Episode 012 - Nothing But Combinations Of Matter And Void

Welcome to Episode Twelve of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, the author of "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world.<br /><br />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 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.<br /><br />Before we start with today's episode let me remind you of our three ground rules: 1: Our focus is on Classical Epicurean Philosophy as the ancient Epicureans understood it, not on how modern commentators interpret it today. 2. Our approach is "Not Neo-Epicurean, But Epicurean," and we aren't going to try to sell you Stoicism, Humanism, Buddhism, or Marxism - Epicurus was unique and we aren't going to put him in a box of conventional modern morality. 3. We don't approach Epicurus as either a minimalist or as a hedonist or an atheist as those terms are commonly used. We're going to study Epicurean philosophy exactly as Lucretius taught it, and that means that feeling - pleasure and pain - are the guides that Nature gave us to live by, not gods, idealism, or virtue ethics, and it also means that supernatural does not exist, which means there's no life after death, and any happiness we'll ever have comes in THIS life, which is why it is so important not to waste time in confusion.<br /><br />In episode twelve we will continue our discussion of the void, and introduce the issue of the properties and qualities of material things, and what that means for issues such as time, and for existence and non-existence. We will be discussing this over several episodes, and we hope you'll join us as we continue