After All

What a lovely read: Greenblatt, 'The Swerve. How the World Became Modern' (New York 2011). Did I already say that it is a must read?

This book has for me three story-lines:

1. Book hunter Poggio Bracciolini who "discovered" in 1417 a copy of Lucretius 'De Rerum Natura' (English: On the Nature of Things) in a monastery. Probably the monastery of Fulda in Germany.
2. The message of Epicurus via the poem of Lucretius.
3. Lucretius' poem as the key on how the world became "modern" in the Renaissance.

What is the message of Epicurus (Ancient Greece 5th century BC) in the poem of Lucretius (Ancient Rome 1th century BC):

• Everything is made of invisible particles. Lucretius didn't use the Greek word 'atoms' but "first things", "first beginnings", "bodies of matter" or "seed of things".
• Elementary particles of matter are eternal. Greenblatt: "The invisible particles from which the entire univere is made, from the stars to the lowiest insect, are indestructible and immortal, though any particular object in the universe is transitory. That is, all the forms that we observe, even those that seem most durable, are temporary: the building blocks from which they are composed will sooner or later be redistributed."
• Elementary particles are infinite in number but limited in shape and size.
• All particles are in motion in an infinite void.
• Universe has no creator or designer.
• Everything comes into being as a result of a swerve. Latin words for 'swerve' are 'clinamen', 'declinatio' or 'inclinatio': an unexpected, unpredictable movement of matter.
• Swerve is the source of free will.
• Nature ceaselessy experiments. Greenblatt: "All living beings, from plants and insects to the higher mammals and man, have evolved through a long, complex process of trail and error. The process involves many false starts and dead ends (...)."
• Universe was not created for or about humans.
• Humans are not unique. We are made of the same stuff as everything else.
• Human society began not in a Golden Age of transquility and plenty but in a primitive battle for survival.
• Soul dies.
• There is no afterlife. When you grasp that your soul dies with your body, you also grasp that there can be no reward or punishment when you die. Greenblatt: "Life on this earth is all that human beings have."
• Death is nothing to us.
• All organized religions are superstitious delusions.
• Religions are invariably cruel.
• There are no angels, demons or ghosts.
• Highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain.
• Greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.
• Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder.

Life's ultimate goal is pleasure and not worshipping JWH, God, gods, ancestors, family, city or state. What a scandal it must have been for the Jews and later the Christians. Not only a scandal but above all a conflicting reason to be (French: raison d'être).

For me this book was above all a meditation on what is lost and the life-cycle of books before the invention of the printing press. So many pagan (read: non- or before-Christian) texts and so little survived over time. Books deteriorate over the centuries by water, fire, touching,  unrolling and rolling, bookworms, etcetera. Books deteriorate inevitable! The only way to preserve them is to read them and before they are worn out, copy them. A work that was done by scribes in monasteries. The copying of manuscripts turned out to be crucial to the survival of Lucretius and other pagan texts.

It reminds me that I've to educate my kids on Epicurus. Sometimes I think they are drowned too much into worldly delusions. Cut the crap and read Epicurus! I've bought two more books of my Epicurean-bible: a book with fragments (not all) of Epicurus translated into Dutch. The book that gave me the words, the worldview, the antidote against Christianity. In case you missed it: I am very Epicurean.

P.S. I wrote many times about Epicurus: here.

P.S. Did you know - not in this book - that Karl Marx's earned his PhD on Epicurus: here?