montejohnson - Seminar on Special Topics

Week 1. Some fragments of Democritus (PDF); Democritus and the Epicurean tradition (PDF); Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus (PDF); Epicurus, Sayings (p. 32-40 of The Epicurus Reader).

Required: Hutchinson, 'Introduction' (HTML, p. viii-xvi of The Epicurus Reader). Recommended: Marx, Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature (HTML); Warren, Epicurus and Democritean Ethics.

Week 2. Epicurus, Letters to Herodotus and Pythocles (p. 5-31 of The Epicurus Reader); doxographical and critical reports about Epicurus in Diogenes Laertius and the polemic of Plutarch (p. 41-46 and 68-74 of The Epicurus Reader); 'Aristippus' in Diogenes Laertius (in two parts: PDF1 on Aristippus and PDF2 on the Cyrenaic School).

Required: Irwin, 'Aristippus against happiness' (PDF); recommended: Tsouna, The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School.

Week 3. Cicero, On Moral Ends 1-2; selections from other writings of Cicero (p. 47-64 of The Epicurus Reader).

Required: Cooper, 'Pleasure and Desire in Epicurus' (PDF); Woolf, 'What Kind of Hedonist was Epicurus' (PDF).

Week 4. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 1-6.

Recommended: Johnson and Wilson, 'Lucretius and the History of Science' (PDF); Jones, The Epicurean Tradition, chapter 3.

Week 5. The Acts of the Apostles 17.16-34; Lactantius, The Divine Institutes 3.17 & 7.12 (PDF) and a selection from On the Anger of God (HTML); Lorenzo Valla, selections from On Pleasure 1 and 3 (PDF); Erasmus The Epicurean (PDF).

Recommended: Jones, The Epicurean Tradition, chapters 4-5; Piettre, "Paul and the Athens Epicureans'; Jungkuntz, 'Christian approval of Epicureanism' (PDF); Simpson, 'Epicureans, Christians, and Atheists' (PDF).

Week 6. Pierre Gassendi, Three Discourses of Happiness, Virtue, and Liberty (abridgement by F. Bernier of Gassendi, Syntagma Philosophicum, Part III, Ethica): Bk. I, "Concerning Happiness" tr. E. Anderson (HTML); Bk. II, "Of Virtue" (PDF); Bk. III, "Of Liberty" (PDF).

Required: Gventasdze, 'Aristotelian influences on Gassendi's moral philosophy' (PDF); Johnson, 'Was Gassendi an Epicurean?' (PDF). Recommended: Michael and Michael, 'Gassendi's modified Epicureanism'; Jones, The Epicurean Tradition, chps 6-8; Sarason, 'The ethical and political philosophy of Pierre Gassendi'.

Weeks 7-8. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chaps. 1-13; Elements of Law (PDF); De Homine (PDF); De Corpore (PDF).

Required: Rutherford, 'In pursuit of happiness: Hobbes's new science of ethics' (PDF).

Week 9. John Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding 2.20 ("Of modes of pleasure and pain"), 2.21 ("Of power").

Required: Sarasohn, Gassendi's Ethics, chap. 8, 'Gassendi and Locke' (PDF); Milton, 'Locke and Gassendi: A reappraisal' (PDF); Magri, 'Locke, suspension of desire, and the remote good' (PDF). Recommended: Colman, John Locke's Moral Philosophy.

Week 10. Final discussion.

Web Resources

www.epicurus.info (an outstanding collection of etexts)

In this seminar we will read philosophical works written and influenced by Epicurus, including his surviving letters, collections of his sayings, representations of his thought in Cicero, and the epic didactic poem by Lucretius On the Nature of Things. We will also discuss the Christian attack on and later reconciliation with Epicureanism in the works of Lactantius, Eusebius, and Erasmus. The second part of the course will look at works by key figures of the revival of Epicureanism, Valla and Gassendi, and consider the case for considering two of the most important early modern philosophers, Hobbes and Locke, to be exponents of Epicureanism. Topics to be investigated include: the relation of physics and ethics in ancient materialist philosophy; the Epicurean view of the gods and the critique of teleology; the relation of pleasure and desire; descriptive or psychological and normative versions of hedonism; the relation of kinetic and katastematic pleasure; the Epicurean account of virtue and politics; the Epicurean account of freedom; Christian attacks on Epicureanism, and the circumstances of the Renaissance revival of Epicureanism; the influence of Epiucreanism on early modern accounts of the relation of physics and ethics, and pleasure, desire and virtue; the room these accounts allow for happiness as the summum bonum.

Evaluation for credit based on:

1. Participation in class discussion or blog.

2. Mid-term examination on four set questions about Epicureanism.

3. Final Term paper 10-20 pages on a topic developed in consultation with the professors. Written proposal due Monday of week 9; final version due Friday of week 11.

Books (available at Groundwork)

The Epicurus Reader, ed. and tr. B. Inwood and L. Gerson (Indianapolis, 1994).
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, tr. M. F. Smith (Indianapolis, 2001).
Cicero, On Moral Ends, tr. R. Woolf (Cambridge, 2001).