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The school of Greek philosopher Epicurus, which became known as the Garden, famously put great stock in happiness and pleasure. As a philosophical community, and a way of seeing the world, Epicureanism had a centuries-long life in Athens and Rome, as well as across the Mediterranean. The Invention and Gendering of Epicurusstudies how the Garden's outlook on pleasure captured Greek and Roman imaginations---particularly among non-Epicureans---for generations after its legendary founding. Unsympathetic sources from disparate eras generally focus not on historic personages but on the symbolic Epicurean. And yet the traditions of this imagined Garden, with its disreputable women and unmanly men, give us intermittent glimpses of historical Epicureans and their conceptions of the Epicurean life. Pamela Gordon suggests how a close hearing and contextualization of anti-Epicurean discourse leads us to a better understanding of the cultural history of Epicureanism. Her primary focus is on sources hostile to the Garden, but her Epicurean-friendly perspective is apparent throughout. Her engagement with ancient anti-Epicurean texts makes more palpable their impact on modern responses to the Garden. Intended both for students and for scholars of Epicureanism and its response, the volume is organized primarily according to the themes common among Epicurus' detractors. It considers the place of women in Epicurean circles, as well as the role of Epicurean philosophy in Homer and other writers.

Epicurus and His Philosophywas first published in 1954. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. In this volume, the first comprehensive book in English about Epicurus, existing data on the life of the ancient philosopher is related to the development of his doctrine. The result is a fascinating account that challenges traditional theories and interpretations of Epicurean philosophy. Professor DeWitt demonstrates the fallacy of centuries of abuse of Epicurus and the resulting distortion of most discussions of Epicureanism that appear in standard philosophical works. Of major significance to students of philosophy and theology are the findings that show the importance of Epicureanism as a source of numerous Christian beliefs.

Hampe discusses about transformations and wisdom. Oblomov, the main character in Gontscharow's novel named after him, is an extraordinary person since he does not want to change, to develop, or to transform himself or his environment into something else or better. He stays the same by staying on his sofa. Robert Walser's Institute Benjamenta in his novel Jakob von Gunten does nothing with its pupils, or, perhaps, if it does do something to them it deletes their wishes to become a certain type of person. They are supposed to leave the school as ambitionless nils. Is Oblomov already wise? Is Walser's school the ideal school because it does not nourish but deletes any false ambitions in its pupils that would only make them unhappy in the end? Both books are so strange because it is normal for us today as individuals, and as members of institutions and societies, to try to transform ourselves and each other: individuals are transformed by educational institutions, by political situations, by cultures, and they feed back into these structures by their actions; individuals can transform institutions, political situations, and cultures.

What if the beam intensity is decreased so that a single photon strikes the screen at any given time? Since the photon is indivisible, it \"comes through both slits, spreads over the entire screen, and collapses to an atom-size disturbance on interacting with the [second] screen's atoms. [...]many philosophers and a few scientists use the Bayesian (subjectivist or personalist) view of probability as a measure of an individual's degree of belief. Since beliefs are personal and such probability assignments are arbitrary, Bayesianism is hardly scientific: it is only a variety of gambling.8 In the sciences, probability is introduced only when the referent is quantum-mechanical or, in the case of secondary chance, when a randomization mechanism, such as shaking, heating, or spinning a wheel, can be identified. [...]the splitting experiments have shown that primary chance is objective. [...]there are two very different kinds of chance: primary and secondary.

The atomism of Democritus aims to solve a number of physical problems, and it does so by means of a number of distinctions and explanatory strategies. Because my discussion concerns some very general features of the theory as metaphysics, my account is brief and partial, resting largely on the testimony and interpretations of Aristotle, as put forward in On Generation and Corruption 1.2. [...]one never arrives at an unconditional unity, for which reason the question of the size of the unconditional unit never even arises.13 The Aristotelian and Democritean accounts of the multiplicity inherent within the magnitude are opposed in this crucial respect. Both understand a being, insofar as it is a being, as finite. [...]the Democritean argument considers the ultimate unit that is presupposed by the initial multiplicity and infers that, since this unit is not nothing (for no assemblage of nothings can add up to the initial magnitude that these units are supposed to constitute), the unit is finite, from which follows the conclusion that everything is made up of unsplittable (atomic) magnitudes of finite size. [...]I part from Furley, Two Studies in the Greek Atomists, 97, who accepts Simplicius's testimony (according to which Democritus's atoms were partless, while those of Epicurus had parts) at the cost of attributing to Democritus an admittedly incoherent account, and instead reject that testimony as a misunderstanding.

This article reads Colm Toibin's latest novel, House of Names (2017), as a contemporary revision of Greek tragedy in which the mythic character of Clytemnestra takes centre stage, acquires a philosophical voice, and shows how her new refiguration is articulated around three major concerns: (1) the existential question of loss and grief, (2) the transgression of traditional power relations, and (3) the development of a modern metaphysical conception of the world. What emerges as a result of these particular characteristics of the new Queen of Argos is a powerfully revived character, a vengeful rationalist, a circumspect rebel, and a prophet for our liquid modernity. Keywords: Clytemnestra; Colm Toibin; House of Names; grief; power; faith.

Sometime in the late 1450s the Platonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino wrote a “little commentary” on Lucretius’s De rerum natura—a commentary he said he eventually burned as Plato once burned his own juvenilia. Scholars have read this text as an expression of a “religious crisis,” and they have described the event of its destruction as a critical turn both in Ficino’s thought and in Renaissance intellectual history. This essay explores an alternative explanation for Ficino’s early engagement with the poetry of the ancient atomist, revisiting a number of familiar problems in the scholarship, including the philosopher’s ideas about the uses of poetry, the story of his intellectual development, and the influence of Lucretius in the Quattrocento. As Ficino sought to revive Plato in Latin, I argue, he may have been drawn to the author of De rerum natura as a model of philosophical and poetic transmission.

This book is designed to appeal both to those interested in Roman poetry and to specialists in ancient philosophy. In it David Sedley explores Lucretius' complex relationship with Greek culture, in particular with Empedocles, whose poetry was the model for his own, with Epicurus, the source of his philosophical inspiration, and with the Greek language itself. He includes a detailed reconstruction of Epicurus' great treatise On Nature, and seeks to show how Lucretius worked with this as his sole philosophical source, but gradually emancipated himself from its structure, transforming its raw contents into something radically new. By pursuing these themes, the book uncovers many unrecognised aspects of Lucretius' methods and achievements as a poetic craftsman.

The Epicurean teacher and poet Philodemus of Gadara (c. 110-c. 40/35 BC) exercised significant literary and philosophical influence on Roman writers of the Augustan Age, most notably the poets Vergil and Horace. Yet a modern appreciation for Philodemus' place in Roman intellectual history has had to wait on the decipherment of the charred remains of Philodemus' library, which was buried in Herculaneum by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. As improved texts and translations of Philodemus' writings have become available since the 1970s, scholars have taken a keen interest in his relations with leading Latin poets. The essays in this book, derived from papers presented at the First International Symposium on Philodemus, Vergil, and the Augustans held in 2000, offer a new baseline for understanding the effect of Philodemus and Epicureanism on both the thought and poetic practices of Vergil, Horace, and other Augustan writers. Sixteen leading scholars trace his influence on Vergil's early writings, the Eclogues and the Georgics, and on the Aeneid, as well as on the writings of Horace and others. The volume editors also provide a substantial introduction to Philodemus' philosophical ideas for all classicists seeking a fuller understanding of this pivotal figure.

The first monograph entirely devoted to the Epicurean doctrine of minimal parts. The Epicurean doctrine of minimal parts (ta elachista) is a crucial aspect of Epicurus's philosophy and a genuine turning point compared to the ancient atomism of Leucippus and Democritus. This book consists of three chapters: a philological and theoretical analysis of the primary sources (Epicurus and Lucretius) of the doctrine, a reconstruction of its likely historical background (Xenocrates, Aristotle, Diodorus Cronus), and a close examination of the chiefly geometrical development of this theory within the philosophical school of Epicurus. The critical examination of ancient sources (including several Herculaneum Papyri), combined with a careful analysis of the secondary literature, reveals the very significant role played by minimal parts within the Epicurean science of nature. This is the first monograph entirely devoted to the study of this important doctrine in all its historical and theoretical breadth. Questo volume esamina la dottrina epicurea dei minimi (ta elachista) che rappresenta un nodo cruciale della filosofia di Epicuro e un autentico punto di svolta rispetto all'atomismo di Leucippo e Democrito. Il libro è organizzato in tre capitoli dedicati rispettivamente: (1) all'analisi filologica e teorica delle fonti primarie (Epicuro e Lucrezio), (2) alla ricostruzione del contesto storico-filosofico a cui la dottrina dei minimi verosimilmente fa riferimento (Senocrate, Aristotele e Diodoro Crono), e, infine, (3) all'approfondimento dello sviluppo della teoria dei minimi in ambito prevalentemente geometrico all'interno della scuola di Epicuro. L'esame critico delle fonti antiche (che riguardano anche alcuni Papiri Ercolanesi), anche attraverso l'attenta analisi della letteratura secondaria, conferma il ruolo decisivo giocato dai minimi nella scienza della natura epicurea. Si tratta della prima monografia interamente consacrata allo studio di questa significativa dottrina in tutta la sua ampiezza storica e teorica.