Epicureanism
Last update: 03 Apr 2026 11:52First version: Before 13 March 1995
Science, attacks on religion and superstition, (moderate) sensual pleasure and peace of mind: what's not to like?
There is a curious passage in Dante where, in the city of Dis, he meets various Ghibelline nobelmen whom he describes as "Epicureans". I'd very much like to know whether they were in some sense actually Epicureans, and if so whence they derived their doctrine, or whether Dante was loosely using the word to mean something like "atheist".
- Recommended, primary:
- Titus Lucretius Carus, De Rerum Natura
- Recommended, secondary:
- Jones, The Epicurean Tradition [Dry as dust, and stops in the 17th century, just when things started to get interesting]
- Catherine Wilson, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity
- Recommended, what on Earth was that about?
- Dante Aligheri, Inferno [Canto 9 or 10, I can't recall which]
- To read:
- Jeffrey Fish and Kirk R. Sanders (eds.), Epicurus and the Epicurean Tradition
- Antonia Lolordo, Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy
- Martha Nussbaum, Therapy of Desire [On Hellenistic schools of ethics generally]
- Margaret J. Osler (ed.), Atoms, Pneuma, and Tranquillity: Epicurean and Stoic Themes in European Thought