA — “prime elements” (Munro)
ELEMENTIS — “elements” (Munro)
FIGVRAS — “elements” (Munro)
EXORDIA — “beginnings” (Munro)
EXORDIA PRIMA — “first-beginnings” (Munro)
EXORDIA RERVM — “beginnings of things” (Munro)
GENITALIA CORPORA — “begetting bodies” (Munro)
GENITALIA CORPORA REBVS — “begetting bodies of things” (Munro)
MATERIAI CORPORA — “bodies of matter” (Munro)
MATERIAI CORPORIBVS — “bodies of matter” (Munro)
MATERIEM RERVM — “matter of things” (Munro)
MATERIES AETERNA — “matter everlasting” (Munro)
MINVTIS PERQVAM CORPORIBVS — “exceedingly minute bodies” (Munro)
PRIMAS PARTIS — “primal parts” (Munro)
PRIMASQVE FIGVRAS — “primary elements” (Munro)
PRIMORDIA — “first-beginnings” (Munro)
PRIMORDIA CORPORE — “first elements” (Munro)
PRIMORDIA PRINCIPIORVM — “basic elements” (Humphries)
PRIMORDIA RERVM — “first beginnings of things” (Munro)
PRIMORDIAQVE — “firstlings” (Humphries)
PRIMORVM — “first things” (Munro)
PRINCIPIIS — “primary particles” (Smith)
PRINCIPIIS RERVM — “primary elements of things” (Smith)
PRINCIPIORVM — “primary elements” (Smith)
PRINCIPIORVM CORPORIBVS — “primary particles” (Melville)
PRINCIPIORVM CORPORIS ATQVE ANIMI — “the elements of the body and spirit” (Smith)
SEMINA — “seeds” (Munro)
SEMINA REBVS — “seeds of things” (Munro)
SEMINA RERVM — “seeds of things” (Munro)
SEMINAQVE — “seeds” (Smith)
SEMINE — “seed” (Munro)
SEMINIBVS — “seeds” (Munro)
SEMINIS — “seeds” (Munro)
RERVM PRIMORDIA — “first-beginnings of things”
Of note, lines between 1000-1288 in Book V use SEMINA to refer to male ejaculate fluid, thus, employing literal imagery, creating a necessary, poetic comparison between the generation of the Earth and the generation of a Child through the same, insentient mechanisms; both of which are composed of clumps of eternal matter that get entangled while falling through the void, both of which lead to inextricably vast complexity, coming from simple, primordial seeds.
I plan on reviewing III-VI next, but I thought that I-II would most efficiently provide me with the largest variety of phrases for "atoms" in the ancient context or "subatomic particles" in the modern meaning. (Edit: updated to sixerino)
I believe we are looking for the following:
sentio, ergo sum
"I feel, therefore I am."
“The work of Lucretius will work its magic on anyone who does not completely wrap himself in the spirit of our time and, in particular, occasionally feels like a spectator of the intellectual attitude of his contemporaries. One sees here how an independent man equipped with lively senses and reasoning, endowed with scientific and speculative curiosity, a man who has not even the faintest notion of the results of today’s science that we are taught in childhood, before we can consciously, much less critically, confront them, imagines the world.
The firm confidence that Lucretius, as a faithful disciple of Democritus and Epicurus, places in the intelligibility, in other words, int he casual connectedness of everything that happens in the world, must make a profound impression. He is firmly convinced, he even beleives he can prove, that everything is based on the the regular motion of immutable atoms, ascribing to atoms no qualities other than geometric-mechnaical ones. The sensual qualities warmth, coldenss, color, odor, taste, are to be attributed to the movements of atoms, likewise all phenomena of life. He conceives of the soul and mind as formed from especially light atoms, by assigning (in an inconsistent way) particular qualities of matter to particular characteristics of experience.
He states as the primary objective of his work the liberation of humanity from the slavish fear, induced by religion and superstition, that he sees as nourished and exploited by priests for thei own purposes. This certainly is a serious issue for him. Nonetheless, he does seem to have been guided mostly by the need to persuade his readers of the necessity for the atomistic-mechanical worldview, although he dare not say this openly to his much more practically oriented Roman readers. His reverence for Epicurus, Greek culture and language, which he considers greatly superior to Latin culture and language, is altogether moving. It redounds to the glory of the Romans that this could be said to them. Where is the modern nation that holds and expresses such noble sentiments with regard to one of its contemporary nations?
Diels’s verses read so naturally that one forget it is a translation.”
(Albert Einstein, Foreward in T. Lucretius Carus, De rerum natura, Vol. 2, Lukrez, Von der Natur, trans. by Hermann Diels, Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1924, pp. via-vib)
I'm not sure if this is the right place, but I confirmed this:
There is a vastly misattributed quote to Lucretius and De Rerum Natura that proposes that “Fear first on earth created gods." This comes from Statius, “Primus in orbe deos fecit timor” (Thebais III 661)
Not incompatible, simply, misattributed.
My only hesitation is that the picture has - to me - an almost Jesus vibe with the orientation of the face and the long hair. I didn't notice the pig until cassius pointed it out.
“For if we are to speak, as the majesty of his revelations demand, a god he was, a god […] who first discovered that principle of life which is now identified with wisdom, and who by his genius saved life from such mighty waves and such deep darkness and moored it in such calm water and so brilliant light.” (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book V, Lines 7-12)
Another thing I noticed in Latin, speaking of repetition:
Book I 926-951
avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante
trita solo. iuvat integros accedere fontis
atque haurire, iuvatque novos decerpere flores
insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam,
unde prius nulli velarint tempora musae;
primum quod magnis doceo de rebus et artis
religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo,
deinde quod obscura de re tam lucida pango
carmina musaeo contingens cuncta lepore.
id quoque enim non ab nulla ratione videtur;
sed vel uti pueris absinthia taetra medentes
cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circum
contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore,
ut puerorum aetas inprovida ludificetur
labrorum tenus, interea perpotet amarum
absinthi laticem deceptaque non capiatur,
sed potius tali facto recreata valescat,
sic ego nunc, quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur
tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque
volgus abhorret ab hac, volui tibi suaviloquenti
carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostram
et quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle;
si tibi forte animum tali ratione tenere
versibus in nostris possem, dum percipis omnem
naturam rerum qua constet compta figura.
Sed quoniam docui...
"this is what impels me now to penetrate by power of intellect the remote regions of the Pierian maids, hitherto untrodden by any foot. Joyfully I visit virgin springs and draw their water; joyfully I cull unfamiliar flowers, gatherings for my head a chaplet of fame from spots whence the Muses have never before taken a garland for the brows of any person: first because I teach about important matters and endeavor to disentangle the mind from the strangling knots of superstition and also because of an obscure subject i compose such luminous verses, overspreading all with the charm of the Muses. For obviously my actual technique does not lack a motive. Doctors who try to give children foul-tasting wormwood first coat the rim of the cup with the sweet juice of golden honey; their intention is that the children, unwary at their tender age, will be tricked into applying their lips to the cup and at the same time will drain the bitter draught of wormwood--victims of beguilement, but not of betrayal, since by this means they recover strength and health. I have a similar intention now: since this philosophy of ours often appears somewhat off-putting to those who have not experienced it, and most people recoil back from it, I have preferred to expound it to you in harmonious Pierian poetry and, so to speak, coat it with the sweet honey of the Muses. My hope has been that by this means I might perhaps succeed in holding your attention concentrated on my versus, while you fathom the nature of the universe and the form of its structure. Now then..." (Smith 28-29)
Book IV 1-26
Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante
trita solo. iuvat integros accedere fontis
atque haurire, iuvatque novos decerpere flores
insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam,
unde prius nulli velarint tempora musae;
primum quod magnis doceo de rebus et artis
religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo,
deinde quod obscura de re tam lucida pango
carmina musaeo contingens cuncta lepore.
id quoque enim non ab nulla ratione videtur;
nam vel uti pueris absinthia taetra medentes
cum dare conantur, prius oras pocula circum
contingunt mellis dulci flavoque liquore,
ut puerorum aetas inprovida ludificetur
labrorum tenus, interea perpotet amarum
absinthi laticem deceptaque non capiatur,
sed potius tali facto recreata valescat,
sic ego nunc, quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur
tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque
volgus abhorret ab hac, volui tibi suaviloquenti
carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostram
et quasi musaeo dulci contingere melle;
si tibi forte animum tali ratione tenere
versibus in nostris possem, dum percipis omnem
naturam rerum ac persentis utilitatem.
Sed quoniam docui...
"I am penetrating the remote regions of the Pierian maids, hitherto untrodden by any foot. Joyfully I visit virgin prings and draw their water; joyfully I cull unfamiliar flowers, gathering for my head da chaplet of fame from spots whence the Muses have never before taken a garland for the brows of any person: first because I teach about important matters and endeavor to disentangle the mind from the strangling knots of superstition, and also because on an obscure subject I compose such luminous verses, overspreading all with the charm of the Muses. For obviously my actual technique does not lack a motive. Doctors who try to give children foul-tasting wormwood first coat the rim of the cup with the sweet juice of golden honey; their intention is that the children, unwary at their tender age, will be tricked into applying their lips to the cup and at the same time will drain the bitter draft of wormwood – victims of beguilement, but not of betrayal, since by this means they recover strength and health. I have a similar intention now: since this philosophy of ours often appears somewhat off-putting to those who have not experienced it, and most people recoil back from it, I have preferred to expound it to you in harmonious Pierian poetry and, so to speak, coat it with the sweet honey of the Muses. My hope has been that by this means I might perhaps succeed in holding your attention concentrated on my verses, while you apprehend the nature of the universe and become conscious of the beneficial effect of my instruction. Well, now that..." (Smith 100-101)
I have, before, come across the suggestion that repetition found throughout Lucretius' verse lends credence to the proposition that we are only reading a draft of De Rerum Natura and not its author's anticipated final form. I had not realized this myself; now that I found 26 consecutive lines that are repeated almost identically, it seems likely to me (unless there was a trend ancient poets adopted of heavily employing repetition as a rhetorical technique) that Lucretius used this as a placeholder, likely, in my mind, to be re-visited upon meeting some other conditions.
One other angle from the Villa Borghese:
Fun thing I just found while making some notes in my Latin copy:
Book II 27-31
cum tamen inter se prostrati in gramine molli
propter aquae rivum sub ramis arboris altae
non magnis opibus iucunde corpora curant,
praesertim cum tempestas adridet et anni
tempora conspergunt viridantis floribus herbas.
"...when they lie in friendly company on velvety turf near a running brook beneath the branches of a tall tree and provide their bodies with simple but agreeable refreshment, especially when the weather smiles and the season of the year spangles the green grass with flowers." (Smith 36)
Book V 1392-1396
saepe itaque inter se prostrati in gramine molli
propter aquae rivom sub ramis arboris altae.
non magnis opibus iucunde corpora habebant,
praesertim cum tempestas ridebat et anni
tempora pingebant viridantis floribus herbas.
"So they would often lie in friendly company on velvety turf near a running brook beneath the branches of a tall tree and provide their bodies with simple but agreeable refreshments, especially when the weather smiled and the season of the year embroidered the green grass with flowers." (Smith 174-175)
Thanks for the new poll, but am I overlooking it or did you leave out the Brown 1783 version? We don't know the translator's name, but I actually consider that one of my favorites due to the rendering of several important passages - one that stands out to me is his use of "events" rather than exclusively "accidents" in describing emergent properties.
I've added him to both.
Just a little poll while I was doing some work...
