Good Article by Grzelak Highlighting the Ethical Components of "On The Nature of Things" - It's Not Just Physics!

  • Thanks to R.R. for bringing this to my attention. The article disagrees with Bailey and others who express or imply that Lucretius was only concerned about physics.


  • This is a very good article, and the information collected here on the last page is very useful. But good grief, what is that last sentence all about? It's as if the writer has been writing under the glowering scowl, not of the gods of heaven, but of the gods of the Academy, and she has to throw them a bone by suggesting that her findings indicate that Lucretius was not a good Epicurean! She is suggesting that it was a "doctrinal premise" of Epicurus that morals must be kept separate from physics? Or is it more likely that she recognizes that the Academic/orthodox interpretation of Lucretius is flawed, but doesn't want to buck the establishment too far? Possibly there is some mixture of the desire to suggest that Lucretius was not a "good Epicurean," that a lot of people seem to want to make, but I just don't see that at all, and that looks to me like just another effort to undermine the Epicurean message, rather than a point based on anything substantive.