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1

THE PRESENCE OF ETHICAL TEACHING IN THE DE RERUM NATURA OF LUCRETIUS

100%

Grzelak-Krzymianowska A., Zakład Literatury Łacińskiej W. F., Adrianna Grzelak-Krzymianowska – dr Z. L. Ł.

Collectanea Philologica

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2013

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vol. 16

FR

L’objectif de cet article est de montrer que dans son poème De rerum natura, Lucrèce n’a pas seulement inclus l'éthique épicurienne, mais l’a intégrée autant que la partie majeure de son oeuvre. La présence, l’étendue et la forme des éléments épicuriens permettent de les considérer comme matériel suffisant qui justifie l’analyse effectuée. Dans la première partie de l’article, l’auteur démontre que Lucrèce – pour des raisons doctrinales – n’a pas pu interpréter uniquement la physique épicurienne et a construit son oeuvre comme une sorte de compendium de la totalité de la doctrine épicurienne. Dans la partie suivante, l’auteur montre l’ampleur de la synonymie éthique contenue dans le poème et les fragments de l'oeuvre analysée où l’éthique est largement débattue, en employant comme critère d’analyse le lexique du caractère éthique dans De rerum natura.

2

Sugestywność etycznego przekazu prologów w poemacie Lukrecjusza

100%

Grzelak-Krzymianowska A.

Collectanea Philologica

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2019

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issue 22

85-99

EN

Lucretius, considered to be the continuator of Epicure, is the author of the poem De rerum natura. Essentially, this title suggests that it is a work that addresses the problems of ancient physics, in this case the materialistic concept of reality. Of course, this is true, but besides the physical doctrine, the poem also contains numerous sections on ethics and morality. Although no part of De rerum natura is a constant ethical argument, the whole text is permeated with information that serves precisely this purpose. The aim of this article is to show how the poet uses in his prologues for subsequent books of the poem the structure, content and various stylistic and rhetorical elements to convince the reader of the rightness and values of the explicitly and implicitly demonstrated ethical views he proclaims.

3

The Epicurean Views on the Human Soul in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura

75%

Eliopoulos P.

Dialogue and Universalism

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2015

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issue 1

30-37

EN

Epicurean physics elaborates on a system of universal kinetics as regards the crea-tion of the world. One of the main principles is that there is no genesis without motion. The human being, as all other beings, is the product of the motion of atoms within the cosmic void. Due to a sudden swerve in the motion of some atoms, it can be upheld, according to the Epicureans and Lucretius, that there is no determinism in the universe and the human being is capable of free will. The atomic motions and the swerves also take place in the space of the human soul. Lucretius, in the De Rerum Natura, follows with precision the content of the Epicurean dogmas, and divides the soul into an irra-tional part, which he calls anima, and a rational one, animus, according to the distinc-tion between ψυχή and διάνοια.

4

Stanisław Lem: Lukrecjusz ze Lwowa

75%

Okołowski P.

Edukacja Filozoficzna

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2018

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issue 65

33-43

EN

Lem began his writing career during the Second World War under the German and Soviet occupation (in Polish Lviv) and during the early postwar years. The war and the subsequent period of Stalinism in Poland had a deep impact on him. Lem is the most famous Polish writer, not Jewish, but first of all he is par exellence a great philosopher, like Schopenhauer, Russell, Popper or Kotarbiński. I call his position in the philosophy as „rationalistic naturalism with metaphysical extensions”. Lem agreed with this opinion. One can call his outlook an enlightened anthropological manichaeism or the philosophy of inequality. Lem gave ideas, which relate to the problem of evil to issue of community (human propensity for evil and the temporal-social nature of man). I repeat my main proposition (2010): the philosophy of Stanisław Lem is Neo-Lucretianism and Lem can be called the Lucretius of 20th century. The philosophical system of Lem is parallel to the ancient poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), written in the first century B.C. by the famous Roman poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus. The Antireligiosity of both philosophers doesn’t concern all religions; it opposes the one which propagates a false outlook upon life. Therefore, their antireligiosity goes together with apologetics of religion. Lucretius and Lem don’t negate the religiousness, i.e. religious disturbance of the soul. In opinion of Lucretius gods are necessary for people, Lem is of the opinion that God is “the beneficial power”. Lem also says that the Christian system of values is the most proper from the point of view of human nature. He repeats after Schopenhauer and Feuerbach (also Lucretius) that religion is a remedy for the fearful certainty of death. Lem – the atheist in common parlance – from the Christian point of view is the man of ‘strange faith’. There is an eschatology in his outlook, though a worldly (finitistic) one, which clearly has a Lucretian nature. In opinion of both there are two attributes of the Cosmos: extermination (Lucretius says mors immortalis, Lem – holocaust), and creation. A mortal human finds comfort in the idea that ‘other worlds’ come into being in the dead Cosmos eternally and ‘different minds’ are born in them.

5

Democritus’ hypothesis’ of the origins of music

63%

Żerańska-Kominek S.

Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology

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2009

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issue 8

57-70

PL

The oldest conception of the origins of music in European culture was formulated by Democritus, who stated that music arose as an imitation of birdsong. This conception was the most serious working hypothesis on the beginnings of music before Darwin. In the musicography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it constituted an alternative to the predominant creationistic theory, paving the way for the scientific positivist approaches which in the nineteenth century led to the eventual depreciation of thinking rooted in religion. In evolutionistically- and scientisticallyoriented comparative musicology the mimetic theory was rejected on the grounds of a lack of scientific evidence of the evolutionary link between birds and man and especially between birdsong and music.The aim of the article is to show that the mimetic theory of the origins of music was a relict of a mythical vision in which birds represented the materialised image of transcendence. The beginnings of music were linked to the voices of birds, which in many cultures symbolised human spirituality-above all spirituality manifest through death. Thus Democritus’ ‘hypothesis’ may be interpreted as a myth in which the ‘song of the beginning’ is identified with mourning

6

The Sublime, Nature’s Eloquent Gift: A Review Essay

51%

Thein K.

Eirene. Studia Graeca et Latina

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2017

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vol. 53

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issue 1-2

9-75

EN

Discussing two recent books on the sublime (James I. Porter, The Sublime in Antiquity, and, in part, Robert Doran, The Theory of the Sublime from Longinus to Kant), the review essay takes a closer look at the theoretical implications of, especially, Porter’s reading of Longinus. The main virtue of this reading is found to be twofold. First, avoiding the trap of a too narrow conceptualization of sublimity, it brings in an unusually broad range of texts that deal with sublime phaenomena from all the relevant points of view. Second, emphasizing the place of Longinus in the rhetorical tradition, it offers an archeology of the sublime’s fundamental relation to language. Demonstrating that no experience of sublimity is possible without speech that makes it articulate – and therefore shareable and teachable –, Porter enables us to rethink what Longinus has to say about nature, human nature, and art. The sublime emerges here as a unique yet variegated mental habitat where superhuman nature and the art of eloquence can connect and make us “see” what is incomparably greater than our shape and size that usually limit both our experience and the way we analyze it. The sublime reverses this experience and makes the universe bounce back on us by suddenly revealing its most distance vistas, but also its possible internal cracks and ruptures. Longinus himself does not theorize this situation as such: if he quotes and discusses a number of sources (Homer’s sublime mind looms large in his account), he is equally open to a form of Platonism and to those cosmic intervals or voids that originate with Lucretius whose theoretical stance is the most anti-Platonic imaginable. This is no contradiction: at the heart of the expressible sublime, there is a subtle and ongoing negotiation between what Porter labels the material and the immaterial sublime. If the former finds its expression in the poetics of the Presocratic authors and also in Lucretius, whereas the latter reaches its peak in various Platonic images of the soul’s ascent, neither kind of the sublime is a pure form and their difference is a matter of degree and scale. Regardless of theoretical orientation of different authors, the projection of their premises into the material universe leads the reader’s imagination towards the unachievable whole of reality as “sublime reality” (Porter). Compared to Porter’s enterprise, Doran’s book is less concerned with the rhetorical issues and focused on the sublime as a self-transcending psychological state that is more or less independent on the rhetoric of its expression. Instead, Doran’s sublime has a history that is intertwined with the culturally co-determined morality: especially the modern sublime thus shifts towards bourgeois rather than aristocratic values. The question is to know whether we find such a shift anticipated in the last chapter of Longinus’ treatise, which offers various views on the progressive disappearance of truly great and sublime natures. Longinus himself connects this process to the issue of political freedom and the world (imperial) peace, but leaves the matter of the true cause of the decline unresolved. Political progress or decline notwithstanding, to learn the appropriate rhetorical art of the sublime enables us to recover sublimity through the imitation or re-enactment that helps us to literally saturate our soul with the effluences of the great minds of the past.

7

Pedetemptim progrediensis… Lukrecjusz i Morgan

51%

Rygielska M.

Laboratorium Kultury

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2014

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vol. 3

17-55

PL

Autorka wykorzystuje w artykule metodę porównawczą w jej wariancie filologicznym by wskazać istotne podobieństwa między myślą Lukrecjusza i Morgana w zakresie ujmowania rozwoju ludzkiej kultury jako całości. Zestawia „katalog wynalazków” oraz opisy zawarte w V księdze De rerum natura… Lukrecjusza z „epokami etnicznymi” wyróżnionymi przez Lewisa Henry’ego Morgana w Społeczeństwie pierwotnym… Oprócz kryteriów ich wyróżnienia oraz celów badawczych wskazanych przez autora Ligi... istotne są również używane przez niego pojęcia powolnego, stopniowego rozwoju (development) oraz postępu. Ważny jest także problem skali umysłu (scale of mind) i rozumu, jako czynników umożliwiających rozwój człowieka i jego kultury. Pod uwagę zostały wzięte zarówno bezpośrednie nawiązania do filozoficznego traktatu, jak i podobieństwa wymagające rekonstrukcji dokonywanej na podstawie drobiazgowej lektury obu dzieł: starożytnego i dziewiętnastowiecznego.

EN

In this article author uses a comparative method in its philological variant in order to point out significant similarities between the thoughts of Lucretius and Morgan in scope of taking human cultural development as a whole. She juxtaposes “catalog of inventions” and other descriptions included in Lucretius’ book V De rerum natura with “ethical periods” distinguished by Lewis Henry Morgan in Ancient society. Apart from the criterion of their distinction and research objectives, indicated by the author of The League of Iroquois there are important concepts of slow, gradual development and progress, as well as the problem of the scale of mind and reason, as a factor allowing for both human and cultural development. Taken under consideration here, were both direct references to the philosophical treatise as well as similarities, which required reconstruction on basis of meticulous study of both the ancient and nineteenth-century texts.

8

The Moral Philosophy of Lucretius and Aquinas: Competing Ends and Means

51%

Nehez J.

Studia Gilsoniana

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2021

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vol. 10

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issue 2

293-319

EN

The author first explains wisdom and its importance to moral philosophy. Secondly, he follows with a consideration of the nature of things and the soul as told by Lucretius. Then he presents a brief summary on St. Thomas understanding of soul and how his faculty psychology is a superior explanation of moral philosophy. The author concludes by showing how Lucretius’ ethical system fails and to attain true happiness we must take up a faculty psychology aimed at virtue and the perfection of the soul, the principle form of the human person.

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1 Thein K.

1 Zakład Literatury Łacińskiej W. F.

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