Lucretius in the Modern World

174 Pages·2000·8.342 MB·English

by  W.R. Johnson

Lucretius and the Modern World
This page intentionally left blank
Lucretius
and the
Modern World
W.R. Johnson
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic
B L O O M S B U RY
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic
50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway
London New York
WC1B3DP NY 10018
UK USA
www.bloomsbury.com
BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Pic
This impression 2006
First published in 2000 by
Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
© W.R. Johnson, 2000
Quotations from R.E. Latham (tr.) On the Nature of
the Universe by Lucretius
(Penguin Classics, 1951) © R.E. Lathan, 1951,
reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
W.R. Johnson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining
from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: PB: 978-0-7156-2882-9
ePDF: 978-1-4725-0227-8
ePub: 978-1-4725-0228-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Series: Classical Inter/Faces
Typeset by Ray Davies
Contents
Preface ix
PARTI
The Poem Itself
1. No Truth But in Atoms 3
2. The Gospel of Pleasure 47
PART II
Our Lucretius
3. A Genealogy of Melancholy 79
4. The Anti-Lucretius Himself 103
5. Wizards in Bondage 135
Bibliography 157
Index 161
This page intentionally left blank
for Louis, again
A word of reality ... materialism first and last imbuing.
Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!
Walt Whitman
vu
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
Lucretius' poem, On the Nature of Things, stands as a powerful
representation of classical antiquity's best and most influential effort
to speculate on the material universe and the place and condition of
human beings in it. Taking the atomic theory of Democritus as refor-
mulated by Epicurus, Lucretius designed for his fellow Romans, half
a century before the birth of Christ, a poetic model of the physical
world they lived in and an ethical worldview that was compatible with
that world, one which stressed how human beings could find ways of
reducing their suffering and could then become virtuous by learning
to increase their enjoyment of ordinary pleasures. This poem has been
variously received since it came out of hiding at the end of the Middle
Ages - it has been blamed and praised, ignored and adored. What its
future can be no one can guess, but what it has meant in the past and
what meanings it now offers are questions worth considering.
In the first part of this book, I provide a sketch of what I take to be
the poem's central concepts and attempt to describe its ethical project
and the values it espouses. In the second part, I examine several
representative texts from the centuries just preceding ours, ones
which reveal the ways Lucretius was read when the West was becom-
ing modern. Here, I am especially interested in tracing the pattern of
reception that created the all too familiar melancholy Lucretius and in
describing how contemporary versions of 'doing' science contrast with
the Lucretian version.
My notes are minimalist. A surname followed by page numbers (or,
in a few cases, by a year and page numbers) indicates where the reader
can go to find a more extensive discussion of the topic in question, or
an opposing view, or a source for a given statement.
My quotations of Lucretius are from the Penguin translation by
R.E. Latham as revised by John Godwin, and I am grateful to Penguin
ix