Posts by Cyrano

Thanks a million, Bryan! I've been a member here for only eleven days, but man do I feel I joined the right group.

Wow, Cassius, what a beautiful response to my article!

Regarding Lawrence Krauss: while many speak of him as the second coming of Charles Darwin (Richard Dawkins) - and many others laud him to high heaven - I take particular note of the David Albert review in the New York Times and many other good critiques as well.

I have my article only in PDF. I do not know how (and do not have the program) to convert PDF to plain text. If you wish to do so, please do.

But though feel inadequate in that, I am left glowing in your closing remark: "I think this is the position that Epicurus would take even today, and this needs to be on any site devoted to Epicurean philosophy."

Thank you very much.

Only in the title of this thread is Epicurus mentioned, not at all in my article. I wrote this article many years ago, long before I met you great Epicureans. But I think you will nevertheless feel his presence sufficiently that this article will be welcomed.

My contribution to the Cyrano discussion may be found elsewhere on this website.

Yes. I wrote it as an article for the community paper (the 𝑹𝒐𝒔𝒔𝒎𝒐𝒐𝒓 𝑵𝒆𝒘𝒔) in the senior complex in which I live. I've been doing a Shakespeare column there for over two years.

Lear Put His Finger On It

"Tell me, my daughters, which one of you loves me most?”

Has any father ever asked such a question of his children? Especially in a public assembly? No, only in a fairytale. “King Lear” opens as such, but quickly becomes the most terrible tragedy in world literature.

The tragedy begins with that foolish question. But it hinges on the word “nothing.” That is the answer the youngest daughter, Cordelia, gives to her father when he asks what she can say “to draw a third more opulent than your sisters’?” A third more land, he means. For Lear, disposing of his kingdom, means to give the largest portion to the most “loving” daughter.

The two older daughters, Goneril and Regan, beguile their father with grandiose hypocritical professions of love. Cordelia, honest and sincere, cannot play that game. Her reply is “Nothing, my lord.”

“Nothing will come of nothing,” responds King Lear. He thinks he is saying “Because you say ‘nothing,’ I will give you nothing” - no land.

And he is saying that. But Lear – unbeknownst to himself – is uttering words so profound that they reverberate throughout the universe!

For if ‘nothing can come from nothing,’ then something can only come from something. And that something from another something from another in an infinite regression. Makes sense. Almost too simple. But in childlike simplicity can be found the deepest profundity. No one understood this better than Shakespeare, genius of paradox and irony. But it does not take a genius of Shakespearean proportions to comprehend a universe infinite in space and time. It was figured out in Greece almost 3,000 years ago, and long before that in China and India.

Can we doubt that Shakespeare figured it out as well? He was very well aware of Epicurus, the foremost Greek materialist philosopher. Through the ages the philosophy of Epicurus influenced poets, statesmen and scientists from Lucretius, Omar Khayyam, Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson to Stephen Greenblatt, exceptional Shakespeare scholar.

Great Epicureans living in Shakespeare’s time were Montaigne, the French essayist whom Shakespeare read assiduously. Also Giordano Bruno, lover of the infinite material universe who lectured in London and was later burned at the stake by the Catholic Inquisition in 1600. At this time Shakespeare embarked on his series of incredible tragedies - “Hamlet,” “Othello,” “King Lear,” “Macbeth, “Antony and Cleopatra”... Another contemporary Epicurean was Cyrano de Bergerac, greatest atheist of his time – perhaps of all time!

But for an Epicurean, Shakespeare needed only walk down the street. There lived Thomas Digges, mathematician and astronomer. He was the first to promulgate the Copernican system in English. Copernicus had “turned the universe upside down,” but Digges went further than Copernicus by proposing that the universe goes on forever with an infinite number of stars.

Son of Thomas Digges was Leonard, a friend and ardent admirer of Shakespeare. He wrote a laudatory poem for the First Folio, the collection of 36 Shakespeare plays published in 1623. When Leonard’s father Thomas died in 1595, his mother married Thomas Russell. Shakespeare named Russell as overseer of his will.

Given all the foregoing, may we not ask whether Shakespeare was an Epicurean? It’s possible, perhaps probable. We know from his plays that Shakespeare was not a believer. And it would be just like him to give King Lear words that surreptitiously expressed the poet’s position on the most foundational question of philosophy: something from something or something from nothing?

Too much philosophy? Well, we do want to know Shakespeare better. And here I feel we are entering the mind – the very heart – of “our world’s greatest genius.”

Shakespeare fanatic that I am, I am very happy to see your extended discussion of 𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐭. I am now working on 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫 and the possibility that Shakespeare may have been an Epicurean. Wouldn't that be something! In Montaigne, also an Epicurean, Shakespeare read about Lucretius, atomic theory and all.

Shakespeare fanatic that I am, I am very happy to see your extended discussion of 𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐭. I am now working on 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐫 and the possibility that Shakespeare may have been an Epicurean. Wouldn't that be something! In Montaigne, also an Epicurean, Shakespeare read about Lucretius, atomic theory and all.

I admire you, Cassius, for all the work you do here.

My speciality is Shakespeare, and I am working now on an article on 𝑲𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑳𝒆𝒂𝒓 and whether Shakespeare may have been an Epicurean.

The truth is I have not read all the works of de Bergerac. Yes, I "would think that he most definitely had something to say about Epicurus at some point." But I'm sorry I cannot help you now. Probably in the future I will, for you are shaming me into a perusal of his writing.

Quit a few years ago I published a Cyrano article in the magazine FREE INQUIRY.

https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/1991/10/22160745/p39-1.pdf

It covers a lot of the same ground as in my presentation, but also, of course, new material as well.

Oh! The best book I know of about Cyrano is this one...

http://tinyurl.com/59xshm5w

Thank you very much, Cassius.

Yes, my love for Cyrano inspired me to create that extensive presentation. And your idea of doing a similar one for Epicurus is excellent. It can be done (for free!) on the terrific website CANVA.

Much thanks to all who have welcomed me here and reacted to my post. Already I am enjoying so much this website and my participation in it.

I just discovered your site and am delighted to find it. I have not read much on Epicurus per se, but I have been a materialist in philosophy for 60 years. (I did read with tremendous enjoyment the book by Stephen Greenblatt.)

The Epicureans with whom I am most familiar are Omar Khayyam and Cyrano de Bergerac. In fact, the latter is one of the great heroes of my life. I send you here a pictorial presentation I created about him...

http://tinyurl.com/3a7wvnwu

Gene Gordon