Lucretius II

PPC spine 17mm, 256 x 333mm Cover sine 13mm, 216 x 289mm ‘With Lucretius II, Thomas Nail continues his project of re-reading Lucretius‘ De rerum natura in a startlingly new fashion - as a foundational text in the philosophy of movement. The results of Nail‘s labour are breathtaking: traditional pieties of scholarship fall by the wayside, replaced by a Lucretius truly of and for the twenty-first century.‘ Wilson Shearin, University of Miami More than just a study of Lucretius, Nail provides a stunning reading of an already fascinating philosopher. Nail‘s originally and beautifully composed account of motion generates an ethics worthy of the twenty-first century, allowing us to think of instability as an opportunity for thinking our world anew.‘ Claire Colebrook, Penn State University An ancient ethics for modern life Suffering, the fear of death, war, ecological destruction, and social inequality are urgent ethical issues today as they were for Lucretius. Thomas Nail argues that Lucretius was the first to locate the core of all these ethical ills in our obsession with stasis, our fear of movement, and our hatred of matter. Almost two thousand years ago Lucretius proposed a simple and stunning response to these problems: an ethics of motion. Instead of trying to transcend nature with our minds, escape it with our immortal souls, and dominate it with our technologies, Lucretius was perhaps the first in the Western tradition to forcefully argue for a completely materialist and immanent ethics based on moving with and as nature. If we want to survive and live well on this planet, Lucretius taught us, our best chance is not to struggle against nature but to embrace it and facilitate its movement. Thomas Nail is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver. He is the author of Lucretius I: An Ontology of Motion. Cover image: Primavera, Sandro Botticelli, 1482 Cover : [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN: 978-1-4744-6663-9 Barcode