Lucretian Studies

La riscrittura della natura ne Il partito preso delle cose di Ponge, nella Piccola cosmogonia portatile di Queneau e in Palomar di Calvino segue il modello lucreziano per l’osservazione e la descrizione dei fenomeni naturali e delle loro leggi fisiche. Paesaggi, elementi ed oggetti contemporanei vengono descritti con una minuzia scientifica di stampo materialista unita ad una commozione cosmica, che ricorda il tono dei versi di Lucrezio e, in molti casi,  ad un po' di ironia. Le tre opere, ricche di consapevoli riferimenti a recenti scoperte scientifiche, inseguono le choses attraverso la letteratura, che si tratti di versi o di prosa, investendo il linguaggio letterario di un potere disvelativo e considerandolo come ponte per raggiungere l'essenza dell'oggetto. Specialmente nel caso di Ponge e di Calvino, la letteratura ha un fine conoscitivo che allontana l'intentio auctoris dall'applicazione dell'atomismo lucreziano in senso combinatorio e postmodernista: essa è piuttosto il punto di partenza per conoscere il mondo nella sua intera fisicità e continuità, dagli atomi alle leggi cosmiche e dal naturale all’artificiale, come se ogni elemento del creato contenesse sempre la risonanza di una sola cosmogonia, una sola natura.

The most original and shocking interpretation of Lucretius in the last 40 years.

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.

Lucretius was the first philosopher of immanence. It is he and not Democritus or Epicurus who holds this title. If we want to understand the historical emergence of the concept of immanence, we should start by distinguishing its precursors in Greek atomism from its first complete incarnation in Lucretius. This way, we can see exactly what first defined and distinguished immanence from its past. Therefore in what follows I would like to make three, perhaps controversial, claims about the emergence of philosophical immanence. 1) Lucretius was not an atomist, 2) Greek atomism reintroduced transcendence, and 3) It is the primacy of motion in Lucretius that defines his philosophical immanence. Lucretius was not an atomist This thesis is as counterintuitive as it is straightforward. The first major difference between Lucretius and the earlier Greek atomists is precisely that—the atom. For Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus atoms are always in motion, but the atom itself remained fundamentally unchanged, indivisible, and thus internally static—even as it moved. Thus instead of positing discrete atoms as ontologically primary as both ancient Greek and later modern theories do, one of Lucretius's greatest novelties was to posit the movement or flow of matter as primary. Lucretius did not simply " translate Epicurus, " as the Greco-centric story goes; rather, he introduced the first immanent kinetic materialism in the West. For example, although the Latin word atomus (smallest particle) was available to Lucretius to use in his poem, he intentionally did not use it, nor did he use the Latin word particula or particle to describe matter. The English translations of " atom, " " particle, " and others have all been added to the text in translation based on a certain historical interpretation of it. The idea that Lucretius subscribed to a world of discrete particles called atoms is therefore both a projection of Epicureanism, who used the Greek word atomos, and a retroaction of modern scientific mechanism of the fifteenth century onto De Rerum Natura. Lucretius rejected entirely the notion that things emerged from discrete particles. To believe otherwise is to distort the original meanings of the Latin text as well as the absolutely enormous poetic apparatus he summoned to describe the flowing, swirling, folding, and weaving of the flux of matter. Although Lucretius rejected the term atomus, he remained absolutely true to one aspect of the original Greek meaning of the word, τομος (átomos, " indivisible "), from-(a-, " not ") + τέμνω (témnō, " I cut "). Being is not cut up into discrete particles, but is composed of continuous flows, folds, and weaves. Discrete " things " (rerum) are composed of corporeal flows (corpora) that move together (conflux) and fold over themselves (nexus) in a woven knot work (contextum). For Lucretius, things only emerge and have their being within and immanent to the flow and flux of matter in motion. Discreteness is an apparent product of continuous folded matter, uncut, undivided, and in motion and not the other way around.

Epicureans have been branded atheists since antiquity, but although they might have held unorthodox beliefs about divinity, they did nevertheless believe in gods, however unorthodox their beliefs about them were. They did not believe in the Olympians that Hesiod and Homer had depicted, but anthropomorphic yet bizarre gods: although these were compounds of atoms, they were immortal, unlike any other compound in the Epicurean universe, and there was quite possibly an infinite host of such deities, all alike and all nameless. These gods were not considered figments of the imagination by the Epicureans, but as real, living entities that actually existed, remotely, somewhere out there in the cosmos, doing very little aside from maintaining their supremely peaceful, painless, and tranquil dispositions. And these gods needed to be considered real in order to be genuine, ethical models for mankind to follow, which was their main function within the Epicurean world-view. The atoms of these gods, like everything in existence, were held to be perpetually in motion, constantly being emitted from their bodies as images that then travelled directly to the minds of mankind and thereby presented a true depiction of divinity, of peacefulness, and above all, of happiness, which would then be examples for individual Epicureans to follow on their individual journeys towards ἀταραξία, tranquillity.

The aim of the following article is to study the relation between Rhetoric, Poetics, and Philosophy in Lucretius De rerum natura. Seeking to convert his Roman reader to Epicureanism, the poet implements propagandistic strategies, which provide an important role to Poetry and Rhetoric, although Epicurus had harshly criticized them. This lucretian didactic method based on dialogue is then explained and analyzed through the study of the Nature’s speech in book III.

La critica della ragione sovrana e del suo corrispettivo edipico nella filosofia politica e nella psicoanalisi ha colto da subito la necessità di stabilire un diverso rapporto tra il desiderare dei soggetti e le forme sociali che questo doveva assumere. Questo avviene per almeno due ragioni. La prima è che la cattura capitalistica del desiderio accompagna come un’ombra ogni tentativo di liberazione dall’imperio del limite e della cesura. La seconda è che proprio il problema di affrancare il soggetto di desiderio dalla coazione al godimento rischia di fare del desiderare un’essenza, rendendola scaturigine di una prima natura dell’uomo, luogo di origine/verità dei soggetti. In questo breve contributo intendo delimitare il luogo del Machiavelli in tale arcipelago di questioni.

In the Renaissance admiration for Lucretius was widespread, but it nevertheless had to comply with a set of unwritten rules in order for the De Rerum Natura to be read and allowed into humanist culture. Spared from the index of forbidden books, humanists had to be particularly careful when handling this epicurean, materialistic, soul's-immortality-denying poem. The key factor was probably the prohibition on translating the poem into the vernacular: the fate met by Alessandro Marchetti's belated attempt is usually proof enough of the perils that awaited the transgressors. What became explicit in Marchetti's case had implicitly been the rule since the poem's unearthing: this only partially discouraged humanists enticed by the charm of Lucretius' poetry. Not only did the DRN serve as model for vernacular or neo-Latin poetry in general, but also literal translations of Lucretian lines or groups of lines appear everywhere in Italian vernacular poetry of the time. Not surprisingly then, the scholarship keeps tenuous trace of not one but two complete, unpublished sixteenth-century vernacular translations of the DRN: one by Neapolitan aristocrat Giovan Francesco Muscettola, the other by professional letterato and philosopher Tito Giovanni Ganzarini from Scandiano. Nothing remains of either translation, but much can be inferred regarding their quality, relevance and circulation from the two authors' circumstances, their epistolaries, their surviving writings. The aim of this paper is to outline this neglected but all-important episode within the history of Lucretius' Renaissance reception.

... In so doing, I raise some of the kinds of questions that would naturally have occurred to Quintilian or Demetrius in discussions of metaphor: Is this simile, for inst-ance, appropriate to the task at hand? ... 121 entirely resist the illusions and pleasures that their poetry cre-ates. ...

These are some notes for a seminar-style discussion of the philosophy of time on offer in the Epicurean and Stoic traditions. Lucretius is taken as representative of the Epicurean tradition, while Marcus Aurelius gets to speak for the Stoics. Issues covered include: cyclical v. linear time; present-mindedness; atomism; providence; the reality of the past and future; finitude, infinity, and transfinites; and the fear of death.

Two key questions here are:

1. Can the Stoics validate present-mindedness while assaulting the Epicurean definition of the present as a time-atom?

2. Is Pierre Hadot's revival of Stoic present-mindedness satisfying from the point of view of the philosophy of time?

Das vorliegende Heft der Non-Fiktion widmet sich den diversen
Konstellationen und Diskussionszusammenhängen der Kosmologie mit
und in anderen (Wissens-)diskursen, die in populären Darstellungen
Eingang gefunden und damit wiederum neue Anwendungsfelder generiert
haben. Hypothese dieser Ausgabe ist erstens, dass kosmologische Inhalte
und Derivate vielfach von populären Medien aufgegri$en werden
und in teils heterogenen Darstellungszusammenhängen zur Anwendung
kommen, wobei sich der besondere Leistungs- und Wissensanspruch
der Kosmologie als unverzichtbare Ressource erweist. Zweitens reflektieren populäre Kosmologien ihren Ganzheitsanspruch in den Medien, in denen sie zur Darstellung "nden, indem sie diesen zumindest approximativ in der Form einzulösen suchen. So gebraucht das populäre Sachbuch für die Darstellungsfunktion eines ganzheitlichen Sinn- und Weltzusammenhangs wesentliche Inhalte der Kosmologie und intensiviert in einem fortlaufenden Publikationsverfahren noch den ästhetischen Gesamteindruck. Drittens bleibt die Kosmologie aus diesem Grund für die
populären Wissensdarstellungen der Moderne weiterhin aktuell, kann
dem Sinn- und Weltdeutungsanspruch einer wachsenden Leserschaft
unter säkularen Voraussetzungen doch in besonders geeigneter Weise
jene, die Einzelwissenschaften integrierende, antike Disziplin Rechnung
tragen.

https://www.newclassicists.com/conferences

The fortune of Lucretius is also reflected on stone.
From the complete analysis of the corpus of carmina latina epigraphica and considering some successive catalogs, I have collected fourteen likely quotations from De rerum natura, ranging from the first to the fourth century CE.
Funerary inscriptions concerning the issue of future life are apparently the most fertile ground for Lucretius’ influence.

Talk given on 26 June 2017 in the Research Colloquium of the Chair for British Literary and Cultural Studies, Saarland University.
This talk is the extension of my talk "Epicurus and his depiction in Ben Jonson's 'The Alchemist' - A short introduction". The goal of this new talk was to give an overview over the depiction of the Hellenist philosopher Epicurus in Ben Jonson's play. After giving a condensed introduction to the Epicurean ethics and a bit of Epicurus' philosophy of nature (just enough to not overwhelm the literary scholars present ;-) ), I discussed the revival and reception of Epicurean (and Lucretian) philosophy and in the early modern age, both amongst philosophers and other groups, and tried to shed light on how Jonson might have perceived the Epicurean doctrines. I then discussed the stage character of Sir Epicure Mammon and how much of Epicurean philosophy he actually resembles. I concluded with a couple of methodological remarks on what I have not yet done and what I could or should do, to follow this resarch interest further and expand it to a proper paper or book chapter.

In The Netherlands annually over 45 million (and globally billions) male chicks are killed immediately after hatching. Because the aim of the layer breeding industry is to produce laying hens, they have no use for male chicks. These chicks do not lay eggs and in layer breeds males are not suitable for meat production because of their unfavourable feed efficiency compared to meat type chickens. This mass killing raises discussions. Since the mid-eighties the societal resistance against the culling of male chicks is growing, as can be witnessed by numerous newspaper articles. Animal rights activists maintain that current practice of killing one day old male chicks is unethical.
Several years ago the Dutch minister of agriculture commissioned research projects to identify alternatives with the best prospects to the killing of male chicks, resulting in the following alternatives:
1. Genetic modification (GM): sexing un-incubated eggs might be possible through genetic modification such that eggs can be recognized by optical equipment as to sex and not hatching the eggs with a male embryo. An important part of the innovation is that the female chickens, and also their eggs, will not be GM. In practice this alternative will mainly have impact on the hatcheries, but will not change production processes of eggs or chicken meat.
2. Dual purpose chickens: in this case the males can be used for meat production. These dual purpose chickens do need more time to reach the desired weight than the current broilers. Furthermore, the hens are bigger than current laying hens and produce fewer eggs than specialized laying hens.
Although both alternatives seem feasible, the problem is that both alternatives have different specific health- and welfare consequences and also may be problematic from an ethical perspective. The aim of this paper is to provide researchers and stakeholders, by reviewing and analysing literature, with a conceptual framework that will help them to understand, evaluate and monitor the social- and ethical aspects of GM chickens and dual purpose chickens as alternatives to the killing of male chicks.