Epicureans: Metaphysics and Physics, Misc

Epicurus asked: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” This Socratic dialogue explores a popular version of the Argument From Evil. Suitable as an introduction to the topic.

This chapter considers the status of the PSR for the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics as falling along a spectrum of attitudes to the demand for explanation. The PSR is strongest with the Stoics, but also limited by their brute commitment to two eternal, ungenerated, and fundamental principles that are the source and explanation for everything there is. With the Epicureans, the PSR is strong yet limited in similar ways, by the fundamentality of the atoms and eternality of their motion, but (...) also much more severely blunted by the famous doctrine of the swerve, according to which atoms veer off at uncertain times and places. Finally, with the skeptics there is a tantalizing tension between the pervasive use of the PSR to undermine all dogma and the application of the PSR to itself, so that there is no more reason to endorse this guiding skeptical principle itself than to reject it. (shrink)

Previous chapter Rhuthmic ontology Having set up the larger scientific frame, Serres introduced Lucretius' ontology. He did not pay attention to the atoms themselves but it is worth noticing that Lucretius described them as endowed with various size, weight, and “shape” which was an accurate translation of the Democritean rhuthmós. Serres started from Book 2 where the concept of clinamen – declination was introduced as “depellere paulum, tantum quod - Physique – Nouvel article.

Previous chapter Rhuthmic Perception Theory At the juncture point between ontology and knowledge was the soul. According to Lucretius, the soul consisted of two parts: the animus, located in the chest, which commanded intellectual operations and will, and the anima which was spread throughout the body, received perceptions and transmitted in turn the impulses of the command center. The soul in both aspects could be shown to be corporeal. To make it short, anthropology could be - Physique – Nouvel article.

This essay shows how the Epicureans could have anticipated time dilation measurements precisely as our standard model predicts and precisely as we measure it today. Specifically, a mathematical equivalent of the velocity Lorentz transformation can be derived from the Epicurean atomist doctrine of isotakheia, which states that all (Epicurean) atoms have equal speed. The derivation is brief and classical, and it requires no mathematical concepts that would be foreign to the ancient Greeks. The significance of this derivation is addressed.

This article examines the use of political metaphors and analogies in ancient discussions of Epicurean atomism, ranging from the philosophical dialogues of Cicero in the 1st century BC to Claudian’s epic invective In Rufinum in the 390s AD. Building on earlier scholarship that traces the emergence of monarchical and imperial analogies for the Greco-Roman pantheon in Post-Hellenistic philosophy, I argue that ancient critics of atomism shared a common tendency to depict Epicurean physics as the conceptual opposite of a well-ordered state. (...) In particular, depictions of Epicurean theology as a form of divine ‘banishment’ and of atomic cosmology as a form of cosmic ‘democracy’ or ‘anarchy’ appear in texts by a wide range of Greek and Roman authors, revealing the great extent to which philosophical disagreements over atomic physics were influenced by political and social ideas. (shrink)

This article demonstrates the importance of making explicit different conceptions of movement for the philosophy of sport. In addition to the mechanistic and the Aristotelian approaches, this article presents a third, underexplored view of movement, namely that of Lucretius as interpreted by Karl Marx and Michel Serres. By exploring the similarities between Marx’s motion of repulsion and Serres’s turbulent flux, it will be argued that a Lucretian view offers a philosophy of movement that uniquely does not rely on stasis. This (...) Lucretian perspective is illustrated through Serres’s elaborations on the body and sport. It is concluded that sport is not primarily a rational, rule-guided practice but arises from moving and sensuous bodies that are always deviating from their standard trajectory. (shrink)

In his later writings, Althusser brings to light a repressed materialistic current in Western philosophy, ranging from Epicurus to Heidegger and Derrida. In this article, I argue that the comparison between Epicurus's conception of Nature and Heidegger's concepts of _Geworfenheit_ and _Es gibt_ allows Althusser to lay the foundation for a new notion of event. Through the analysis of this philosophical connection, Althusser aims both to think of Time and History in a non-teleological way and to create the conditions for (...) a political praxis that does not apply any kind of metaphysical principles to a constantly changing reality. (shrink)

The present edition of Book I of Lucretius's De rerum natura by Serafín Bodelón García is based on the Hispanic codices Valentianus and Caesaraugustanus. It amends the text as fixed by Bailey (1926, 1947) and takes note of the various corrections proposed by prominent philologists of Lucretius's work and reproduced in the edition: Lucretius, Über die Natur der Dinge. Lateinisch und Deutsch. Schriften und Quellen der Alten Welt (ed. Josef Martin). Berlin, Akademie-Verlag (DDR), 1972. The entire book I can be (...) considered an introduction to the work. From the model of invocation to the muses (hymn to Venus) the intention of the work is exposed: to eliminate the fear of the gods. The basic principles of the atomistic doctrine, the operators (atoms and vacuum) and the operations (nothing comes from nothing) are exposed. A critique is made of alternative theories to atomism and those with which it can be confused, atoms and the void are justified as principles of things. (shrink)

Lucretius made it plain that his poem was designed to liberate man from superstition, the fear of death and the tyranny of priests: \"When man’s life lay for all to see foully groveling upon the ground, crushed, which displayed her head from the regions of heaven, lowering over mortals with horrible aspect, a man of Greece was the first that dared to uplift mortal eyes against her.... but all the more they goaded the eager courage of his soul, so that (...) he should desire, first of all men, to shatter the confining bars of nature’s gates. \". (shrink)

While most new materialists, including Thomas Nail, tend to distance themselves from Deleuze, this essay reads the encounter of Nail's ‘process materialism’ and Deleuzian philosophy as productive rather than contentious. After tracing the affinities of their notions of continuity and discontinuity by way of Deleuze's The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque and Nail's Lucretius I: An Ontology of Motion and Being and Motion, the essay considers Nail's unfolding of Lucretius’ luminous philosophy in relation to Deleuze's reading of Lucretius from within (...) Deleuze's own ‘philosophical luminism’. Within the multiple overlaps between Nail and Deleuze, particularly vis-à-vis quantum physics and quantum field theory, their divergent readings of the particle–wave duality bring about a productive conceptual tension. Nail's argument about the ontological precedence of waves over particles (‘process precedes existence’) is illuminated by Deleuze's concept of their ontological complementarity (actual particles and virtual waves, virtual particles and actual waves), and vice versa. (shrink)

This chapter offers an overview of the Epicurean conception of philosophy, with special attention to the value of physics. The Epicureans value physics not only for its ability to help remove superstitious beliefs about the gods and death, but also for its ability to stabilize our beliefs and to give causal accounts of ethically-relevant kinds such as pleasure and desire.

Through a radical new reading of the Theological Political Treatise, Dimitris Vardoulakis argues that the major source of Spinoza’s materialism is the Epicurean tradition that re-emerges in modernity when manuscripts by Epicurus and Lucretius are rediscovered. This reconsideration of Spinoza’s political project, set within a historical context, lays the ground for an alternative genealogy of materialism. Central to this new reading of Spinoza are the theory of practical judgment (understood as the calculation of utility) and its implications for a theory (...) of democracy that is resolutely positioned against authority. (shrink)