Lucretius on Religion

Abstract

A number of Enlightenment thinkers of questionable piety drew inspiration from Lucretius's philosophic poem On the Nature of Things. Contemporary atheists, in their renewed vigor, have continued the Enlightenment attack on faith. Our atheists have sought to create a tradition for themselves by claiming Lucretius as an ancient exemplar of their own impious forthrightness. This study argues that Lucretius was more fully appreciative of the necessary and salutary relationship between religion and politics and would not appreciate being co-opted by either group. A return to Lucretius may be useful in understanding the foundation of the early modern project and revealing the imprudence of modern atheism.     

Lucy Hutchinson,Lucretius and Soteriological Materialism

Abstract

This article examines Lucy Hutchinson's pervasive materialism, arguing that her use of corporeal imagery – in part shaped by her early translation of Lucretius – contributes to the soteriological purposes of her later works in multiple ways. Criticism on Hutchinson has tended to divorce the materialist imagery of her translation from the Calvinistic themes of her other writings. I argue, however, for the lasting presence of a materialism constructed from the vocabularies of Lucretian Epicureanism, Neoplatonism and John Owen. Focusing especially on the poem Order and Disorder and Hutchinson's theological tract to her daughter, I show how she uses materialism as a “means” to achieving assurance and grace. I suggest that these various responses to physical experience are part of Hutchinson's enduring investigation into the ontology of “Order” and “Disorder”, and her quest for stable spiritual being.     

María Rosa Lida,Borges y una cita inexistente de Lucrecio: filología y auctoritas

In 1952, María Rosa Lida de Malkiel published a work in Sur magazine about the literary sources of Jorge Luis Borges. In the second paragraph of that work she relates a passage from one of the Argentine's stories with a verse from the Aeneid and, later on, two verses of the poem “Las calles” with some others from Lucretius' work De rerum natura. In both cases, she cites the number of the book and verse of the Latin poets. The one referring to Virgil is correct; however, Lucretius' verses are apocryphal. In this work, I analyze the reasons the eminent philologist could have had to carry out tremendous artifice and, at the same time, the objective and personal qualms that, during the revision, produced the auctoritas of her figure.