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title: Lucretian and Epicurean Atheism and Materialism
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2019-12-27T05:59:30+08:00
Lucretian and Epicurean Atheism From Wikipedia:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De\_rerum\_natura\#Background)
To the Greek philosopher Epicurus, the unhappiness and degradation of
humans arose largely from the dread which they entertained of the
power of the deities, from terror of their wrath. This wrath was
supposed to be displayed by the misfortunes inflicted in this life and
by the everlasting tortures that were the lot of the guilty in a
future state (or, where these feelings were not strongly developed,
from a vague dread of gloom and misery after death). Epicurus thus
made it his mission to remove these fears, and thus to establish
tranquility in the minds of his readers. To do this, Epicurus invoked
the atomism of Democritus to demonstrate that the material universe
was formed not by a Supreme Being, but by the mixing of elemental
particles that had existed from all eternity governed by certain
simple laws. He argued that the deities (whose existence he did not
deny) lived forevermore in the enjoyment of absolute peace---strangers
to all the passions, desires, and fears, which affect humans---and
totally indifferent to the world and its inhabitants, unmoved alike by
their virtues and their crimes. This meant that humans had nothing to
fear from them.
So, Epicurus, while still being a philosopher without a fully-developed
atheism and materialism, is a really good foundation for a philosophy
that /is/.
Definitely a thinker who took an important first step, in Western
philosophy, away from believing in supernatural entities and processes.