Philosophy 290-7

The primary goal of this course is to study Lucretius’s work On the Nature Of Things (De Rerum Natura) and corresponding passages of Epicurus (excerpted in A.A. Long and D.N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol.1 =LS). My proposed emphasis, at the start, will be on the arguments concerning atoms and void, and on epistemology (Lucretius books 1, 2, and 4), but we will later study Lucretius book 5 on cosmology and anthropology. The material is emphatically anti-Aristotelian (no teleology, infinite time and space, no incorporeal substances, no natural politics). That can be a very helpful interpretive perspective to apply to these texts both historically and conceptually. Both Hobbes and Gassendi were drawn to Epicurus for this reason, and I would like to bring these early moderns into the discussion at the end of the seminar. As a poet Lucretius makes striking use of imagery in his presentation of Epicurean doctrine. I invite you to view this not only as a rhetorical strategy but as a remarkable synthesis of philosophy and literature.

You should acquire your own copy of the Lucretius text, which includes the Latin original on facing pages of the translation: Lucretius De Rerum Natura (Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library). For those of you who know Latin I will make time available for us to read parts of the original.

Basic literature: elementary, A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy (Berkeley, 1986). More detailed; J. Warren, ed. Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism (Cambridge, 2009)