Download or read book Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance written by Ada Palmer and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After its rediscovery in 1417, Lucretius’s Epicurean didactic poem De Rerum Natura threatened to supply radicals and atheists with the one weapon unbelief had lacked in the Middle Ages: good answers. Scholars could now challenge Christian patterns of thought by employing the theory of atomistic physics, a sophisticated system that explained natural phenomena without appeal to divine participation, and argued powerfully against the immortality of the soul, the afterlife, and a creator God. Ada Palmer explores how Renaissance readers, such as Machiavelli, Pomponio Leto, and Montaigne, actually ingested and disseminated Lucretius, and the ways in which this process of reading transformed modern thought. She uncovers humanist methods for reconciling Christian and pagan philosophy, and shows how ideas of emergent order and natural selection, so critical to our current thinking, became embedded in Europe’s intellectual landscape before the seventeenth century. This heterodoxy circulated in the premodern world, not on the conspicuous stage of heresy trials and public debates, but in the classrooms, libraries, studies, and bookshops where quiet scholars met the ideas that would soon transform the world. Renaissance readers—poets and philologists rather than scientists—were moved by their love of classical literature to rescue Lucretius and his atomism, thereby injecting his theories back into scientific discourse. Palmer employs a new quantitative method for analyzing marginalia in manuscripts and printed books, exposing how changes in scholarly reading practices over the course of the sixteenth century gradually expanded Europe’s receptivity to radical science, setting the stage for the scientific revolution.
Download or read book St Paul and Epicurus written by Norman W. De Witt and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book De Rerum Natura written by William Ellery Leonard and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2008-08-08 with total page 916 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available in paperback, this annotated scholarly edition of the Latin text of De Rerum Natura has long been hailed as one of the finest editions of this monumental work. It features an introduction to Lucretius's life and work by William Ellery Leonard, an introduction to and commentary on the poem by Stanley Barney Smith, the complete Latin text with detailed annotations, and an index of ancient sources. --University of Wisconsin Press.
Download or read book The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence written by Alison Brown and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brown demonstrates how Florentine thinkers used Lucretius—earlier and more widely than has been supposed—to provide a radical critique of prevailing orthodoxies. She enhances our understanding of the “revolution” in sixteenth-century political thinking and our definition of the Renaissance within newly discovered worlds and new social networks.
Download or read book Lucretius and Epicurus written by Diskin Clay and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom written by D. N. Sedley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-18 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the structure and origins of De Rerum Natura (On the nature of things), the great first-century BC poem by Lucretius. By showing how he worked from the literary model set by the Greek poet Empedocles but under the philosophical inspiration of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, the book seeks to characterise Lucretius' unique poetic achivement. It is addressed to those interested both in Latin poetry and in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy.
Download or read book Three Philosophical Poets written by George Santayana and published by Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University. This book was released on 1910 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Paul and Ancient Views of Sexual Desire written by J Edward Ellis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2007-06-08 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul and Ancient Views of Sexual Desire refutes the argument put forward by some scholars that Paul, in his sexual ethics, is in partial agreement with a current of thought in the Greco-Roman world that condemns sexual desire and advocates the elimination of such desire from marital sex. Ellis argues against not only this line of thought but also the attendant notion that this way of thinking underlies Paul's comments on homosexual activity in Romans 1. Through close analysis of numerous ancient passages relating to sexual desire, Ellis demonstrates that ancient thinkers tend to condemn not sexual desire in itself but excessive sexual desire and lack of self-control. Furthermore, he contends that ancient auditors would have been unlikely to see condemnation of sexual desire in Paul's words in 1 Thessalonians 4 or 1 Corinthians 7.
Download or read book De Rerum Natura III written by Titus Lucretius Carus and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucretius' poem, for which Epicurean philosophy provided the inspiration, attempts to explain the nature of the universe and its processes with the object of freeing mankind from religious fears.
Download or read book The Early Textual History of Lucretius De Rerum Natura written by David Butterfield and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-17 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first detailed analysis of the fate of Lucretius' De rerum natura from its composition in the 50s BC to the creation of our earliest extant manuscripts during the Carolingian Age. Close investigation of the knowledge of Lucretius' poem among writers throughout the Roman and medieval world allows fresh insight into the work's readership and reception, and a clear assessment of the indirect tradition's value for editing the poem. The first extended analysis of the 170+ subject headings (capitula) that intersperse the text reveals the close engagement of its Roman readers. A fresh inspection and assignation of marginal hands in the poem's most important manuscript (the Oblongus) provides new evidence about the work of Carolingian correctors and offers the basis for a new Lucretian stemma codicum. Further clarification of the interrelationship of Lucretius' Renaissance manuscripts gives additional evidence of the poem's reception and circulation in fifteenth-century Italy.
Download or read book Paul and the Greco Roman Philosophical Tradition written by Joseph R. Dodson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul and the Greco-Roman Philosophical Tradition provides a fresh examination of the relationship of Greco-Roman philosophy to Pauline Christianity. It offers an in-depth look at different approaches employed by scholars who draw upon philosophical settings in the ancient world to inform their understanding of Paul. The volume houses an international team of scholars from a range of diverse traditions and backgrounds, which opens up a platform for multiple voices from various corridors. Consequently, some of the chapters seek to establish new potential resonances with Paul and the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition, but others question such connections. While a number of them propose radically new relationships between Paul and GrecoRoman philosophy, a few seek to tweak or modulate current discussions. There are arguments in the volume which are more technical and exegetical, and others that remain more synthetic and theological. This diversity, however, is accentuated by a goal shared by each author – to further our understanding of Paul's relationship to and appropriation of Greco-Roman philosophical traditions in his literary and missionary efforts.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius written by Stuart Gillespie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-18 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucretius' didactic poem De rerum natura ('On the Nature of Things') is an impassioned and visionary presentation of the materialist philosophy of Epicurus, and one of the most powerful poetic texts of antiquity. After its rediscovery in 1417 it became a controversial and seminal work in successive phases of literary history, the history of science, and the Enlightenment. In this 2007 Cambridge Companion experts in the history of literature, philosophy and science discuss the poem in its ancient contexts and in its reception both as a literary text and as a vehicle for progressive ideas. The Companion is designed both as an accessible handbook for the general reader who wishes to learn about Lucretius, and as a series of stimulating essays for students of classical antiquity and its reception. It is completely accessible to the reader who has only read Lucretius in translation.
Download or read book The Greeks and the New written by Armand D'Angour and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Greeks have long been regarded as innovators across a wide range of fields in literature, culture, philosophy, politics and science. However, little attention has been paid to how they thought and felt about novelty and innovation itself, and to relating this to the forces of traditionalism and conservatism which were also present across all the various societies within ancient Greece. What inspired the Greeks to embark on their unique and enduring innovations? How did they think and feel about the new? This book represents the first serious attempt to address these issues, and deals with the phenomenon across all periods and areas of classical Greek history and thought. Each chapter concentrates on a different area of culture or thought, while the book as a whole argues that much of the impulse towards innovation came from the life of the polis which provided its setting.
Download or read book On the Nature of the Universe written by Lucretius and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-10-09 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: `Therefore this terror and darkness of the mind Not by the sun's rays, nor the bright shafts of day, Must be dispersed, as is most necessary, But by the face of nature and her laws.' Lucretius' poem On the Nature of the Universe combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour Lucretius demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is mortal, and the world and everything in it is governed not by the gods, but by the mechanical laws of nature. By believing this, men can live in peace of mind and happiness. Lucretius bases his argument on the atomic theory expounded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus. His poem explores sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology through acute observation of the beauties of the natural world and with moving sympathy for man's place in it. Sir Ronald Melville's accessible and accurate verse translation is complemented by an introduction and notes situating Lucretius' scientific theories within the thought of 1st century BCE Rome and discussing the Epicurean philosophy that was his inspiration and why the issues Lucretius' poem raisies about the scientific and poetical views of the world continue to be important. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Download or read book Lucretius I written by Thomas Nail and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Nail argues convincingly and systematically that Lucretius was not an atomist, but a thinker of kinetic flux. In doing so, he completely overthrows the interpretive foundations of modern scientific materialism, whose philosophical origins lie in the atomic reading of Lucretius' immensely influential book De Rerum Natura. This means that Lucretius was not the revolutionary harbinger of modern science as Greenblatt and others have argued; he was its greatest victim. Nail re-reads De Rerum Natura to offer us a new Lucretius--a Lucretius for today.
Download or read book The Way Things Are written by Lucretius and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: De rerum natura (The Way Things Are) is a 1st century BC didactic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius with the goal of explaining Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. Lucretius presents the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna, "chance," and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities.
Download or read book The Lucretian Renaissance written by Gerard Passannante and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-11-25 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With The Lucretian Renaissance, Gerard Passannante offers a radical rethinking of a familiar narrative: the rise of materialism in early modern Europe. Passannante begins by taking up the ancient philosophical notion that the world is composed of two fundamental opposites: atoms, as the philosopher Epicurus theorized, intrinsically unchangeable and moving about the void; and the void itself, or nothingness. Passannante considers the fact that this strain of ancient Greek philosophy survived and was transmitted to the Renaissance primarily by means of a poem that had seemingly been lost—a poem insisting that the letters of the alphabet are like the atoms that make up the universe. By tracing this elemental analogy through the fortunes of Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things, Passannante argues that, long before it took on its familiar shape during the Scientific Revolution, the philosophy of atoms and the void reemerged in the Renaissance as a story about reading and letters—a story that materialized in texts, in their physical recomposition, and in their scattering. From the works of Virgil and Macrobius to those of Petrarch, Poliziano, Lambin, Montaigne, Bacon, Spenser, Gassendi, Henry More, and Newton, The Lucretian Renaissance recovers a forgotten history of materialism in humanist thought and scholarly practice and asks us to reconsider one of the most enduring questions of the period: what does it mean for a text, a poem, and philosophy to be “reborn”?
