Description
Book SynopsisThis 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, Hobbe
Trade ReviewBy pointing us to the Epicurean flavor of many of the ideas that pervaded seventeenth- and eighteenth-century metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and natural and political philosophy - Catherine Wilson's work offers a great opportunity to improve our understanding of what was involved in the transformation of Scholastic doctrines into modern philosophy. * Anik Waldow, Journal of the American Academy of Religion *
Wilson's book is learned, judicious, and full of subtle observations. * Eric Schiliesser, Mind 119 d *
lucid and engagingly written... I find the argument entirely compelling... [this] is really a beautiful book. Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity says true and original things in a pleasing manner. It is worth reading for anyone with even a passing interest in seventeenth-century philosophy. * Antonia LoLordo, Metascience *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Revival of Ancient Materialism ; 1. Atomism and Mechanism ; 2. Corpuscular Effluvia: Between Imagination and Experiment ; 3. Order and Disorder ; 4. Mortality and Metaphysics ; 5. Empiricism and Mortalism ; 6. Three Critics of Epicureanism ; 7. Politics and Community ; 8. The Problem of Materialism in the New Essays ; 9. Some Motives and Incentives to the Study of Nature: The Case of Robert Boyle ; 10. Happiness, Welfare, and Morality ; AFTERWORD ; BIBLIOGRAPHY ; INDEX
