[PDF] Epicurus And His Influence On History eBook

Author : Ben Gazur
Publisher : Pen and Sword History
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 20,39 MB
Release : 2023-06-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1399073532

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How should we live? In ancient Greece one man came up with a pleasingly simple answer to this question. The philosopher Epicurus taught his followers that pleasure and contentment were the aims of the good life. For hundreds of years Epicureanism was one of the dominant schools of philosophy. But by the 6th century it had all but disappeared. Discovering how and why Epicureanism was driven from philosophy and public discourse reveals much about how Western thought developed. Despite attempts to erase him, the lessons of Epicurus have been recovered from the mists of time and the ashes of Vesuvius. How he was restored to his place in history is a story of brilliant Renaissance scholars, chance discoveries, and a hunger for intellectual freedom. This new biography of Epicurus reveals the life of Epicurus and traces how his teachings have influenced thinkers across time. Epicurus still has much to teach us about friendship, happiness, and our place in the world.

Author : Phillip Mitsis
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 848 pages
File Size : 44,3 MB
Release : 2020-07-16
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0197522009

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The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE), though often despised for his materialism, hedonism, and denial of the immortality of the soul during many periods of history, has at the same time been a source of inspiration to figures as diverse as Vergil, Hobbes, Thomas Jefferson, and Bentham. This volume offers authoritative discussions of all aspects of Epicurus's philosophy and then traces out some of its most important subsequent influences throughout the Western intellectual tradition. Such a detailed and comprehensive study of Epicureanism is especially timely given the tremendous current revival of interest in Epicurus and his rivals, the Stoics. The thirty-one contributions in this volume offer an unmatched resource for all those wishing to deepen their knowledge of Epicurus' powerful arguments about happiness, death, and the nature of the material world and our place in it. At the same time, his arguments are carefully placed in the context of ancient and subsequent disputes, thus offering readers the opportunity of measuring Epicurean arguments against a wide range of opponents--from Platonists, Aristotelians and Stoics, to Hegel and Nietzsche, and finally on to such important contemporary philosophers as Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams. The volume offers separate and detailed discussions of two fascinating and ongoing sources of Epicurean arguments, the Herculaneum papyri and the inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda. Our understanding of Epicureanism is continually being enriched by these new sources of evidence and the contributors to this volume have been able to make use of them in presenting the most current understanding of Epicurus's own views. By the same token, the second half of the volume is devoted to the extraordinary influence of Epicurean doctrines, often either neglected or misunderstood, in literature, political thinking, scientific innovation, personal conceptions of freedom and happiness, and in philosophy generally. Taken together, the contributions in this volume offer the most comprehensive and detailed account of Epicurus and Epicureanism available in English.

Author : Dane R. Gordon
Publisher : RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 34,66 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780971345966

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The philosophy of Epicurus (c. 341-271 B. C. E.), has been a quietly pervasive influence for more than two millennia. At present, when many long revered ideologies are proven empty, Epicureanism is powerfully and refreshingly relevant, offering a straightforward way of dealing with the issues of life and death. The chapters in this book provide a kaleidoscope of contemporary opinions about Epicurus' teachings. They tell us also about the archeological discoveries that promise to augment the scant remains we have of Epicurus's own writing. the breadth of this new work will be welcomed by those who value Epicurean philosophy as a scholarly and personal resource for contemporary life. "Epicurus: His Continuing Influence and Contemporary Relevance," is the title of a 2002 conference on Epicurus held at Rochester Institute of Technology, when many of the ideas here were first presented.

Author : Catherine Wilson
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 16,88 MB
Release : 2008-06-19
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0191553522

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This landmark study examines the role played by the rediscovery of the writings of the ancient atomists, Epicurus and Lucretius, in the articulation of the major philosophical systems of the seventeenth century, and, more broadly, their influence on the evolution of natural science and moral and political philosophy. The target of sustained and trenchant philosophical criticism by Cicero, and of opprobrium by the Christian Fathers of the early Church, for its unflinching commitment to the absence of divine supervision and the finitude of life, the Epicurean philosophy surfaced again in the period of the Scientific Revolution, when it displaced scholastic Aristotelianism. Both modern social contract theory and utilitarianism in ethics were grounded in its tenets. Catherine Wilson shows how the distinctive Epicurean image of the natural and social worlds took hold in philosophy, and how it is an acknowledged, and often unacknowledged presence in the writings of Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, Boyle, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley. With chapters devoted to Epicurean physics and cosmology, the corpuscularian or "mechanical" philosophy, the question of the mortality of the soul, the grounds of political authority, the contested nature of the experimental philosophy, sensuality, curiosity, and the role of pleasure and utility in ethics, the author makes a persuasive case for the significance of materialism in seventeenth-century philosophy without underestimating the depth and significance of the opposition to it, and for its continued importance in the contemporary world. Lucretius's great poem, On the Nature of Things, supplies the frame of reference for this deeply-researched inquiry into the origins of modern philosophy. .

Author : Ben Gazur
Publisher : Pen and Sword History
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 27,1 MB
Release : 2023-06-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1399073559

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How should we live? In ancient Greece one man came up with a pleasingly simple answer to this question. The philosopher Epicurus taught his followers that pleasure and contentment were the aims of the good life. For hundreds of years Epicureanism was one of the dominant schools of philosophy. But by the 6th century it had all but disappeared. Discovering how and why Epicureanism was driven from philosophy and public discourse reveals much about how Western thought developed. Despite attempts to erase him, the lessons of Epicurus have been recovered from the mists of time and the ashes of Vesuvius. How he was restored to his place in history is a story of brilliant Renaissance scholars, chance discoveries, and a hunger for intellectual freedom. This new biography of Epicurus reveals the life of Epicurus and traces how his teachings have influenced thinkers across time. Epicurus still has much to teach us about friendship, happiness, and our place in the world.

Author : Diego Fusaro
Publisher :
Page : 178 pages
File Size : 49,21 MB
Release : 2018
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781912142156

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Diego Fusaro's monograph on the influence of Epicurus on Marx's thought is multilayered. It not only explains Epicurean thought and how it impacted the young Marx, but also manages to do unto Marx what Marx did unto Epicurus. Marx employed Epicurus' critical stance toward Plato and Aristotle as an excuse, as it were, to drop not-so-subtle hints about the philosophy and politics of the Germany of his day. Fusaro, described by the influential paper La Repubblica (July 2013) as possibly the "brightest star in the Italian philosophical firmament of our times," employs Marx's critique of the German present of Marx's time to propose a critique of our own times, a critique of economic libertarianism and moral libertinism. Fusaro's underlying argument seems to be that we live in times that are nothing but Epicurean, in which dogmatic and hedonistic liberalism dominates our lives, as pensée unique. This monograph combines a twofold approach: the exoteric and the esoteric. Exoterically, it analyses of the long-ignored University dissertation of the young Karl Marx and the influences of Greek Atomism on the molding of Marx's thought system. Esoterically, or by implication, it analyses our contemporary world.

Author : Pamela Gordon
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 48,60 MB
Release : 2012-04-11
Category : History
ISBN : 0472118080

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How a study of anti-Epicurian discourse can lead us to a better understanding of the cultural history of Epicurianism

Author : Haris Dimitriadis
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 450 pages
File Size : 15,56 MB
Release : 2017-11-08
Category : Self-Help
ISBN : 138735308X

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The idea that happiness is a choice accessible to all is far from new; the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus developed the Natural Philosophy of life over two thousand years ago, providing practical, contemporary guidelines to finding meaning and happiness. Unlike Plato, who valued the divine logic above all, Epicurus argued that the pursuit of ideals produced by logic alone leads to inner conflict, cognitive dissonance, dissatisfaction, and even depression. He suggested that by first embracing our natural desires, then using logic to determine which choices will increase pleasure over time, and using our will to take action, we could learn and change, and achieve happiness. Join the author Haris Dimitriadis on a journey through the history of philosophical thought, as well as an in-depth look at the modern neuroscience, psychology, and astrophysics, and discover why the ancient Epicurean Philosophy of Nature matters as much today as it did two thousand and three hundred years ago!

Author : Catherine Wilson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 161 pages
File Size : 28,56 MB
Release : 2015
Category : Electronic books
ISBN : 019968832X

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This very short introudction corrects the prevalent view of Epicureanism that often conjures up ideas of tasty delights and hedonism. Wilson explains the philosophical and scientific ideas of Epicurus and his followers and the legacy of Epicureanism on later European thought.