Reaction to Lucretius

Lucretius was a Roman philosopher who signed on to the epicurean ideas which denied spirituality, superstition, and non-earthly phenomena. He took an unusual approach to publish his ideas by formatting them into poetry. This came at a time when Rome was conquering the empire created earlier by Alexander the Great and Greek culture was eagerly being adopted by many Romans. Poetry was an important genre of literature during the later part of the Roman Republic which Lucretius lived and arguably played an important role in the success of his work. This paper will discuss how Lucretius’ sweeping claims relate to the philosophy of his time, but how many of his ideas would later be ratified by modern scientific research.

One of Lucretius’ strongest assertions in his work is about how religion is not only false, but dangerous. He argues that religion is used to explain the unexplainable and as a result, can slow scientific progress. People would often associate a god to what science couldn’t explain and one of Lucretius’ main points is that nothing can come from nothing. His views and those of society of the time would clash when Lucretius defends one of his most prolific ideas which are that of the soul.

Lucretius defends the notion that the soul is not of spiritual matter, but a more material and empirical being. He describes what he calls “motes”, or what we today would call atoms or neurons. He states that the soul is entirely material and is comprised of motes moving in a random sequence which controls our bodies and our feelings. He attributes everything which involves the body to the activity of motes. Even intellect is attributed to the movement and reaction between motes located in the heart. This parallels his notion that the spirit is spread throughout the body, but forms a unity necessary for the feeling of different sensations. In the epicurean convention, he firmly establishes material cause to cognitive effect.

Lucretius is quite advanced in his thinking when he states that “matter is indestructible” He has the scientific reasoning to understand the basic elements of matter as we understand them today. He states that “The elements are held, are bound together in different degrees, but the basic stuff is indestructible, so things remain intact, unharmed, until a force is found proportionate to their texture, to effect reversion to their primal elements, but never to complete annihilation.” By this statement, Lucretius is defending scientific fact millennia ahead of his time. He takes his fundamental argument that everything is composed of atoms or motes and argues that matter can never be destroyed. It is possible to destroy an advanced assembly of motes, but ultimately they can only return to the basic form of matter.

One of the most contentious claims by atheists today is that once a human dies everything ceases to exist. Lucretius was a founding thinker of this argument. He states that the soul is not immortal and that there is no reason to fear death because there will be no continuation of your being to face either good or bad spiritual occurrences. He states that the thought of a spirit leaving the body is in fact the body’s motes exiting through every miniscule opening in the body. He states that the body’s motes, like other matter isn’t completely destroyed, but exists in the world around us and will someday be decisive in the production of another human being. In this same argument, he dismisses the idea that the soul escapes the body as a single entity. He argues that as a section or limb of the body dies or decays, part of the soul leaves the body along with the ability of that body part.

He uses this idea of death being the ultimate end of our consciousness to reinforce the notion that humans should not be afraid of death and that by focusing on what happens after we die ultimately takes away from the quality of life we can achieve. He says that people will do almost anything to stay alive. He states very vividly that “it drives a man to violate honor, or to break the bonds of friendship.” He continues his passage to explain that nearly every human would rather suffer exile, disease, loneliness, and constant torment, but stay alive instead of face death.

In Lucretius’ argument against personal immortality, he touches on the linkage between the atomic activity of the brain and human movement. Typically we see the brain as the control center of the body, ultimately controlling everything. Lucretius saw the body as controlling the mind. Following the atomist approach of Epicurus, he made no distinction between motes that compose the peripheral body, or cells, with the motes which make human thought necessary, or neurons. He used human drunkenness as an example. He attained proof by observing that the more an intoxicant is consumed, the more random and unusual a person will behave. This correlated with his argument that everything that encompassed our being was empirical.

Lucretius gives the reader an alternative mode of thought by offering his epicurean views on religion and physics. He tries to eliminate any fear that people carry with them as a result of religion and he works to convey the notion that everything that exists is purely chemical and there is nothing of superstition or divinity to be afraid of. He solidifies his stance pertaining to non-existence when he says that everyone will eventually die and nobody can escape it. He argues that death equates to annihilation and to anticipate a final judgment will only lower the quality of life which can be attained.

When people have questions about their own existence, Lucretius offers them several observations they can make which usually encompasses support for his claims. He offers his atomist approach with the idea that although your body simply decays postmortem and your motes escape into nature only to one day be made into a living being again, your immortality is retained, in a sense, but you will not remember your past life. In addition he makes the comparison of the growth both physically and mentally of children as they grow and the deterioration both physically and mentally of elders as they near the end of their life. He professes that death occurs as a process and it is not a sudden release of the soul as many followers of religion might assume.

There is no doubt that Lucretius’ ideas were revolutionary and far ahead of his time. He built upon the foundation of Epicurus and arguably reinforced the ideas of the thinker he had faithfully admired and supported instead of composing authentic atomist ideas. He paved the way for modern scientific methods to confirm what he and his predecessors had established. It is difficult to ponder whether Lucretius had actual proof of many of his claims which we only today have proven, or if he merely had a basic understanding marked by a solid hypothesis. Nevertheless, he planted the seed for enlightened thinkers centuries later and a birth for modern social criticisms.

Source:
Lucretius. Trans. Rolfe Humphries. The Way Things Are. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968.