Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura has as one of its main goals the extermination of traditional conceptions of the gods, but gods pervade the poem in a variety of roles, beginning with the very first line, invoking Venus. This report seeks to analyze the ways in which Lucretius exploits popular notions of the divine while remaining true to both his Epicurean beliefs and his anti-theistic agenda, as well as the reasons behind these decisions. We begin with an exploration of the role of the poetic medium in this situation, followed by a close examination of the entire proem. Lucretius’ negative views about religio are brought to light and are contrasted with his supportive views regarding religious metaphor, partly through an investigation into Lucretius’ representation of Epicurus as divine. The final section of this report identifies some of the same dynamics at play in Lucretius in modern atheistic discourse and draws more general conclusions about the nature of anti-theistic discourse in a world dominated by theistic assumptions. / text

<p>Modern scholars cannot agree how extant fragments of thought attributed to Leucippus and Democritus integrate (or do not) to form a coherent perspective on the ancient Greek world. While a certain degree of uncertainty is unavoidable, given the nature of the evidence available and the fact that Democritus wrote many different works (including at least one in which he deliberately argued against positions that he defended elsewhere), this study demonstrates that we know enough to take a more integrative view of the early atomists (and of Democritus in particular) than is usually taken. In the case of Democritus, this study shows that it makes good sense to read what remains of his works (physical, biological, and ethical) under the presumption that he assumes a single basic outlook on the world, a coherent perspective that informed every position taken by the atomist philosopher. </p><p> Chapter 1 provides an in-depth portrait of the historical and philosophical context in which early atomism was born. As part of this portrait, it offers thumbnail sketches of the doctrines attributed to a representative catalogue of pre-Socratic philosophers to whom published work is attributed (Anaximander, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Philolaus). It demonstrates how each philosopher presumes that his theory offers a universal outlook on human reality, a perspective on the universe which purposely encompasses (and builds into a single theoretical framework) physics and biology and practical ethics.</p><p> Chapter 2 introduces the early atomists as respondents to the pre-Socratic movement before them (a movement which this study refers to as the Critical Tradition). It presents evidence for an integrated reading of early atomist fragments, a reading that construes the Leucippus and Democritus as men of their time (working with and responding to the positions taken by their predecessors in the Critical Tradition).</p><p> Chapter 3 shows how Democritus' ethics arise naturally from his physics via an historical process of development. Like his predecessors in the Critical Tradition and many of his contemporaries, the atomist deliberately imagines nature (physics) providing the raw material from which culture (ethics) naturally and inevitably rises. </p><p> Chapter 4 offers an original reading of extant ethical fragments of Democritus, showing how the atomist uses his unique outlook on the world to develop a practical approach to living well.</p> / Dissertation

Le conseil épicurien d’éviter la participation politique a reçu maintes interprétations, souvent obscures et mal fondées. L’attitude apolitique ne peut être définie comme un simple manque d’intérêt ou de préoccupation pour la politique ; en effet, selon l’opinion de Pierre Hadot, la philosophie ancienne est profondément ancrée dans l’existence et les doctrines philosophiques n’acquièrent de l’importance que lorsqu’elles assistent le praxis. L’attitude d’Épicure est donc enracinée dans le refus de vivre selon des normes prescrites par l’établissement politique. Selon lui, la politique traditionnelle est vouée à l’échec puisqu’elle poursuit aveuglément le pouvoir et la richesse. En réaction à cette situation, Épicure crée une communauté qui instaure de nouvelles valeurs et au sein de laquelle il est possible de vivre conformément à ces nouvelles valeurs. Se situant en totale opposition aux modes de vie les plus fondamentaux de la cité, les adeptes d’Épicure, s’ils participaient à la vie politique, déclencheraient une grande hostilité de la part des partisans des valeurs traditionnelles. Pour cette raison, l’attitude épicurienne peut d’abord représenter une manière d’éviter la persécution politique. De plus, s’il est admis que la politique implique la poursuite du pouvoir, les épicuriens ne peuvent s’y adonner puisque cela serait contradictoire à leur quête d’ataraxie. À tous égards et indépendamment de ces deux motifs justifiant le retrait de la vie politique, il est clair que si l’attitude d’Épicure ne reposait pas sur une conscience politique, alors, ses critiques à l’égard de la vie politique, son désir de s’y soustraire et la création d’une communauté distincte n’auraient pas été. La politique a le pouvoir de profondément modeler la vie des gens. Considérant que ce conditionnement s’appuie sur des valeurs malsaines, le projet épicurien s’applique donc à remodeler, à la lumière de nouvelles valeurs, la vie de ceux qui ne trouvent aucune satisfaction à poursuivre la vie de la cité. / Epicurus’ advice to avoid political participation has been the object of a number of confusing and sometimes ungrounded interpretations. Based on Pierre Hadot’s view that ancient philosophy was fundamentally rooted in existence, and that philosophical doctrines were only important insofar as they assisted a praxis, the apolitical attitude cannot be understood merely as a lack of interest and concern for politics. On the contrary, Epicurus’ attitude was rooted in a refusal to live the way of life prescribed by the political establishment. For him, traditional politics failed at making the life of citizens better on account of their excessive lust for power and wealth. In response to this situation, Epicurus’ project was aimed at creating a community in which it was possible to develop new values and live by them. Had the Epicurean community participated politically, being in direct opposition to the most fundamental ways of life of the city, it would have involved a great deal of hostility from partisans of traditional values. Thus, Epicurus’ attitude may be justified first as a means to avoid political persecution. Second, since politics implied a significant amount of struggle for power, its pursuit clearly went against the prescribed undisturbed life of Epicureanism. At any rate, regardless of these two motives to avoid political participation, it is clear that if Epicurus’ attitude had not been politically inspired then his criticism of political life, his avoidance of it, and the creation of an alternative community would have never taken place. Politics has the power of shaping the life of people in profound ways. Seeing how this conditioning was based on unhealthy values, Epicurus’ project, therefore, was to reshape anew, under the light of new values, the life of those who did not find satisfaction in the way of life of the city.

Zugl.: Bochum, Univ., Diss., 2005/2006

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation aims to make clear just how Epicurus developed his arguments by pointing ataraxia as the purpose of life. Few works of Epicurus remained: three letters (Letter to Herodotus, Letter to Pythocles, Letter to Menoeceus), each one addressed to a disciple in particular, as well as some maxims (Sovereign Maxims and Vatican Sayings) where his tetraphármakon a set four maxims that are the foundation of his Philosophy are. For Epicurus, the beginning (arché) and the end (télos) of all human action would correspond to a physical and mental state of imperturbability. This condition desired by Epicurus was expressed by the Greek concept of ataraxia (ἀταραξία), also present among the stoics and skeptics. However, the means from which ataraxia would be achieved differed among these three philosophies. To Epicurus, in particular, ataraxia would only be possible to the extent that the sources of error were dissolved, the reason why he strove to clarify: (a) the natural mechanisms through which humans relate to the world; (b) the principles of Nature (phýsis), the ignorance of which resulted in the belief of divine beings who punish the human race. It is with research about man and Nature, in order to reach ataraxia, that arise considerations of Epicurus about religion, about fear of death and about pleasure. This shows the unity of Epicurus' Philosophy. Concerned about the cultural condition, political and religious man, he went from Physics to the Ethics, in doing so, he went, through different paths of knowledge. / A presente dissertação teve por objetivo explicitar o modo como Epicuro desenvolveu seus argumentos em favor da ataraxia como finalidade da vida. São poucos os escritos que dele restaram: três cartas (Carta a Heródoto, Carta a Pítocles, Carta a Meneceu), cada uma endereçada a um discípulo em específico, bem como algumas máximas (Máximas Principais e Sentenças Vaticanas), nas quais se encontram seu tetraphármakon um conjunto de quatro máximas que constituem o fundamento de sua Filosofia. Para Epicuro, o princípio (arché) e o fim (télos) de toda ação humana corresponderia a um estado físico e mental de imperturbabilidade. Essa condição almejada por Epicuro era expressa pelo conceito grego de ataraxia (ἀταραξία), presente também entre os estóicos e os céticos. Entretanto, os meios a partir dos quais a ataraxia seria alcançada divergiam entre essas três correntes filosóficas. Em Epicuro, de modo especial, a ataraxia seria possível apenas na medida em que as fontes de erro fossem extirpadas, motivo pelo qual ele se esforçou em esclarecer: (a) os mecanismos naturais através dos quais os seres humanos se relacionam com o mundo; (b) os princípios da Natureza (phýsis), cujo desconhecimento resultava na crença de seres divinos que castigam a raça humana. É da investigação acerca do homem e da Natureza, com vistas à ataraxia, que surgem as considerações de Epicuro sobre a religião, sobre o medo da morte e sobre o prazer. Isso evidencia a unidade da Filosofia de Epicuro. Preocupado com a condição cultural, política e religiosa do homem, ele foi da Física à Ética, perpassando, dessa forma, por diversos caminhos do saber.

This is a study of Epicurus garden in Athens in the 300´s bce, and the method of rehabilitation applied in the garden of Alnarp today at the Swedish University of Agricultural Science. The study aims to pinpoint areas of comparison in methods of healing in a garden environment, in Epicurus garden versus the rehabilitating garden of Alnarp. To make this comparison I have split my analysis into four parts, the conversational therapy, the hierarchy, the garden and its community, and finally the isolation from society. This is a qualitative study, and methods used is, amongst others, hermeneutics.The essay ends with a final discussion of the finds, which conclude that although very different contexts in both time and space, it is easy to find similarities between the two.

Many of Gilles Deleuze’s most celebrated arguments are developed in conversation with Plato, Aristotle, Chrysippus and Epicurus. This thesis argues that ancient Stoic conceptions of causality and language and Epicurean contributions to geometry and physics are especially important to Deleuze because they significantly undergird the concepts of “event” and “problem” that characterize Deleuze’s alternative image of thought and philosophy of nature. The role of Hellenistic influences on Deleuze has been underappreciated, probably because his references are often allusive and oblique. My dissertation reconstructs and supplements Deleuze’s interpretations of these ancient Greek philosophers. I offer critical analysis and discussion of the uses to which Deleuze is trying to put them, as well as evaluations of Deleuze’s readings in light of contemporary scholarship on Greek philosophy. Specifically, I defend Deleuze’s claim that the theory of events in The Logic of Sense is derived in large part from the ancient Stoics. Despite being supplemented by a healthy dose of twentieth-century structuralism, Deleuze’s reading of the Stoics is not indefensible, especially his interpretation of incorporeal lekta as events linked by relationships of compatibility and incompatibility independent of conceptual entailment or physical causality. I also offer an entirely new evaluation of Deleuze's polemic with Aristotle’s conception of difference. The correct understanding of Deleuze’s position has been obscured by his apparent conflation of the Aristotelian concepts of homonymy and analogy. What might otherwise seem to be a misreading of Aristotle should be read as part of an incompletely realized argument to the effect that Aristotle’s account of the core-dependent homonymy of being fails. Finally I explicate Deleuze's contention that Epicurean atomism is a “problematic Idea,” which is derived from a careful but almost entirely implicit reading of both Epicurus and Lucretius. Deleuze reads the Epicurean “swerve” as a mechanism for the self-determination of physical systems, which models the capacity of problematic ideas to provoke new lines of reasoning and alternative forms of thought. The influence of Epicureanism and Stoicism on Deleuze’s late work on meta-philosophy in What is Philosophy? accounts for the way it treats the images of nature and of thought as inextricably linked. Deleuze understands the ambition to give a joint account of nature and thought to be typical of Hellenistic philosophy. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis combines a philosophical interpretation of Epicurean attitudes to language with literary analysis of the language of DRN. Chapters 1-2 describe Epicurean attitudes to diachronic and synchronic linguistic phenomena. In the first chapter I claim that the Epicurean account of the first stage of the development of language involves pre-rational humans acting under a ‘strong’ form of compulsion. The analogies with which Lucretius describes this process were motivated by a structural similarity between the Epicurean accounts of phylogenetic and ontogenetic psychology. Chapter 2 explores the Epicurean account of word use and recognition, central to which are ‘conceptions’. These are attitudes which express propositions; they are not mental images. Προλήψεις, a special class of conception, are self-evidently true basic beliefs about how objects in the world are categorized which, alongside the non-doxastic criteria of perceptions and feelings, play a foundational role in enquiry. Chapter 3 offers a reconstruction of an Epicurean theory of metaphor. Metaphor, for Epicureans, involves the subordination of additional conceptions to words to create secondary meanings. Secondary meanings are to be understood by referring back to primary meanings. Accordingly, Lucretius’ use of metaphor regularly involves the juxtaposition in the text of primary and secondary uses of terms. An account of conceptual metaphor in DRN is given in which the various conceptual domains from which Lucretius draws his metaphorical language are mapped and explored. Chapter 4 presents a new argument against ‘atomological’ readings of Lucretius’ atoms/letters analogies. Lucretian implicit etymologies involve the illustration, via juxtaposition, of language change across time. This is fully in keeping with the Epicurean account of language development. Chapter 5 describes Lucretius’ reflections on and interactions with the Greek language. I suggest that the study of lexical Hellenisms in DRN must be sensitive to the distinction between lexical borrowing and linguistic code-switching. I then give an account of morphological calquing in the poem, presenting it as a significant but overlooked strategy for Lucretian vocabulary-formation.

Vers la fin du IVe siècle av. J-C., des tyrans macédoniens sont érigés en dieux (théoï). C’est en face d’une telle bassesse politique manifestée par les Athéniens que le philosophe du Jardin, Épicure (341-271 av. J.-C.), put légitimement s’interroger sur la garantie de la sécurité (asphaleia), de la liberté et du bonheur en cette période de désarroi. Dans sa perspective, il appert qu’avec des tyrans débauchés, qui ne poursuivent que des désirs superfétatoires (richesse, pouvoir, honneur, gloire, royauté, etc.), et qui sont en perpétuelle guerre les uns contre les autres, la sécurité (asphaleia) n’est possible nulle part, sauf dans les murs clos du Jardin en banlieue d’Athènes. Par leur apolitisme, Épicure et ses disciples assument contre l’extérieur, contre la foule et les institutions politiques, leur lathè biôsas (« vis caché »). À l’heure des interrogations sur la concrétisation de la sécurité dans nos propres États, la katalepsis des staseis gréco-hellénistiques permet de montrer avec une lumière nouvelle que le philosophe du Jardin fut un précurseur de la zététique de la sécurité (asphaleia) politique aussi bien intérieure qu’extérieure. En partant des allégations de Cicéron et de Plutarque, que nous pensons injustifiées, nous sommes parvenu à entrevoir qu’en arrière-plan du « vivre caché » d’Épicure et des épicuriens, se loge une préoccupation centrale à l’époque hellénistique, à savoir le souci d’Épicure pour la sécurité de l’entité politique condition sine qua non de la sécurité, de la vie de plaisir et de sagesse, qui caractérisent la communauté des amis du Jardin. Eu égard à l’échec politique de Démétrios Poliorcète qui n’a pas su garantir la tranquillité (hésuchia) et la sécurité (asphaleia) de la polis athénienne, Épicure formule la thèse implicite d’un monarque qui assurera la sécurité et la tranquillité, quitte à user utilement et pragmatiquement de la force. Cette philosophie politique de l’utilité de la force au service de l’ordre et de la sécurité de l’état fut le credo de l’épicurien Jules César. A travers le triomphe politique de Jules César se dévoile selon nous le pragmatisme de la philosophie politique d’Épicure, voire sa Realpolitik dont le substrat est l'utilitas. / At the end of the IVe century B.-C., Macedonians tyrants are been elevated like gods (théoï). It on the face of this political lowness showed by the Athenians that the garden philosopher, Epicurus (341-271 B.-C.), could rightfully interrogate himself about the security guaranteed (asphaleia), on the liberty and happiness at this anxious period. In the Epicurus view, it’s obvious that with debauched tyrants, who pursue only some superfluous desires (wealth, power, glory, honour, kingship, etc.) and in perpetual war against each other, the security (asphaleia) isn’t possible anywhere, except inside the walls closed of the Garden located at Athens suburbs. By their apolitical attitude, Epicurus and his disciples assume against outside, against the crowd and the political institutions, their lathè biôsas (“ unnoticed life”).At the time of interrogations on the security materialization in our own states, « The katalepsis of staseis gréco-hellenistics on the light of Epicurus doctrine » allows to show in a new light that the Garden philosopher had been a precursor of politics security zetetic (asphaleia) as well interior than outside. Following to the allegations of Cicero and Plutarch, that we think are unjustified, we are attained to forsee that in background of Epicurus “ unnoticed life” and epicureans, lodge an crucial preoccupation during the hellenistic period, specifically the worry of Epicurus for the political security, sine qua non condition of the security, of the pleasure life and wisdom, which characterize the community of Garden Friends. In consideration of the political failure of Demetrius Poliorcete who hasn’t be able to guarantee the tranquility (hésuchia) and the security (asphaleia) of the Athenian polis, Epicurus formulate implicitly the thesis of a monarch who will ensure the security (asphaleia) and the quietness (hésuchia), in the risk to employ usefully and pragmatically strength. This political philosophy of strength usefully for the maintaining of order and state security has been the creed of the epicurean Julus Cesar. Through the political triumph of Julus Cesar appear greatly according us, the pragmatism of Epicurus political philosophy, and even his Realpolitik, of which substratum is utilitas.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T17:27:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fernando Rocha Sapaterro.pdf: 1519028 bytes, checksum: 20c080e2600133773a449661cfaddba7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-05-07 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Our thesisaims to investigate the Epicurus concept of e&#945;&#954;&#945;&#961;&#953;j&#964;&#951;&#962;, blessedness, as belonged between gods and men, who despite the divine asribute is fact, it is unclear as human asribute. If gods and men have the same asribute we can pass from the fact to the knowledge about gods, founding a theology, since it is supported by elements of the Epicurus doctrine. First of all, we proceed searching the nature of the asribute to the asribution mode, or the possibility to pass from men to gods knowledge, by a the ology taken against filed Epicurean atheism / Nossa tese tem o intuito de investigar a noção de e&#945;&#954;&#945;&#961;&#953;j&#964;&#951;&#962;, beatitude, em Epicuro, como atributo partilhado entre deuses e homens,que apesar de ser fato como atributo divino, é obscuro como atributo humano. Supomos que se deuses e homens partilham de um mesmo atributo é possível passar do fato ao conhecimento, firmando uma Teologia, desde que isso seja corroborado pelos elementos da doutrina de Epicuro. Procedemos, assim, investigando qual a natureza do atributo para passarmos ao modo de atribuição, ou a possibilidade da passagem do conhecimento dos homens aos deuses, por meio de uma Teologia assumida contra o impetrado ateísmo epicurista