Lucretius and Epicurus (review)

424 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:3 JULY a985 will find it difficult to follow some of the more subtle distinctions and detailed analyses (suggested, quite often, by contemporary philosophical debates, e.g., 2o2-o 4 on Aristotle's categories). But his endeavors will be rewarded (as mine have been) by the encouraging example of a piece of German scholarship which attends to the historical conditions of its subject-matter and which at the same time, without foisting on thinkers of the past the questions of today, treats their views with the respect of sympathetic and critical understanding. I noted some slips and misprints: On page 3 t "Korpus" is preceded by "einen" instead of "ein" and by "dieser" instead of "dieses." According to Aristotle, people are occasionally harmed by goods (G~ter) rather than by gods (G6tter: 68)! The reference on page 69/7o should give Becket page 132% not 1328. On page 214, 1. 9, "eigentlichem" should read "eigentlichen." Footnotes 16 and 19 on page ~7o withold page references. And on page ~78, "TI" should be "T~." That there are extensive footnotes printed as an appendix to the text detracts a little from the pleasure of reading Graeser's book. Otherwise the publisher has provided a very suitable layout for a remarkable scholarly achievement. ANSELM WINFRIED MULLER Universit~it Trier West Germany Diskin Clay. Lucretius and Epicurus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. Pp. 361. $39.5~. Diskin Clay has an ambitious goal: to show both what Lucretius owes to Epicurus and what is the poet's own contribution. Accordingly, he devotes his first chapter to a general discussion of Lucretius' sources, then continues in the second chapter with an analysis of certain basic features of Epicurus' physics. The remaining three chapters examine how Lucretius differs from Epicurus. Special attention is given to Lucretius' proem (the subject of the third chapter) and the argument of the first two books (treated in the fourth chapter); in the final chapter, Clay treats a variety of topics that range over the rest of Lucretius' poem. In his first chapter, Clay emphasizes that Lucretius was influenced not just by Epicurus, but also by Empedocles; and he accepts the controversial view that Lucretius was untouched by contemporary Epicureanism or indeed by philosophy after Epicurus. The chapter is a selective review of scholarly positions, written with elegance and with a polemical fervor that is welcome because it is well informed. The chapter contains little new argument or evidence in favor of the positions that are adopted, although some new argument, particularly on the influence of Empedocles, is added later in the book. The second chapter, entitled "Epicurus' Last Will and Testament," focuses on ten doctrines which Clay considers to be the ten "master propositions," or stoicheiomata, of Epicurus' physics. Nine of the ten propositions are contained in Epicurus' "outline" of his physics in the Letter to Herodotus (sections 38 to 44). As a tenth proposition, Clay BOOK REVIEWS 425 adds the claim (made in section 54 of the Letter to Herodotus) that since the atoms do not change, they have no properties except shape, weight, and size. Clay calls this proposition Epicurus' "axiom of change." He considers that the ten propositions together constitute a "philosophical armature," passed on by Epicurus to his intellectual heir, Lucretius, to be translated and developed by Lucretius in the first two books of De rerum natura. Although the ten propositions selected by Clay are important tenets of Epicurean physics, they are not presented by either Epicurus or Lucretius as a set of ten "master propositions." In the Letter to Herodotus Epicurus presents the first nine propositions enumerated by Clay as a "sufficient outline" of his physics (without, however, distinguishing them as nine in number). The so-called "axiom of change" is one of numerous doctrines added by Epicurus after his outline. All of these additional doctrines, together with the fundamental doctrines of the outline, are viewed in the Letter to Herodotus as stoicheia, "elements." Lucretius refashions Epicurus' outline of fundamental doctrines (as preserved in Letter to Herodotus 38-44) in the first two books of his poem. He follows up his treatment of the fundamental doctrines by adding...