Customer Reviews (1)

To Epicurus
Mr. Sedwick - I believe - must have been among the first to point out the similarities between the teachings of the ancient Greeks and the greatest minds of the East.

In this little book, Mr.Sedwick offers a modern(1933) interpretation of Epicurus. I bow to his effort. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An Eye Opener for living with Eyes Open
Let me say at the outset that Epicurus is hard to understand because we have only fragments of his work.

Epicurus is important to people living in the third millenium because he realized, asmost of us do, that traditional religion is not very believable.

In his time the Hellenistic and Romanworld was about to fall into a morass of Eastern religions, spiritualism,and superstition familiar tothird millenium peopleliving amid Tibetan and Zen Buddhism, Wicca, and New Age.

Epicurus has two huge virtues that make him worth reading even now.

He is ferociously smart for one. Some of his insightsabout physical phenomena millenia before the invention of real scientificinstrumentsare astonishing.

The other is that he is unrelentingly honest and rigorous. His premise isthat we only know what we can find out from our senses and our reason. This is immensely liberating from all the causistry,tradition, authority, and sentiment of both culture and counter-culture.

To the ultimate rationalization for religion,"Well, it is a comfort for the simple." he responds, "Truthand honesty are better than comfort."Hedismissed death as nothing, and proved his point by showing legendarycourage in facing his own. ... Read more

Book Description
THIS 22 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Source Book in Ancient Philosophy, by Charles M. Bakewell. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766101479. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A fine compendium of doubt
Believers as well as skeptics would profit from a reading of this fine anthology. Besides reprinting hard-to-find shorter items such as Shelley's essay "A Refutation of Deism", the editor has skillfully excerpted passages from longer works. Each selection is introduced by a brief essay providing biographical information about its' author, and a deft summary of the ideas expressed. Besides the necessary inclusion of representative works from Greek and Roman Epicurians, 18th century 'philosophes', and such philosophers as Hume, Nietzsche, Russell, and Sartre; the editor also adds works from now-obscure but important early figures such as Anthony Collins and Elihu Palmer.

My only disappointment was the absence of Anthony Flew's famous (and much anthologized) essay, "Theology and Falsification", but this is only a cavil. There is always room for one more custard pie, as Orwell wrote. Oh, and it would be nice if this book were printed instead of photocopied. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Plutarch (Plutarchus), ca. 45-120 CE, was born at Chaeronea in Boeotia in central Greece, studied philosophy at Athens, and, after coming to Rome as a teacher in philosophy, was given consular rank by the emperor Trajan and a procuratorship in Greece by Hadrian. He was married and the father of one daughter and four sons. He appears as a man of kindly character and independent thought, studious and learned.

Plutarch wrote on many subjects. Most popular have always been the 46 Parallel Lives, biographies planned to be ethical examples in pairs (in each pair, one Greek figure and one similar Roman), though the last four lives are single. All are invaluable sources of our knowledge of the lives and characters of Greek and Roman statesmen, soldiers and orators. Plutarch's many other varied extant works, about 60 in number, are known as Moralia or Moral Essays. They are of high literary value, besides being of great use to people interested in philosophy, ethics and religion.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of the Moralia is in fifteen volumes, volume XIII having two parts. Volume XVI is a comprehensive Index.

Product Description
Traditional theories and interpretations of Epicurean philosophy are challenged by this work, in which a distinguished scholar demonstrates the fallacies and shortcomings of most of the previous studies on the subject. ... Read more