Lucretius: De Rerum Natura

2008 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
World View ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
The World ◽  
Original Audience ◽  
Scientific Argument

For a work written more than two thousand years ago, in a society in many ways quite alien to our own, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura contains much of striking, even startling, contemporary relevance. This is true, above all, of the fifth book, which begins by putting a strong case against what it has recently become fashionable to call 'intelligent design', and ends with an account of human evolution and the development of society in which the limitations of technological progress form a strong and occasionally explicit subtext. Along the way, the poet touches on many themes which may strike a chord with the twenty-first century reader: the fragility of our ecosystem, the corruption of political life, the futility of consumerism and the desirability of limiting our acquisitive instincts are all highly topical issues for us, as for the poem's original audience. Book V also offers a fascinating introduction to the world-view of the upper-class Roman of the first century BC. This edition (which complements existing Aris and Phillips commentaries on books 3, 4 and 6) will help to make Lucretius' urgent and impassioned argument, and something of his remarkable poetic style, accessible to a wider audience, including those with little or no knowledge of Latin. Both the translation and commentary aim to explain the scientific argument of the book as clearly as possible; and to convey at least some impression of the poetic texture of Lucretius' Latin.

Nature

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bellamy Foster
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Material World ◽  
Complex Word ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The World ◽  
Raymond Williams

This article is adapted from John Bellamy Foster, "Nature," in Kelly Fritsch, Clare O'Connor, and AK Thompson, ed., Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 279-86, http://akpress.org/keywords-for-radicals.html."Nature," wrote Raymond Williams in Keywords, "is perhaps the most complex word in the language." It is derived from the Latin natura, as exemplified by Lucretius's great didactic poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) from the first century BCE. The word "nature" has three primary, interrelated meanings: (1) the intrinsic properties or essence of things or processes; (2) an inherent force that directs or determines the world; and (3) the material world or universe, the object of our sense perceptions—both in its entirety and variously understood as including or excluding God, spirit, mind, human beings, society, history, culture, etc.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Prime Minister

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Trollope
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
British Society ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The World ◽  
Twenty First Century

‘Though a great many men and not a few women knew Ferdinand Lopez very well, none of them knew whence he had come.’ Despite his mysterious antecedents, Ferdinand Lopez aspires to join the ranks of British society. An unscrupulous financial speculator, he determines to marry into respectability and wealth, much against the wishes of his prospective father-in-law. One of the nineteenth century’s most memorable outsiders, Lopez’s story is set against that of the ultimate insider, Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium. Omnium reluctantly accepts the highest office of state; now, at last, he is ‘the greatest man in the greatest country in the world’. But his government is a fragile coalition and his wife’s enthusiastic assumption of the role of political hostess becomes a source of embarrassment. Their troubled relationship and that of Lopez and Emily Wharton is a conjunction that generates one of Trollope’s most complex and substantial novels. Part of the Palliser series, The Prime Minister’s tale of personal and political life in the 1870s has acquired a new topicality in the early twenty-first century.

The Art of Imperial Politics and the Interminable Frustrations of History

2021 ◽  
pp. 610-622
Author(s):  
John Bew
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
World Order ◽  
Middle Part ◽  
First Century ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The World ◽  
Imperial Politics

This short chapter considers the renewed interest in Niebuhr’s legacy from the middle part of the first decade of the twenty-first century, through the presidency of Barack Obama and into the era of Donald Trump, following his victory in the 2016 presidential election. It places what might be called the Niebuhrian ‘world view’—understood as Christian theology set upon an international historical canvas—against the backdrop of the so-called ‘crisis of world order’, about which much has been written since 2014. It argues that Niebuhr plays a similar role in American intellectual life as Edmund Burke has done in Britain and that his ideas continue to provide a useful guide to the world today.

Fighting for Virtue

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan McCargo
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
World View ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
The World

This book investigates how Thailand's judges were tasked by the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX) in 2006 with helping to solve the country's intractable political problems—and what happened next. Across the last decade of Rama IX's rule, the book examines the world of Thai judges: how they were recruited, trained, and promoted, and how they were socialized into a conservative world view that emphasized the proximity between the judiciary and the monarchy. The book delves into three pivotal freedom of expression cases that illuminate Thai legal and cultural understandings of sedition and treason, before examining the ways in which accusations of disloyalty made against controversial former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra came to occupy a central place in the political life of a deeply polarized nation. The book navigates the highly contentious role of the Constitutional Court as a key player in overseeing and regulating Thailand's political order before concluding with reflections on the significance of the Bhumibol era of “judicialization” in Thailand. In the end, under a new king, who appears far less reluctant to assert his own power and authority, the Thai courts may now assume somewhat less significance as a tool of the monarchical network.

The World of the Panhellenion I. Athens and Eleusis

1985 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 78-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Spawforth ◽  
Susan Walker
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Intellectual Milieu ◽  
Greek World

In A.D. 131/2 the emperor Hadrian created a new organization of Greek cities, the Panhellenion. This paper is the first of two in which we explore, from a provincial perspective, the implications of this novel initiative by Rome in Greek affairs.The foundation of the Panhellenion belongs to a series of interventions by Hadrian in the Greek world, the others mostly in the form of acts of benefaction towards individual communities. Although Hadrian's reign marked a watershed in Greek relations with Rome, these relations had already evolved significantly over the previous two generations. The two most obvious developments lay in the overlapping areas of cultural and political life. Not only did educated Greeks and Romans now share an intellectual milieu, but a renaissance of Greek literary and rhetorical activity had begun under the leadership of provincials enjoying (more often than not) close ties with Rome. At the same time, a Roman career had become more available to ambitious Greeks; a marked increase in the numbers of Greek senators may be dated to the last quarter of the first century.

Concepts of democracy in democratic and nondemocratic countries

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Zagrebina
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
World View ◽  
Political Life ◽  
World Values Survey ◽  
The World ◽  
Democratic Experience ◽  
Concepts Of Democracy

Democratic experience constitutes an essential part of people’s world view and affects their understanding of democracy. This statement is confirmed by evidence from the World Values Survey (WVS) showing that the concept of democracy among citizens differs in democratic and nondemocratic societies. Democratic citizens associate democracy principally with gender equality, while people in nondemocratic countries associate it more strongly with a prospering economy and social control. People in democratic countries are also less likely to associate democracy with army rule and the intervention of religious authorities in political life than people in nondemocratic countries.

“Dante, Can I Lead You?” South African students write back (across seven centuries and a hemisphere)

2021 ◽  
pp. 97-103
Author(s):  
Chris Thurman
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
World View ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
First Century ◽  
African Students ◽  
Cosmic Order ◽  
The World ◽  
Temporal And Spatial

This account of the essays, poems and stories collected in the present volume reflects on the authors’ diverse forms of engagement with Dante via the implications of proximity and distance. In what ways do these students signal affinity with Dante – his historical context, his writerly persona – and in what ways do they subvert or challenge the world view (or the cosmic order) represented in the Commedia? How does their location in South Africa in the twenty-first century, as a particular kind of temporal and spatial dislocation from Italy in the fourteenth century, enable their creative and critical responses to Dante’s work?

scholarly journals A Linguistic Discursive Analysis of Techno-Colonialism Through the Post-cyberpunk Literature

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 131
Author(s):  
Saba Zaidi ◽  
Mehwish Sahibzada ◽  
Saman Salah ◽  
Anisa Tul Mehdi ◽  
Durdana Rafique
Keyword(s):  
Technological Progress ◽  
First Century ◽  
Technological Advancement ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cultural Constructions ◽  
Century Literature

Technological advancement has made the world a complex arena of day to day transforming phenomenon. In such a complex and technologically progressive world nothing is static instead things have become technology oriented. The socio-historical phenomena like orientalism and imperialism are also not free from technological progress. Similarly, literature of the contemporary times has become Postmodernist for it now aims to represent the current human experiences. The quality of the Postmodernist literature is to represent and dismantle the socio-cultural constructions that use to perpetuate control and power. The objective of this research is twofold; it has projected the world of technological progress and innovation through the analysis of the selected Post-cyberpunk novel Accelerando (2005) by Charles Stross, The Windup Girl (2009) by Paolo Bacigalupi and The Rapture of the Nerds (2012) by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. Socio-Cognitive analysis (van Dijk, 2008) has projected the linguistic discursive analysis of techno-colonialism in order to answer the research questions. The study has also introduced Post-cyberpunk as the genre of Postmodernist twenty-first century literature. The findings of the research have suggested that the selected Post-cyberpunk novels have not only represented techno-colonialism but they have also characterized the impact and influence of the techno-colonizers throughout the world.

Ecocritics and Ecoskeptics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan F. Krell
Keyword(s):  
Technological Progress ◽  
World View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
French Philosophy ◽  
Contemporary Novels ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Animal Question

Michel Serres and Luc Ferry represent the two opposing views of ecology in contemporary French philosophy. Serres calls for a “natural contract” that would ensure a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. Ferry rejects Serres’s ecocentric world view, embracing instead modernist humanism that places humans squarely in the center of the world. Part 1 of Ecocritics and Ecoskeptics presents three contemporary novels that depict the world as both a beautiful and fragile place, in danger of being destroyed—as Serres fears—by human technological progress. Part 2 studies two novels that address the animal question. What is the difference between humans and animals? Are humans animals, or have they been torn away from their animality? Can humans justify their inhumane treatment of animals? Part 3 analyzes two novelists, both avowed humanists who—one through humor and the other through humanitarianism—explore potential undesirable effects of environmentalism. The conclusion states that “environmentalism is a humanism.” Traditional humanism must yield to an ecological humanism that gives dignity and respect to both humans and the earth, acknowledging the unbreakable bond between human and humus.

I. The Poet and his Times: Bene qui latuit bene uixit. OVID

1977 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Near East ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
First Century ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
War Memory ◽  
Good Family ◽  
Civil War Memory ◽  
Ways Of Life

Lucretius was born in the 90s and died in the 50s of the first century B.C.; greater precision the evidence hardly warrants.These were the years which saw the proscriptions of Marius (87) and Sulla (82), the rebellion of Spartacus (73-71), the consulship of Cicero and the death of Catiline (63-62), the first Triumvirate (60), and the acquisition of Rome’s empire in the Near East. When Lucretius died the stage was set for a civil war memory of which was to haunt the Roman conscience for the succeeding century. Of all this the only overt hint in the De Rerum Natura occurs at the beginning of the poem, in the poet’s prayer to Venus for peace in his time:nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquopossumus aequo animo nee Memmi clara propagotalibus in rebus communi desse saluti.(1. 41-3)This implies the detachment proper to the Epicurean philosopher; the tone of certain other passages, especially in Book III, suggests that the poet, a Roman writing for Romans, was not indifferent to the agonies of the dying Republic. That Lucretius was indeed a Roman citizen, and probably a man of good family, may be plausibly inferred (though it cannot be proved) from the tone in which he addresses Memmius, from the familiarity displayed in his writing with upper-class ways of life, and above all from the literary culture evident in the D.R.N.

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