Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Lucretius, De rerum natura
>
Lucretius, Book 6 and the work as a whole
date
newest »
newest »
David wrote: "I will have to ask you to clarify your point because clearly I do not understand it. "Simply put, if human purpose is material-based like the mind, there is no reason to preclude similar purposes existing in nature, just as there is no reason to preclude the existence of ETs.
Just out of curiosity, why do you think Sartre's analogy fails?
Genni wrote: "Nemo's post at #27 had me wondering exactly WHAT the reaction was to Lucretius. Was there a serious, severe reaction to him from Christian circles?"In the time of Epicurus/Lucretius, there were no Christians around and Judaism was an abomination (for lack of a better word) to the Romans, so most of the reactions to Epicureanism were from pagan authors.
St. Augustine and St Jerome, who lived four centuries after Lucretius, were aware of the Epicurean doctrine, and mentioned it in passing in their writings, but they both had bigger fish to fry.
As Rex mentioned, philosophically speaking, Epicureanism doesn't present a serious threat to Christian theism. It might have done some good by demolishing pagan idols, imo.
Everyman and Patrice: It seems you gus are using the term pretty similarly. I have barely begun to read Aristotle, but did he not also do the same thing, look for natural explanations and make observations without attributing things to gods?
Nemo wrote: "As Rex mentioned, philosophically speaking, Epicureanism doesn't present a serious threat to Christian theism. It might have done some good by demolishing pagan idols, imo. "I read this earlier in the intro to my copy of Epicurus's writings, that later Christians actually found tenets in Epicurean thought that they agreed with, the fight against superstition being one of them.
Thomas wrote: "Genni wrote: "Nemo's post at #27 had me wondering exactly WHAT the reaction was to Lucretius. Was there a serious, severe reaction to him from Christian circles? Granted, I have not searched extens..."Thanks, Thomas. I have already requested the titles mentioned by Rex above and will see if my library has this one also.
Patrice wrote: "I think so. I think that's why we still read him, even though he got things wrong. What we don't read is the Etruscan book,I forget the name, that holds the secrets of augury."So Aristotle is modern also? I mean, I know we definitely recognize the influence of Greek and Roman thought today, but I have never considered them (or Lucretius really) to be modern....
Patrice wrote: "I think so. I think that's why we still read him, even though he got things wrong. What we don't read is the Etruscan book,I forget the name, that holds the secrets of augury."What saved Lucretius was the poetry -- the honey on the cup. Even those who find his message bitter can appreciate the honey on the cup. This seems to be the main reason his work survived.
But he was not the first to propose the theory of atoms. So what he was writing was not really novel (except for the form). I guess that is why I haven't really been impressed. He hasn't truly given anything new: just taken old stuff and put it in poetry. But everyone else has been so impressed by him that I think i must have missed something and am rereading him. Lol this time I am going to pay more attention to comments and stuff as I read. Maybe I will "get it" the second time around.
Patrice wrote: "You really think so? Yes the honey is wonderful, but if he was explaining how the universe was truly made up of fire, would we be interested? I would say not. That's why the parts that are just pla..."I don't think we can really appreciate the poetry in translation, but that seems to be the reason the text itself survived. I actually find his wrong-headed theories more interesting than what he got "right," because what he got right seems too vague. He is rarely specific about how atoms behave, and when he is, like in his description of the "swerve," or when he explains mental activity in terms of finer and finer particles, he pushes his credibility to the breaking point.
I think of his theory of particles as a kind of wildcard for physical phenomena that we can easily interpret in a modern way, and when we can do this we say he was correct. But he wasn't really correct, he was just vague enough for us to think that he might have been. Those who said the world was composed of water or fire had a much more difficult argument to make, because everyone knows what fire and water is. Nobody knows what "first beginnings" are, so they could be almost anything of an invisible material nature.
Genni wrote: "But he was not the first to propose the theory of atoms. So what he was writing was not really novel (except for the form). I guess that is why I haven't really been impressed. He hasn't truly give..."Yes, some of the poetry was lovely but yes, I do agree with you that Luc didn't actually say anything that was different from Epicurus's teachings.
But maybe the importance of his work doesn't lie in that he was the 'first' but the one that better conveyed it? I have always been amazed at how people who write so well puts the basically same thing I already know or feel into just the right words that I can't manage to even grasp at.
I've heard that Socrates was portrayed very differently by Plato and Xenophon. If only Xenophon's writing existed, I wonder if we would have considered so much of Socrates' wisdom or charisma.
Thomas wrote: "Patrice wrote: "You really think so? Yes the honey is wonderful, but if he was explaining how the universe was truly made up of fire, would we be interested? I would say not. That's why the parts t..."Same here, I found the similar or 'near-hit' theories fascinating at first, but on second reading, I now tend to read more into his wild or wrong theories that challenges our imagination.
Some excellent points, Genni. Thomas and Nemo have already provided fine summaries, but I think it's important so I'll add mine. By the time Christianity had emerged onto the Roman philosophical scene, Lucretius wasn't much read. So we have a rather dismissive reference by St Jerome but not much else. The only reason Lucretius's text has survived, though, is because DRN was copied by Carolingian monks. Fragments of Lucretius were known to medieval thinkers, and some scholars have argued he influenced this or that school in a minor way, but it was only with the Renaissance that he garnered significant interest, and then largely as a poetic genius and novelty. I don't believe early Christians suppressed Lucretius any more than they suppressed any of the great classical philosophers; they simply lacked interest in him.Regarding Lucretius being modern, I think Patrice makes an important point. We don't read books of classical divination much anymore, but they were everywhere in the Roman world, and on at least a popular level worlds more influential than anything Lucretius wrote. Part of the reason for our lack of interest is so few texts survive--Roman Christian had little use for them. But part of it is that as moderns we see it as inherent nonsense.
Yet it's also true that we don't read ancient scientific texts much anymore, unless we are specialists. We have a lot of survivals from medieval natural philosophy, belying our popular perception of the Middle Ages as an "unscientific" period, but their theories are so dated we often find them difficult to understand. The same is, in some respect, also true of Lucretius. Here there is not a matter of inherent worth, but an issue of chronology, obsolescence, and what we regard as missteps.
So why do we read Lucretius? As others have said, the poetry is perhaps the most significant factor. But it's not quite enough. We don't read Aratus much, though his didactic poetry about the cosmos was very widely read by Greeks and Romans. Rather, what fascinates us about Lucretius is his apparently modern attitudes to phenomena and the senses in which his atomism unconsciously foreshadows modern scientific developments.
Science is really a field where the winners write the history. There have been numerically far more brilliant wrong theorists than right theorists along science's path, yet generally speaking only the right theorists are remembered. Something analogous is at work here.
Nemo wrote: "Borum wrote: "Nemo wrote: "It is possible that language is abstracted from nature, conversely, it is also possible that nature is modelled on an abstract language."That is very nicely put. I alwa..."
I'm planning to read that one soon. Thank you. :-)
I've heard it's something quite different from Plato.
Borum wrote: "I'm planning to read that one soon. Thank you. :-)I've heard it's something quite different from Plato. "
I won't spoil the fun of discovery for you, but I think your esteem of Socrates would be just as high, if not higher, after reading Xenophon. :)
Enjoyed reading Ronald Melville’s verse translation of De rerum natura in a concentrated burst over the past week. I managed to finish the poem this morning, before starting work, so here are my initial impressions. Apologies if my comments don’t flow with the discussion so far, but I just wanted to add a couple of thoughts on the poem as a whole, and respond to Everyman’s questions at the start of the thread.The two things that most impressed me were:
1. Lucretius’ bottom-up thinking: His general approach is to explain natural phenomena without recourse to outside agency and this method, allied with technological advances, has been essential to the progress of science. That Lucretius and the other atomists were read by so many of the greatest minds such as Newton, and may have been influential in his thinking about the laws of motion, is enough to secure him a valuable place in the history of western thought, in my eyes.
2. Lucretius’ poetry and spirit: There are so many wonderful passages, especially as the poem progresses, notably the lyrical codas to Books 3 and 5, the latter containing Lucretius’ potted history of the evolution of prehistoric man, probably my favourite section of the entire poem. I also enjoyed his irreverent spirit, notably the passage where he shamelessly advocates sexual permissiveness (“And by avoiding love you need not miss / The fruits that Venus offers, but instead / You may take the goods without the penalty”).
As to the question of Lucretius trailing off, there’s no doubt the poem ends abruptly, and in an unsatisfying way. I don’t feel that there’s enough in the text itself to suggest he was going mad; it’s fair to say that the first two books of the poem come across as more rigorous than the other four, but he seems lucid to me throughout and the greater freedom he enjoys in Books 3-6 is to the benefit of the poetry.
Patrice wrote: "You are awesome! I am looking forward to being done."Not really. And I will say, I am enjoying it much more the second time around!
Thomas wrote: "think of his theory of particles as a kind of wildcard for physical phenomena that we can easily interpret in a modern way, and when we can do this we say he was correct. But he wasn't really correct, he was just vague enough for us to think that he might have been. Those who said the world was composed of water or fire had a much more difficult argument to make, because everyone knows what fire and water is. Nobody knows what "first beginnings" are, so they could be almost anything of an invisible material nature. "This is a great assessment. Are we simply projecting our modern views onto a theory so vague that many things could fit in it? If we are, is Lucretius's poetry all we have left? If so, as Rex points out below, is it enough to deserve a place among the classics?
Borum wrote: ".But maybe the importance of his work doesn't lie in that he was the 'first' but the one that better conveyed it? I have always been amazed at how people who write so well puts the basically same thing I already know or feel into just the right words that I can't manage to even grasp at."I agree. I love it and hate it when that happens! It makes me wish I were a better writer, but Honestly, I don't enjoy it enough to put forth the effort to improve. Oh well.
Anyway, he did convey it better than Epicurus himself. I was listening to a lecture by Lawrence Principe and he kind of dismissed Lucretius and other Roman philosophers as simply popularizers of Greek thought. They didn't really come up with anything new, just regurgitated it so that it would appeal to the greater population. That Greek philosophy was more of an accroutrement to the Roman aristocratic class, a sign of leisure, and that they didn't really struggle with ideas as the Greeks did. I don't know about all of that because it does seem that, in some sense, there is a more powerful experience in Luc's life that propelled him to be more polemic in places. Butmaybe I am just reading into it.
Dave wrote:"As to the question of Lucretius trailing off, there’s no doubt the poem ends abruptly, and in an unsatisfying way. I don’t feel that there’s enough in the text itself to suggest he was going mad; it’s fair to say that the first two books of the poem come across as more rigorous than the other four, but he seems lucid to me throughout and the greater freedom he enjoys in Books 3-6 is to the benefit of the poetry. ."I agree. He is pretty focused throughout. He does ramble in the last book, but if it was unfinished, as the ending seems to suggest, maybe the final product would have been more cohesive?
Here's a quote from Epicurus: "Only the wise man would be able to discourse rightly on music and poetry, but he would not actually compose poems." In other words, the good Epicurean is cultured, but poetry is not a suitable vehicle for sober philosophy. Epicurus also disdained figures of speech, dialectics, rhetoric, and mathematics (including geometry and astronomy).Lucretius's deliberate departure from his master's advice has been food for a number of scholarly studies and, I suspect, quite a few graduate papers. His views on erotics seem closer to Epicurus's. According to Epicurus, sex is a natural but unnecessary pleasure; sexual passion, on the other hand, agitates the sexual drive without ever allowing it to be satisfied. Romantic love and the obsessive monogamy it fuels are to be shunned. "Sexual intercourse never helped anyone," Epicurus is quoted as saying, "and one must be satisfied if it has not harmed." One goal of the Epicurean life was to be able to enjoy the natural pleasures of life without getting overcome by them.
Patrice wrote: "Rex wrote: "Here's a quote from Epicurus: "Only the wise man would be able to discourse rightly on music and poetry, but he would not actually compose poems." In other words, the good Epicurean is ..."I am wondering the same thing, Patrice. As I was reading book 1 the following stood out to me:
"For in my country's hour of trial I cannot sit calmly writing, nor can Lord Memmius in such a season fail the common weal."
Why such urgency?
He said that around line 40 after talking about Mars, the god of war.
I was googling around (can I say that?), and I think you may be right. Until the Pax Romana of Augustus, things were chaotic.
Nemo wrote: "P.S. Don't you get me started on Aristotle..."
If we ever vote Aristotle in, I certainly hope to get you started, and more!
Genni wrote: "Everyman and Patrice: It seems you gus are using the term pretty similarly. I have barely begun to read Aristotle, but did he not also do the same thing, look for natural explanations and make obse..."Pretty much, yes.
Thomas wrote: "What saved Lucretius was the poetry -- the honey on the cup. Even those who find his message bitter can appreciate the honey on the cup. This seems to be the main reason his work survived.."
It may well have explained why he survived as long as Latin was still read by most educated readers. But it's not as persuasive an explanation of why he survives with non-Latin readers today, since frankly the poetry he is generally translated into doesn't seem to me to be all that excellent.
Rex wrote: Yet it's also true that we don't read ancient scientific texts much anymore, unless we are specialists. ."Or unless we go to St. John's College. [g]
Genni wrote: "He does ramble in the last book, but if it was unfinished, as the ending seems to suggest, maybe the final product would have been more cohesive?"Yes, it's an interesting question. In the intro to my edition (Oxford World's Classics), Melville says that "the prologue to Book 6 states explicitly that this is the final book" but that the ending is "abrupt" and "textually corrupt", suggesting that the final lines may have been "displaced" -- and that line 1251-2 in Book 6, "Nor could a man be found at such a time / Whom neither plague nor death nor grief had touched", was the intended epigrammatic conclusion to the poem. Melville says that this ending would have had echoes of The Iliad, which also "ends with a funeral, but with one which lacks all sense of resolution and reintegration of the mourners."
In my (admittedly limited) experience, the question of apparent incompleteness hangs over a lot of the classics -- Epics of Gilgamesh, Virgil's Aeneid, Spenser's Fairie Queen, etc. Then there's the even more thorny question of disputed authorship, but I don't think that's an issue here, is it?
Not a particularly pleasant, but certainly a rewarding book. We may and do have quite different opinions about its place and meaning, and we could go on discussing it for a long time. But the great thing is that we are able to do so, that we live in an open society. To which, I believe, Lucretius' radical rejection of superstition made an important contribution. Here are my 'final' considerations, presented as a spoiler because of their length - I just can't decide what to throw out. For the diehards.(view spoiler)
Dave wrote: "Melville says that "the prologue to Book 6 states explicitly that this is the final book" but that the ending is "abrupt" and "textually corrupt", suggesting that the final lines may have been "displaced" ...""Textual corruption" is a vague expression. It could mean that some passages are obviously missing or displaced in transcription, or that some words and passages make no sense --have no known usage/meaning-- therefore the translators have to guess at the sense and "correct" the text themselves.
If the cause of corruption is due to the repeated physical process of transcription and preservation, the corruptions would be more or less evenly distributed throughout the whole book; otoh, if the corruption is in the original text, e.g., due to the mental lapses of the author, they would be more localized and display a certain pattern.
The fact that the corruptions are more obvious in the late books, especially the last one, suggest to me it is more likely that Lucretius' mental faculties are deteriorating. But this is just my guess.
Everyman wrote: "It may well have explained why he survived as long as Latin was still read by most educated readers. But it's not as persuasive an explanation of why he survives with non-Latin readers today, since frankly the poetry he is generally translated into doesn't seem to me to be all that excellent. "Good point. But I suppose what the work lost in terms of poetry, over time, it gained in terms of the history of science. Lucretius give materialism historical validity, and today, as more people turn away from organized religion, it serves as an historical foundation for an alternative way of viewing the universe.
So I finally finished the book. Just a few impressions, nothing academic though. It was an eye-opener for me! As has been stated almost from the beginning of our read how modern or ahead of his time (despite not being the first!) he appears to be when trying to extrapolate his observations of natural and "supernatural" phenomena. Although, I found it quite repetitious and/or contradictory at times, I was still quite amazed at what he got right and foreshadowed current science such as genomics & quantum theory.I must admit, I didn't appreciate the poetical style as much as others. It is probably just my lack of knowledge & experience with poetry. I do appreciate that he was trying to get his ideas across in a unique way.
Book 6 tickled me although the abrupt ending was disconcerting. His descriptions ( & false conclusions) about volcanic activity brought a smile to my face as I lived in Sicily under the shadow of Etna for 3 years, and active it was!!
Having been raised as a materialist, I had an inside view of materialism. I also believed in freedom, equality and justice, but I never examined the basis of my beliefs. (Why I believed so strongly in justice when there was so much injustice in the world?) I guess part of the pleasure I derive from reading Lucretius is having a conversation with my younger self about those things. :)
P.S. Don't you get me started on Aristotle.