Episode 017 - All Things Are Not Made Of A Single Element, Such as Fire

Welcome to Episode Seventeen of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who lived in the age of Julius Caesar and wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world.I am your host Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we'll walk you through the six books of Lucretius' poem, and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. Be aware that none of us are professional philosophers, and everyone here is a self-taught Epicurean. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book, "Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt.Before we start with today's episode let me remind you of our three ground rules.First: Our aim is to go back to the original text to bring you an accurate presentation of classical Epicurean philosophy as the ancient Epicureans understood it, not simply repeat for you what modern commentators teach about it today.Second: We won't be talking about modern political issues in this podcast. Epicurean philosophy is very different from Stoicism, Humanism, Buddhism, Taoism, Atheism, and Marxism - it must be understood on its own, not in terms of any conventional modern morality.Third: The physics presented by Lucretius is the essential base of Epicurean philosophy. When you study this, you will see that Epicurus taught neither luxury nor minimalism, but that feeling - pleasure and pain - are the guides that Nature gave us to live by rather than supernatural gods, idealism, or virtue ethics. More than anything else, Epicurus taught that there is nothing supernatural whatsoever, and that means there's no life after death, and any happiness we will ever have must come in THIS life, which is why it is so important not to waste time in confusion.Remember that our home page is LucretiusToday.com, and there you can find a free copy of the versions of the poem we are reading.In this Episode 17, we will discuss how All things are not made of a single element, such as fire, contrary to what some philosophers asserted - such as Heraclitus, who held all things are made of fire.Daniel Brown 1743 Edition: https://archive.org/details/lucretiusepicureanfriendsreferenceeditionversion01/page/n83/mode/2up[621] Lastly, if nature, parent of things, had not compelled all things that perish then to be resolved into least parts, she could from them repair nothing that dies; for bodies that are formed of various parts can never be endued with properties, which the first seeds of things ought to possess, as union, weight, and force, agreement, motion, by which all things act.[627] And yet, suppose that nature had allowed no end to bodies being divided, yet some bodies from eternity must have been, which by no force could ever be subdued. But bodies that are formed of brittle seeds, and to be broken, could not have remained for ages infinite, vexed as they have been with endless blows, but must have been dissolved.[635] Wherefore, those sages who have thought that fire is the first principle of things, and from that alone the whole is formed, do greatly err from the true rule of reason. The champion of these, Heraclitus, enters first the lists, more famed for dark expression among empty Greeks than with the wise, who search for truth; for none but fools admire, and love what they see couched in words abstruse; and that they take for truth which quaintly moves the ear, and painted over effects by witty jingling of the sound.[646] For how such various beings could arise, I ask, if formed from pure and real fire? To say, that the hot fire is now...