Concerning religiosity

Great post, Oscar, and I personally absolutely feel the same way. That kind of feeling oozes out of every section of Lucretius - how can we not ascribe supreme importance to our connection to the work of a man who had the courage and wisdom to stand against so much of the world in the way that he did - and showed us how to do the same!

Quote from Oscar

where's the annual symposium?? lol

That is definitely a question that we need to answer! If they can have an symposium in Athens, and if Thessaloniki can have regular meetings too, then our goal certainly ought to to match that. We can make some headway through on-line discussion, but in the end there's no substitute for in-person meetings.

I would love to see the Getty Villa! Seems like a really underappreciated resource for people with a connection to something that is sort of Roman-revivalist - like Epicurean philosophy.

Oscar we've had some degree of success in having online discussions, and we'll probably schedule another one soon. We've been going through the Norman Dewitt book, as that is a highly organized presentation of the whole philosophy.

Do you happen to have read DeWitt's book?

Very good Oscar. As you know I push that book pretty hard because I think it gives an excellent overview without getting bogged down in too much comparative criticism.

But even as I push it as important, I like nothing better than to hear commentary from others as they read it and compare it to what they have read elsewhere. No doubt DeWitt's take is not in line with the conventional outlook in many ways, and I like to hear the reaction of people whether they agree or disagree, so I hope you'll post comments as you read it.

Thank you Oscar! You have just made your first major contribution to organization of the forum. I already had a forum and threads set up for discussion of each chapter as part of our online discussion meetings, but your question caused me to realize that I needed to reorganize that into a category and subforums for each chapter.

In my view there is not likely to be in many years a book so important as this one, and if we are going to use it as an organization method for discussing the philosophy (and I think it is the best one extant) then we want people to start new threads and not just respond to existing ones. So I am setting that up now and you will find it here: Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus And His Philosophy"

I will have it fully set up, with existing threads moved to the new location, before the day is over.

Thank you!