Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The Athenian Garden
- 2 Epicureanism in the Roman Republic
- 3 Epicureanism in the Roman Empire
- 4 Epicurean atomism
- 5 Epicurean empiricism
- 6 Cosmology and meteorology
- 7 Psychology
- 8 Action and responsibility
- 9 Pleasure and desire
- 10 Politics and society
- 11 Epicurean philosophy of language
- 12 Philosophia and technē: Epicureans on the arts
- 13 Removing fear
- 14 Epicurean therapeutic strategies
- 15 Epicureanism in early modern philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
15 - Epicureanism in early modern philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The Athenian Garden
- 2 Epicureanism in the Roman Republic
- 3 Epicureanism in the Roman Empire
- 4 Epicurean atomism
- 5 Epicurean empiricism
- 6 Cosmology and meteorology
- 7 Psychology
- 8 Action and responsibility
- 9 Pleasure and desire
- 10 Politics and society
- 11 Epicurean philosophy of language
- 12 Philosophia and technē: Epicureans on the arts
- 13 Removing fear
- 14 Epicurean therapeutic strategies
- 15 Epicureanism in early modern philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The recovery of Epicurus' natural and moral philosophy in the Renaissance and its dissemination in the early modern period had a significant effect on the evolution of philosophy. The theses of the plurality of worlds, their self-formation, the non-existence of any god or gods concerned with the affairs of men and women, and the centrality and validity of the hedonic motive in human life, came under extended scrutiny in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although it was once customary to regard Epicureanism as a fringe movement represented in the seventeenth century almost uniquely by the enigmatic Pierre Gassendi, it is now increasingly recognized that Epicurus' letters and sayings, and his follower Lucretius' Latin poem, On the nature of things, contributed to the formation of a rival image of nature - the corpuscularian, mechanical philosophy - that replaced the scholastic synthesis of Aristotelianism and Christian doctrine, and that found special favour in the new scientific academies of Europe.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism , pp. 266 - 286Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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