Dynamic Reading Studies in the Reception of Epicureanism

by Holmes, Brooke; Shearin, W. H.

• ISBN13: 9780199794959
• ISBN10: 0199794952
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-05-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Dynamic Readingexamines the reception history of Epicurean philosophy through a series of eleven case studies, which range chronologically from the latter days of the Roman Republic to late twentieth-century France and America. Rather than attempting to separate an original Epicureanism from its later readings and misreadings, this collection studies the philosophy together with its subsequent reception, focusing in particular on the ways in which it has provided terms and conceptual tools for defining how we read and respond to texts, artwork, and the world more generally. Whether it helps us to characterize the "swerviness" of literary influence, the transformative effects of philosophy, or the "events" that shape history, Epicureanism has been a dynamic force in the intellectual history of the West. These essays seek to capture some of that dynamism.

Author Biography

Brooke Holmes is Assistant Professor of Classics at Princeton University.

W. H. Shearin is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Miami.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Contributors	p. ix
Note on Editions	p. xiii
Introduction: Swerves, Events, and Unexpected Effects	p. 3
Haunting Nepos: Atticus and the Performance of Roman Epicurean Death	p. 30
Epicurus's Mistresses: Pleasure, Authority, and Gender in the Reception of the Kuriai Doxai in the Second Sophistic	p. 52
Reading for Pleasure: Disaster and Digression in the First Renaissance Commentary on Lucretius	p. 89
Discourse Ex Nihilo: Epicurus and Lucretius in Sixteenth-Century England	p. 113
Engendering Modernity: Epicurean Women from Lucretius to Rousseau	p. 133
Oscillate and Reflect: La Mettrie, Materialist Physiology, and the Revival of the Epicurean Canonic	p. 162
Sensual Idealism: The Spirit of Epicurus and the Politics of Finitude in Kant and Hölderlin	p. 199
The Sublime, Today?	p. 239
From Heresy to Nature: Leo Strauss's History of Modern Epicureanism	p. 267
Epicurean Presences in Foucault's The Hermeneutics of the Subject	p. 303
Deleuze, Lucretius, and me Simulacrum of Naturalism	p. 316
Bibliography	p. 343
Index	p. 367
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