A Thought

Let your thoughts and intentions be coherent and your actions focused  and you will be half-way to leading a good life.

Thoughts on Greenblatt and Lucretius

This morning, on NPR's "Morning Edition," they broadcast an interview with the Always Un-Insightful Stephen Greenblatt, who shared his non-insights on Lucretius' De rerum natura.  

The interview implies that Lucretius' philosophy (which Greebblatt fails to identify as Epicureanism) was stifled in the early centuries AD because it contradicted the dogma of the Christian Church. However, any competent historian of ancient philosophy knows that Epicureanism was always a minor player in the world of Greco-Roman thought - much less popular than its principle rivals, Stoicism and Platonism (in all its various forms). The philosophy of Lucretius failed to catch on not because it was un-Christian, but because pagan Greek and Roman thinkers found its dogma of the Randomness of the Universe so intellectually and spiritually unsatisfying.

Stoicism and Platonism were very different, but both were convinced that we live in a Cosmos, not a Chaos. Our world is not an infinite collection of atoms bouncing around randomly and forming temporary - and meaningless - conglomerates of Being. It is the product of Providential Wisdom. Every being we contemplate - including ourselves - is the effect of Divine Intellect. It has coherence and purpose.

The cosmos is Beautiful and Good, not only because it exists, but because it is Wise.