#Epicurus Portrait

[hhyartist]

Looking for a unique piece of intellectual decor that will inspire your mind and add a touch of vintage philosophy to your home or office? Look no further than this stunning digital portrait of Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher and founder of Epicureanism. With its intricate details and timeless style, this Epic

Print

This vintage philosophy print is not only a great conversation starter, but also a perfect gift for students, teachers, or anyone interested in the history of philosophy. It's easy to download and print, making it a convenient and affordable way to add a touch of intellectual elegance to your space. Combine it with other philosophy wall art or use it as a standalone piece, this Epicurus decor will elevate any room.

Order now and receive this beautiful Epicurus digital art print in a matter of minutes. Add it to your cart and enjoy the beauty and wisdom of this Greek philosopher every day.

Etsy Purchase

[lionofchaeronea]

Head (Pentelic marble) of the philosopher Epicurus. Artist unknown; 2nd cent. CE copy after a lost Greek original of the early 3rd cent. BCE. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[period-dramallama]

"It was an obvious choice, for I have studied Henry’s queens over several decades, and published books on them, notably a collective biography in 1991, which I am now re-researching and rewriting."

That's longer than I've been alive but GIRL I still found errors in your novel ffffffffffffffff

'Tudor women were poorly educated'

I'm not saying I WANT the education of a tudor woman (certainly at the bottom end of society the sexes would be almost equally illiterate). But again, educated for what? And why the value judgement of failure on the part of the teacher? If a carpenter teaches me carpentry but not theology, am I poorly educated? Did the carpenter 'fail'?

'Tudor women were excluded from formal academic spaces, often denied education in classical languages, and had fewer opportunities to enter or create informal ones' is the more accurate (but admittedly clunkier) way to put it.

"They lived in a court dominated by an egocentric, suggestible king, in which factions fought each other with often bloody consequences. It was the duty of the King’s wives to bear him male heirs – and in that they mostly failed spectacularly, and so exposed themselves to their enemies."

Catherine and Anne didn't fail. You can't fail something you have no control over. You might as well say that I failed to win the lottery this week.

"In 1533, to his crushing disappointment, she bore him a daughter, Elizabeth."

Henry was relieved, not disappointed! "Sons will surely follow" is a man who is optimistic not disappointed.

"Henry sent Hans Holbein to Cleves to paint Anna’s portrait. An ambassador vouched that it was a good likeness, but it showed her from the most flattering viewpoint. Henry was enchanted, and pressed ahead eagerly with the marriage negotiations. He was shocked to find Anne so unlike what he had expected. It was the most disastrous of beginnings. The marriage went ahead, in January 1540. On the wedding night Henry pawed Anna’s breasts and belly, but ventured no further, for by these tokens, he was to declare, she was no virgin. We might wonder what he meant by that."

Many people described Anne as the most good-looking of all Henry's wives. And why would Hans Holbein flatter her? He has no incentive to do that. His skill at painting is that he can capture the true likeness. Did he flatter every one of the candidates he painted?

"We might wonder what he meant by that" maybe he was looking for an excuse not to stay married to her and he was totally ready to LIEEEEEEEEEE

"At an early age she was corrupted by her music master."

The definition of corrupted:

cause to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain:"there is a continuing fear of firms corrupting politicians in the search for contracts"

cause to become morally depraved: "he has corrupted the boy"

change or debase by making errors or unintentional alterations:"a backup copy will be needed if the original copy becomes corrupted" · "Epicurus's teachings have since been much corrupted"

ARCHAIC infect; contaminate:"the corrupting smell of death"

This is a value judgement. You're saying that Katherine Howard was made worse by being ABUSED. That is AWFUL.

"What happened next to this ignorant girl is one of the saddest chapters in English history."

Again, a value judgement. Say naive, say inexperienced. But ignorant?

Only one of Henry VIII’s wives left an enduring legacy.

Catherine of Aragon left a legacy in her daughter Mary and as a patron of humanism, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Parr left a legacy in Elizabeth and also as Reformation heroines (see Foxe) and patrons or in Catherine's case AUTHOR. Catherine was a pioneer as a female pioneer of the English language!

[lafcadiosadventures]

Madame Putiphar Readalong. Book One, Chapter seven:

A short but (not) sweet (rather made of “fiel”) chapter with marriages of convenience --for only one of the parties involved-- baroque images of carnage, piracy changing its clothes to become an official state policy. And caricatures of imperial England.

Albert Besnard, Le Pendu, etching and drypoin, 1873

Once again as with all the chapters centring on Cockermouth, we are dealing in caricature and farce. This time we hear it all from the narrator, and since Cockermouth technically doesn’t “act” in the present timeline, we do not get a theatrical scene but a series of grotesque tableaux protagonized by this embodiment of English Imperialism. If Lady Cockermouth said Cock being “a bad son” implied he could only be a bad father and husband, which seemed to promise an exploration of his childhood as a possible source for his violence, well, we are not given any of that by our narrator. The only allusion to his youth is that Lord Cock is unable to see his knees since the age of 15. We are not given details as to how he was raised, in fact we don’t hear at all of his parents. We can still presume the root of the evil is the culture he was raised in and the social role he had to be groomed into performing, but we are not shown any of that, rather a series of allusions to an English national character, supposedly intrinsically bent to dominion and violence.

However, even when Borel strives to make an impenetrable, one sided caricature of the excesses of imperialism, an allegorical fat man signifying greed and self indulgence and power abuse alla Frantisek Kupka’s Money character, he will be rendered human by one or two ridiculous details. (on the one hand, he is strong, but all that eating and drinking has weakened his heart, so he’s not as invulnerable as he seems, on the other, he has a strange desire to be ridiculous, to become a jester. He is a volatile mixture of infinite pride and a desire to be laughed at, to be humiliated by others when slightly drunk and relaxed)

Our Lord Cock is compared to a pig from the very beginning of the Chapter: he has the aspect of a pig of Epicurus’ sty (that is to say, he is a hedonist in the vulgar asception of the word, he indulges every whim of the flesh)(the followers of the hedonistic school called themselves that, notably Horatius. And while hedonism technically meant a pursuit of happiness in its just measure, through a life of simple pleasures, it soon became distorted to its popular contemporary meaning)

Borel is not the first and sadly won’t be the last to use fatness as a visual symbol of greed. This symbol is clearly compelling for him, as he will repeat it much later in his Croque-mort, where the dead in Paris are classed by weight, and therefore coffin size, signifying social status.

The physical portrait is grotesque and frightening. Some elements of the description are conventional, the fatness, the “ethnic” physical traits supposedly denoting a typically English physionomy, (and it is strange to read Borel linking physiccal traits to a personality, since he expresses an aversion to phrenology) he is red in the face because of his pale complexion, but also because he is sunburnt from sailing and travelling in Imperial ventures.

There is however in Cockermouth’s portrait an element which seems unconventional and unique to Borel’s imagination. His face looks like that of a doll. It is baby-like, soft and round, with huge cheeks. Not what I imagined at all. His face being hairless makes sense because we are in the 1700’s, being shaved was in. But the dummy/doll evoques a mismatched scale, a smallish head in a huge, powerful at the verge of decay, masculine body. It brings to the portrait an element of childishness, the infantile made grotesque, a doll head misplaced out of its familiar place (the unheimlische, the familiar suddenly revealed as terrifying because we are made to see it in an unfamiliar context) and the lack of expressiveness, and an artificiality.

We are given the causes Lord Cockermouth had to marry his anglo-irish wife. He, a purity obsessed, anti catholic, irishphobic English noble, married a rich Anglo-Irish pleb for her money alone, because he had squandered his fortune in his youth. And he was reaching old age when he married (this chapter is also about how awful lady Cockermouth’s life has been. We already intuited as much, but now we know. Although the narrator will later say it would be repugnant for him to make the story of her sufferings explicit, and here Borel takes the opposite route Sade would, refusing to display her suffering openly, making a spectacle out of it.)

Meadowbanks- Debby’s grandfather- married his daughter to Cockermouth out of vanity. He wanted her daughter’s riches to be made honourable by getting her a title. We are told he felt guilty immediately after, and made visits frequently, took Debby and her mother to his house when Cockermouth was away on imperial business. He taught Deborah Italian (yet another link with our heroine to Spain and Italy, the cultures French romantics idealized as more genuine and passionate and sincere) He was desperate to try and make things up for Debby, so he left her his fortune. We will see later on (Borel likes to dose information throughout the chapter, letting the reader make their own mind after assembling the full picture) He feels guilty after the marriage is consummated. We will learn in a short while how it was impossible for him not to have known what he was setting his daughter up for.

To no one's surprise we learn Cockermouth was hated in India, where he was in charge of ruling conquered domains. Always applying the harshest punishments and torments. He would never punish the innocent, Borel tells us (the concept of a lack of innocence in a colonially administered justice is curious) but he followed the law in the most literal way possible. And that brought him a twisted pleasure.

Cokermouth’s banner brought terror to the pirates: whom we learn he either had hanged them to the masts at sight, in a grotesque tableau worthy of a sea faring Callot, or recruited, which provided him with terrified men in a vulnerable position who would therefore become the most diligent, eager to please soldiers (and that is exactly the way Chris was drafted. He is an ex pirate now on the hunt of his former peers. We are told he was one of the most violent and efficient soldiers in pirate hunting. We can assume his extreme blood-lust is due to having to prove his loyalty, since we don’t know how firm his legal status would be, how easy it would be for Cockermouth to revoke it and have him hanged for piracy if he ever displeased him)(I cannot help but think of the incipient sûreté and its most illustrious commander, Vidocq, who was himself an ex criminal, using his expertise of the criminal world to hunt them down, and he himself in a fraught position legally speaking)

We also learn that Cockermouth’s activity at the high seas involved what could be called legal piracy: He had himself assigned letters of marque and reprisal -as a treat, the narrator tells us- which allowed him to seize any ships of a nation at war with England that was unfortunate enough to cross his path. (so really, the difference between him and Chris is merely nobility and academic military training)

We are told his main belief was that human race was rendered worthless because of its fecundity, so no cares were taken by him to prevent bloodshed. He is one of those warlords who flatter themselves into thinking they counteract overpopulation, how very contemporary.

The nods to melodrama and farce that envelop the character are made explicit in a line describing how his laugh sounds like an onomatopoeia of a prison lock being shut in a melodrama. (I love that line) Here is when we are told how Lord Cockermouth has a surprising enjoyment of allowing himself to be farcical and play the buffoon, complaining of how much silver coins his belly costed him. (even if he likes to have others laugh at him in certain circumstances, his humour is of course still based on money)

This grotesque side of the blood spluttered dummy faced buffoon was combined with unmeasured aristocratic pride. (so. I’m thinking Joe Pesci in Goodfellas. It’s a trap, the laughing and the joking surely can become deadly at the drop of a hat) He could also be quiet which might have make him pass for a philosopher to people who confused silence for intelligence (I am sure I’ve read that same idea in a Balzac novel, probably les employés. I am not at all sure which work came first, but I did read about instances of Borel and Balzac influencing each other’s work)

A second allusion to pigs is made in relation to his person: the people who take silent people for intellectuals, Borel remarks, would have rather listened to Saint Anthony’s companion-a pig-, rather than the saint himself. There are many explanations as to what the pig represents, but the most relevant here seems to be the one claiming it’s one of the many guises the devil took to try and tempt the saint. (I recommend looking up temptation of Saint Anthony paintings because there are many versions and many of them are masterpieces of surrealism from before -and after, both Rivera and Dalí worked on the subject-we had a name for that)

The final brush stroke of this horror is applied when we’re told Debby’s mother was only 16 when married off to Cockermouth who was already reaching old age at the time. So like I said before, there is no way Mr Meadowbanks could wash his hands off his responsibility in his daughter’s suffering. She was also raised in complete ignorance. She knew nothing of her rights, of her pleasure, of how to assert herself. “sweet, shy, and terrified, she had diligently bowed down to her husband’s sceptre, or rather, his mace” (I don’t need to spell out the sexual allusions)

The final blow is that even all that abuse she endured could not extinguish the love burning in her heart, which she poured into Deborah exclusively, the only thing that bounded her with life. Deborah is her whole reason for living, and yet her life has unfolded in a way in which she can only conclude the safest path for Debby is to replicate her mother’s fate: become an unconditionally submissive wife to a stranger chosen by her parents.

[rockislandadultreads]

More Independence Day Recommendations

Friends Divided by Gordon S. Wood

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds, or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slaveowner, while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government. They worked closely in the crucible of revolution, crafting the Declaration of Independence and leading, with Franklin, the diplomatic effort that brought France into the fight. But ultimately, their profound differences would lead to a fundamental crisis, in their friendship and in the nation writ large, as they became the figureheads of two entirely new forces, the first American political parties. It was a bitter breach, lasting through the presidential administrations of both men, and beyond.

But late in life, something remarkable happened: these two men were nudged into reconciliation. What started as a grudging trickle of correspondence became a great flood, and a friendship was rekindled, over the course of hundreds of letters. In their final years they were the last surviving founding fathers and cherished their role in this mighty young republic as it approached the half century mark in 1826. At last, on the afternoon of July 4th, 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration, Adams let out a sigh and said, At least Jefferson still lives. He died soon thereafter. In fact, a few hours earlier on that same day, far to the south in his home in Monticello, Jefferson died as well.

Arguably no relationship in this country's history carries as much freight as that of John Adams of Massachusetts and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Gordon Wood has more than done justice to these entwined lives and their meaning; he has written a magnificent new addition to America's collective story.

First Principles by Thomas E. Ricks

On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation's founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders' thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works--among them the Iliad, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero. For though much attention has been paid the influence of English political philosophers, like John Locke, closer to their own era, the founders were far more immersed in the literature of the ancient world.

The first four American presidents came to their classical knowledge differently. Washington absorbed it mainly from the elite culture of his day; Adams from the laws and rhetoric of Rome; Jefferson immersed himself in classical philosophy, especially Epicureanism; and Madison, both a groundbreaking researcher and a deft politician, spent years studying the ancient world like a political scientist. Each of their experiences, and distinctive learning, played an essential role in the formation of the United States. In examining how and what they studied, looking at them in the unusual light of the classical world, Ricks is able to draw arresting and fresh portraits of men we thought we knew.

Founding Mothers by Cokie Roberts 

While much has been written about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution, the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters they left behind have been little noticed by history. Roberts brings us the women who fought the Revolution as valiantly as the men, often defending their very doorsteps. While the men went off to war or to Congress, the women managed their businesses, raised their children, provided them with political advice, and made it possible for the men to do what they did. The behind-the-scenes influence of these women -- and their sometimes very public activities -- was intelligent and pervasive.

Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the often surprising stories of these fascinating women, bringing to life the everyday trials and extraordinary triumphs of individuals like Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Read Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Littlefield Green, Esther DeBerdt Reed, and Martha Washington -- proving that without our exemplary women, the new country might never have survived.

Rush by Stephen Fried

By the time he was thirty, Dr. Benjamin Rush had signed the Declaration of Independence, edited Common Sense, toured Europe as Benjamin Franklin’s protégé, and become John Adams’s confidant, and was soon to be appointed Washington’s surgeon general. And as with the greatest Revolutionary minds, Rush was only just beginning his role in 1776 in the American experiment. As the new republic coalesced, he became a visionary writer and reformer; a medical pioneer whose insights and reforms revolutionized the treatment of mental illness; an opponent of slavery and prejudice by race, religion, or gender; an adviser to, and often the physician of, America’s first leaders; and “the American Hippocrates.” Rush reveals his singular life and towering legacy, installing him in the pantheon of our wisest and boldest Founding Fathers.

[romegreeceart]

Epicurus

* Roman copy

* 1st century CE

* Palazzo Massimo

Rome, July 2015

[philosophyshirts-blog]

(via Epicurus Portrait) Are you an Epicurean, or just Epi-curious? One of a series of high-resolution philosopher portraits by designer Kislev. This design is available on shirts, mugs, stickers, posters & more!

[hadrian6]

Double Herm with Portrait Heads of Epicurus and Metrodorus. marble. Capitoline Museum. Rome.       http://hadrian6.tumblr.com

[barcarole]

I saw pictures of philosophical texts & i was wondering for someone who's interested in reading philosophy where should i start?

Philosophy is an ample spectrum of diverse subjects, perspectives, and unanswered questions. I’m by no means an expert, but below are several works that can serve as an introduction. I have also included second-hand reference/guide books, as well as databases, courses, and podcasts that can help for general orientation. Feel free to explore as you wish (don’t feel too compelled to follow linearity — rather your own instinct and interest). Keep in mind that philosophy is not just about studying ideas and notions, but also about your judgment and reaction towards these according to your own experience or speculation. It’s also about questioning your own beliefs in different areas and discovering your own standpoint. It’s preferable to have a historical notion of influence, context, and consequence, but it should be a stimulating endeavor for you. Discovery shouldn’t feel like a chore but a challenge. You will eventually find yourself drawn to particular conceptions and thinkers that will create more questions and compel you to explore certain areas more than others. [Other kinds of literature are complementary to philosophy, so I have also included texts that might aid and encourage further inquiry].

Philosophical Works

The Upanishads

Tao Te Ching, Laozi

Meno | Theaetetus | Phaedo, Plato

Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle

Letter to Menoeceus | Principal Doctrines, Epicurus

Enchiridion, Epictetus

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

Letters from a Stoic, Seneca

Of Idleness | That It Is Folly… | Of Experience, Michel de Montaigne

Discourse of the Method | Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume

On the Improvement of Understanding, Baruch Spinoza

Political Writings, Voltaire

Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals | Prolegomena, Immanuel Kant

Aesthetic and Philosophical Essays, Friedrich Schiller

A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollenstonecraft

Essays and Aphorisms, Arthur Schopenhauer

Fear and Trembling | The Sickness Unto Death, Soren Kierkegaard

The Gay Science | On the Genealogy of Morality | The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche

All Things Are Possible, Lev Shestov

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin

In Praise of Shadows, Junichiro Tanizaki

The Myth of Sysiphus | The Rebel, Albert Camus

The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir

The Human Condition | Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt

The World of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Discourse on Colonialism, Aimé Cesaire

Mythologies, Roland Barthes

On Beauty, Umberto Eco

Philosophical Literature

[Aeschylus (The Oresteia), Euripides (The Bacchae), Horace (Satires), Attar of Nishapur (The Conference of the Birds), Rumi (Masnavi), Petrarch (Secretum), Lawrence Sterne (The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman), Voltaire (Candide | Micromégas), Denis Diderot (Rameau’s Nephew), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment | Notes from Underground), Ivan Turgenev (Fathers and Sons), Chekhov (Ward No. 6 | The Black Monk), J. W. von Goethe (Elective Affinities), Edgar Allan Poe (The Imp of the Perverse), Honoré de Balzac (The Magic Skin), Oscar Wilde (The Portrait of Dorian Gray), Franza Kafka (In the Penal Colony | Before the Law | A Country Doctor), Thomas Mann (Death in Venice | Disillusionment), Stefan Zweig (The Royal Game), Albert Camus (The Stranger | The Fall | The Plague), Dino Buzatti (The Tartar Steppe), Natsume Soseki (Kusamakura), Christa Wolf (No Place on Earth), Maurice Blanchot (The Madness of Day), Jorge Luis Borges (The Library of Babel), Samuel Beckett (Molloy), Ernesto Sábato (On Heroes and Tombs), James Baldwin (Just Above My Head), Roland Barthes (A Lover’s Discourse), Thomas Bernhard (Wittgenstein’s Nephew), Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider: Lectures and Speeches) Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon)]

Reference Books

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy

History of Philosophy, William Turner

A History of Women Philosophers, Vol I | Vol. II | Vol. III | Vol. IV

The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius

History of Western and Eastern Philosophy, Radha Krishan

Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy, Brian Carr & Indira Mahalingam

Classic Asian Philosophy: A Guide to the Essential Texts, Joel Kupperman

History of Islamic Philosophy, Henry Corbin

A Short History of African Philosophy, Barry Hallen

Sadhana, Rabindranath Tagore

Databases

The Internet Classics Archive

Monoskop

Early Modern Texts

Forgotten Books

E-Books Directory

Gutenberg

UC Press

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Philosophy Pages

Marxists.org

Online Library of Liberty

Lucian of Samosata

Ontology/History of Logic

Medieval Philosophy

Ethiopian Philosophy

Free Online Courses/Podcasts

King’s College London, LMU

Coursera

University of Oxford

MIT

OpenCulture

The University of Edinburgh

Open Yale Courses

[archaeologs]

Copy of a 3rd-century BC portrait of the philosopher Epicurus. Height 40.5 cm. Learn more / Daha fazlası Epicurus: http://www.archaeologs.com/w/epicurus/

[emmanuelmavros]

PHOTO OF THE DAY: “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” ― Epicurus #7arts #portrait #portraits #portraits_ig #pixel_ig #portraiture #expofilm3k #portraits_universe #portrait_perfection #portraitstyles_gf #makeportraits #snowisblack #featurepalette #captionplus #portraitmood #quietthechaos #life_portraits #profile_vision #igPodium_portraits #rsa_portraits #top_portraits #2instagood #artofvisuals #postthepeople #justgoshoot #l0tsabraids https://www.instagram.com/p/B_eh-OogI_f/?igshid=8zb2puxqi32h

[jamesgraybooksellerworld]

Pierre GASSENDI  (1592-1655).

Opera omnia: in sex tomos divisa, edited by Henri-Louis Habert de Montmor [ca. 1600-1670].

Lyon: Laurent Anisson and Jean Baptiste Devenet, 1658.     $20,000

6 volumes bound in 3 heavy folio volumes, 36 cm. Volume One: Books 1 and 2. [lvi] 752 [14] pp.; [viii] 860 [10] pp. Volume Two: Books 3 and 4. [xliv] 662 [2] pp.; [viii] 536 pp.; Volume Three: Books 5 and 6. [xiii] 740 [34] pp; [xii]  545 [3] pp. Engraved portrait; woodcut diagrams and tables.  Titles in red and black, engraved portrait by Robert Nanteuil in Volume 1, numerous woodcut diagrams and tables, especially in Book 4.  Text printed chiefly in double columns.

This  set is bound in contemporary vellum with gilt arms of Johann Jodocus Schmidmair von Schwartzenbruck; library numbers inked out on spines, embossed stamp and ink deaccession stamps on titles. Vol. 5, leaf Dd4 margin torn and repaired, generally sound otherwise; bright pages firmly bound with wide, clean margins.

  First collected edition of Gassendi’s works, including many texts first published here.  Chief among these is his important Epicurean treatise on logic, physics, and ethics, the Syntagma philosophicum, which occupies the first two of these six volumes. It includes the correspondence with Brahe, Campanella, Queen Christina of Sweden, Descartes, Galileo, Grotius, Hevelius, Kepler, Kircher, Peiresc, Schickard, and other celebrated scientists of the day.  Volumes 3 and 4 collect his scientific writings, most notably his important astronomical works.  Volumes 5 and 6 present additional material relevant to the study of astronomy, including his lives of Brahe, Copernicus, Regiomontanus and other notables, and his correspondence with Brahe, Campanella, Queen Christina of Sweden, Descartes, Galileo, Grotius, Hevelius, Kepler, Kircher, Peiresc, Schickard, and other celebrated scientists of the day.

    Born in Provence, Gassendi was one the leading lights of the scientific revolution. As Richard Popkin notes in his history of skepticism, Gassendi had “an extremely important intellectual career, whose development, perhaps more than that of René Descartes, indicates and illustrates … ‘the making of the modern mind.’” Introducing an atomism drawn from Epicurus into the mainstream of European thought, Gassendi offered an empiricist alternative to Aristotelianism and Cartesanism, and was the first to articulate the mind-body problem. Molière and Cyrano  

de Bergerac numbered among his students; Newton, Boyle and Barrow were among those who expressed their debt to Gassendi. His argument with Descartes over ontology and epistemology represented one of the great intellectual feuds of the day, a battle between giants. Edward Gibbon praised Gassendi’s work by styling him “le meilleur philosophe des littérateurs, et le meilleur littérateur des philosophes.”

  It is as an observational astronomer that Gassendi is best celebrated today.  The large lunar crater Gassendi is named in his honor.  He was the first person to describe the transit of a planet across the Sun. Kepler had predicted the event, but it was Gassendi who first observed it in 1631, with a telescopic apparatus borrowed from Galileo that projected images on a sheet of paper.

Besides his work on the transit of Mercury, volume Four of the Opera Omnia collects Gassendi’s general treatises on astronomy as well as his analyses of Copernicus and Brahe, and his careful observations of a wide range of phenomena, including eclipses, comets, lunar coronas, planetary distances and orbits, parhelia, and other celestial topics.  The volumes also present Gassendi’s contributions to other realms of science, including his reports on measuring the speed of sound, the rotation of the earth, the creation of vacuum, and the principle of inertia. Recent scholarship has focused on Gassendi’s correspondence, collected in volume Six, as an important source for understanding intellectual networks during the scientific revolution.

This is a handsome example of a rare and important work, represented in only a handful of institutional collections (the vast majority of listings in OCLC are microforms or facsimile reprints). The gilt arms embossed on the cover are those of Johann Jodocus Schmidmair von Schwartzenbruck (1611-1647), but given his dates we think it more likely that the book was acquired by his wife, Anna-Maria or possibly his son, Johann Friedrich Schmidmair von Schwartzenbruck (1624–1669).

Turner & Gomez, Pierre Gassendi, 116; Carli & Favaro, Bibliographia Galileiana, 260; Houzeau & Lancaster, Bibliographie générale de l’astronomie 3404; Brunet Manuel du libraire, II : 1499; Krivatsky Catalogue of 17th Century Books, 4572

An Impressive Set of the Works of Gassendi Pierre GASSENDI  (1592-1655). Opera omnia: in sex tomos divisa, edited by Henri-Louis Habert de Montmor .

[mcmansionhell]

McMansion Hell Does Architectural Theory (Part 4): Empiricism & the Picturesque (Part 1)

Hello Friends! Today we continue our very fun foray into the 18th Century with some dudes who were like what if, like, we don’t have any innate ideas at birth? Dude, what if -- hear me out -- our ideas are but a product of our sensations and our later reflections on said sensations? 

(I promise there won’t be anymore gifs in this article)

These ideas about the philosophy of our minds are the core basis for what was known as empiricism, a philosophy originating with everybody’s favorite life liberty and property (honestly, mostly property) dudebro from Civics class, John Locke.

My mother must be so proud of me for making this. 

Locke’s 1700 essay An Essay Concerning Human Understanding laid out the foundations of his philosophy and set the context for which beauty is understood within said philosophy. 

Locke’s Empiricism

Locke’s ideas were founded on the concept that humans are not born with innate thoughts - that they were in fact a “blank slate” (tabula rasa) at birth, upon which thoughts become inscribed via a process of sensation: the external information which we receive from our senses - hearing, sight, taste, etc. These sensations are followed by the operations of our minds in reaction to external stimuli including such acts as: “perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing...”  

Of course we don’t go through the world blinded by our senses. Locke finishes his idea with the concept of Reflection, which is exactly what it sounds like - the mind’s reflecting on its own thoughts and experiences. 

Another core idea of Locke’s was the idea of associationism - an observation that thoughts that are not alike at all somehow become inextricably linked in the minds of human beings. When linked, Locke argues, these ideas can seem impossible to separate. 

We’ve all surely experienced such a thing. For example, some of us can’t listen to My Bloody Valentine ever again without thinking about a bad relationship, or eat Papa Johns pizza without thinking about that weird guy in college who framed a picture of Papa John (carved from an old pizza box) in a fit of boozy glee. 

Of course this philosophy has huge implications for aesthetics.

The Picturesque

Until this time, aesthetics (and by corollary architectural theory) was pretty much entirely based on the Platonic idea of innate absolute beauty based on mathematical proportions, with a few notable exceptions (e.g. our friend, Perrault)

However, Locke’s ideas presented a problem to this idea: how can there be an absolute beauty innately known to all if we are born a blank slate without innate thoughts? 

Importantly, Locke’s ideas of sensation and reflection offered an explanation for a phenomenon Platonic aesthetics could not or did not explain satisfactorily: why human beings find untamed nature, which certainly does not follow a rigid proportional framework, so breathtaking and inspiring. 

This idea was first formally explored through the field of landscape architecture, which, even before Locke’s writings, was expressing exasperation with the Platonically inspired, highly manicured gardening style the British had adopted from the French tradition. 

The whole purpose and ideology of these French gardens was to make order out of nature, to tame it and subject it to a mathematical, proportional scrutiny. 

Orangerie at the Palace of Versailles Photo by Urban (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

At the end of the 17th century, several British diplomats and writers visited China, several of whom wrote in depth about the gardening style found there and how shockingly different it was from the traditions back home. 

The most notable of these gardening diaries was “Upon the Gardens of Epicurus; or, of Gardening in the Year 1685″ by William Temple, a diplomat to Charles I and an amateur gardener. In his essay, Temple marveled at Chinese gardens and their use of “contriving figures, where the beauty shall be great, and strike the eye, but without any order or disposition of parts that shall be commonly or easily observed...” 

It was upon these ideas of beauty being “great and strike the eye...without any order” that the English Landscape Garden was born, and through it, gardening became divorced from the rigorous proportional rules of architecture, and could exist instead as an idealized portrait of nature.

Garden at Rousham House (1737) by the great English landscape designer, William Kent. Photo by Grahamec (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

This idealized view, later rooted in the ideas of Locke’s ideas of sensation, was called the picturesque - wherein beauty (at least in nature) is judged by “the picture one sees” and the mental/emotional reaction to it.

Even our staunchly Palladio-obsessed friend, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, pounced on this ideology. In his famous 1709 dialog “The Moralists”, Shaftesbury waxes poetic about how much better nature is than any dumb ugly people garden: 

“I shall no longer resist the passion growing in me for things of a natural kind, where neither art nor the conceit or caprice of man has spoiled their genuine order by breaking in upon that primitive state. Even the rude rocks, the mossy caverns, the irregular unwrought grottos and broken falls of waters, with all the horrid graces of the wilderness itself, as representing Nature more, will be the more engaging, and appear with a magnificence beyond the formal mockery of princely gardens.”

Shaftesbury, being a notorious tastemaker, set the stage for a discussion amongst writers and artists that would span most of the 18th century.

Philosophical Debates 

While the ideas of sensation and reflection were easy to grasp within a landscape design framework, they proved to be much more slippery from an aesthetic theory standpoint. 

It was the writer (and close acquaintance of Shaftesbury) Joseph Addison who, in a series of essays from a short-lived journal called The Spectator, would link Lockean empiricism to aesthetics. Addison would also go on to write a play, (Cato, a Tragedy) that would p much end up being the literary inspiration for the American Revolution. 

Back to his 1712 essays on art, Addison describes beauty as a sensation: “The very first Discovery of [beauty] strikes the Mind with an inward Joy, and spreads a Chearfulness and Delight through all its Faculties.”

Addison drifts into uncharted territory when he proposes that “There is not perhaps any real Beauty or Deformity more in one Piece of Matter than another”, citing the common phenomenon of hating something and then coming to like it as time goes on. However Addison cannot deny that there are some things “which the Mind, without any previous Consideration, pronounces at first sight Beautiful or Deformed.” 

This is the heart of the philosophical debate behind empiricist aesthetics: if we are not born with innate thoughts, why, then, do so many human beings find beauty in the same things, especially when experiencing these things for the first time? 

It is the answers to this question that we will explore in next Monday’s installment: Empiricism & The Picturesque Part 2. If you like Burke, Hume, and some really dank fights about how our brains work, you’re def in for a treat. 

To keep you occupied until then, be sure to be on the lookout for Thursday’s Maryland McMansion, which is guaranteed to be devastatingly dank. 

Have a great Memorial Day!

If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon! Not into small donations and sick bonus content? Check out the McMansion Hell Store - 100% goes to charity.

Copyright Disclaimer: All photos without captioned credit are from the Public Domain. Manipulated photos are considered derivative work and are Copyright © 2017 McMansion Hell. Please email kate@mcmansionhell.com before using these images on another site. (am v chill about this)

[societyofepicurus]

Epicureanism: Busts

The wise man will set up votive images. – Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, chapter on Epicurus

In the book Epicurus and His Philosophy, Norman DeWitt mentions that Epicurus’ image was celebrated on rings, in portraits displayed in living rooms, and was even venerated in marble sculpture.

According to the book The Sculpted Word, Epicureans were a missionary philosophy that did not…

[angrycollectordaze-me-blog]

Assignment代写：Renaissance Italian hedonism

下面为大家整理一篇���秀的assignment代写范���- Renaissance Italian hedonism，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了文艺复兴时期意大利的享乐之风。在中世纪早期的欧洲，禁欲主义压倒一切，世俗享乐被压制在一定范围。后来在宗教改革运动和人文主义思想的不断冲击下，意大利开始进入一个承前启后的繁荣期。思想的转变、经济的发展使得民众的生活水平和生活态度与以往相比有了很大的转变，而享受生活、追求快乐的风气在社会的每个角落蔓延，人们将自己视为单独的个体，把享乐、欲望看成是人的本性和自然加以推崇。

In early medieval Europe, asceticism prevailed, and worldly pleasures were suppressed to a certain extent. Under the constant impact of the religious reform movement and humanism, the Italian society has entered a period of prosperity. The change of thinking and the development of economy have greatly changed people's living standard and attitude compared with the past. The atmosphere of enjoying life and pursuing happiness has spread in every corner of the society.

"Hedonism" mainly refers to the concept of life that people show in social life with excessive pursuit of physical and mental enjoyment, satisfying secular desires and giving full play to people's natural attributes as the value goal. Early medieval Christian belief and asceticism, as a way of life, were greatly impacted by humanism. People began to think of themselves as individuals and to praise pleasure and desire as human nature and nature. Italians ushered in an era of luxury and sensual desire.

Hedonism, as a value concept, existed in ancient Greece. In ancient Greece, the development of human civilization gave birth to the idea of enjoying life and a happy life. The enjoyment and worship of the happy life of the ancient greeks led to the emergence of hedonism. The ancient Greek theory of happiness was that only spiritual happiness was permanent, stable and profound. Epicurus, the earliest hedonist thinker, once said that happiness is the beginning and end of a happy life. All choices should be based on happiness. He thinks that the purpose of life is to pursue happiness. The hedonism advocated by Epicurus emphasizes the happiness of the body or the senses, which is the origin and basis of all happiness. Even wisdom and culture must satisfy this joy. Hedonists are active in the pursuit of happiness and do everything possible to harvest the fruits of it.

The medieval asceticism was opposite to the ancient Greek hedonism. The religious doctrine of original sin classified human desire and emotion as the representation of original sin, and advocated absolute rationality, rejecting desire and emotion. Ascetic people believe that only by abandoning physical enjoyment and worldly happiness, believing in god, can they be saved by the soul. This ascetic view of life requires people to abandon all worldly pleasures, especially sensual ones. With the economic recovery and the spread of humanism, this ascetic outlook on life has been gradually replaced and broken. Humanism advocates the secular culture with people and nature as objects, advocates the humanitarian spirit, the people-centered secular movement without god as the center, and breaks the asceticism completely. Known as one of the "three heroes of literature," Dante was the first Renaissance man to affirm that "man is a free man." In the theory of free will, vallaye argues that everyone has his own freedom of thought. Only independent human freedom can create miracles on earth and bring benefits to people. However, those ascetic and mysterious illusions can only lead to the death of human beings.

In the early medieval period, even in the feudal society, the material wealth of society was not enough, and the material conditions for the prevailing wind of pleasure were not enough. The humanist movement brought drastic changes to European society, and the urban lifestyle was pushed to the forefront. In terms of the overall structure of society, after the 13th century, cities dominated by industry and commerce came into being or came back to life one after another, which eroded the agricultural natural economy of the great unification of the past. The aristocracy dominated by inherited manor farming also began to operate the commodity economy, and people began to have urban life similar to that of Greece and Rome. Such an unprecedented new class of citizens has stepped onto the historical stage with a new look, and the modern city has emerged in various major cities of Italy. The rapid development of economy and the increase of wealth provide material security for people's enjoyment.

Periodic plague outbreaks in the 14th and 15th centuries increased the cult of hedonism. The black death caused a great touch to people. The love of Christ and the occurrence of plague caused the survivors to reorient their way of life and re-examine the value of life. In the death fear, they aroused people's appreciation of the right to life in a variety of ways. Five generations of experience brought by the black death fear and anxiety, the florentines decided to strive for in the real pleasure in time, whether it's polite aristocratic or civilians surrounded by one of the most fanatical carnalism, luxury, drinking, voluptuousness, like in the carnival and thank the meat section festival but also pushed the hedonism to acme.

The accumulation of wealth has made people's life very different from the frugality and abstinence in the middle ages. Luxury and enjoyment have become new life goals. In such a social environment, many people are more deeply and directly pursuing happiness and enjoying secular life than ever before. The Italian people's clothes, food and housing have all changed dramatically with the aim of enjoying life and pursuing happiness.

Asceticism is under attack, and the belief in openness and freedom is being strengthened. Enjoying life and satisfying one's own needs are the things that everyone has to think about. Clothing, which can reflect the personal aesthetic and wealth status of the carrier, in the transition period by people to play the most incisive. As boccaccio said, showing off, dressing up and realizing every desire of an individual seems to be the most correct goal in life. Aldanzio has described the following details of Italian dressing: "the milanese are always dressed beautifully", "the neapolitans are extremely luxurious in their clothes", and "ferrara and mantua pay great attention to the golden cap". In the 15th and 16th centuries, the great wealth brought by Florence's developed economy led its nobles to increasingly advocate luxurious and exquisite lifestyle. Young men spend their time and money gambling and women doing nothing all day. They are no less fastidious about clothes than women's make-up, with close-fitting long-sleeved clothes, colorful stockings, flat-topped hats of strange shapes and colors, velvet leotards, and silky hemlines and necklines, and accessories such as gloves and shoes often laced with lace. Lorenzo's brother, giuliano, spent 8,000 ducats on his clothes at a tournament. Women's clothing is extremely luxurious. They are made of velvet or silks and furs, often decorated with expensive herbs and jewelry, with delicate pleats, lace skirts and collars. Many rich people also like to decorate the collar of their clothes with different shapes such as leaf shape and star shape and ornaments of different materials such as gold plating, silver plating and porcelain glaze. We can see such luxury accessories in many portraits at that time. As a model for the murals in the monastery of Santa maria novella, she wore a gorgeous pink silk coat inlaid with Venus and a white silk smock embroidered with pomegranates and flowers. The generosity and generosity of Italians in the aspect of clothing consumption fully reflects the affirmation and pursuit of self-consciousness and self-value of people after the break of the shackles of traditional Christian thought, and their preference for luxurious clothes satisfies their desire for secular enjoyment.

Since the 13th century, the diet structure of the Italian people has changed significantly, the food variety has changed from single to rich, the quality has changed from coarse to fine, the cooking technology is more exquisite, the tableware is more exquisite and practical, the dining method is more elegant, the banquet guests pay more attention to the rehearsal. Before the humanist movement, the food in Italy was relatively simple, but after that, people's diet gradually developed to exquisite, extravagant and wasteful, and the diet of residents added many spices and sugar from Arabia, almonds, pistachios, rice, dates and other ingredients. By this time, Italians had begun to understand how to drink mineral water to make their diet more meaty and greasy, and began to drink wine to quench thirst caused by the spices in delicious food. Once considered a luxury food, sugar became a popular food in the 15th century. "No banquet has ever used sugar in any way in large quantities," says pencheroos. Rhubarb, dried fruit, pines and other spices, as well as sugar, make the world a happy place. People drink sugar water instead of pure water, salt is not used as frequently as sugar, and meat, fish and eggs are added with sugar. In other countries and regions of Western Europe at the same time, sugar was still a luxury that only a few aristocrats or wealthy merchants had access to. The trend of people's enjoyment and luxury in food consumption is more prominent in Venice, Florence and other large cities with rapid development. The nobles of Venice had a high demand for food and drink. Due to their geographical advantage, they could easily enjoy the luxuries and spices of the east. When the noble families held the banquet, they only accepted the most exquisite delicacies. In 1460 Venice also banned the consumption of more than half the dugats per person. The variety and luxury of people's food reflect the improvement of people's living standards and the profound influence of social enjoyment on Italian thoughts and lifestyle.

51due留学教育原创版权郑重声明：原创assignment代写范文源自编辑创作，未经官方许可，网站谢绝转载。对于侵权行为，未经同意的情况下，51Due有权追究法律责任。主要业务有assignment代写、essay代写、paper代写服务。

51due为留学生提供最好的assignment代写服务，亲们可以进入主页了解和获取更多assignment代写范文 提供美国作业代写服务，详情可以咨询我们的客服QQ：800020041。

[hadrian6]

Double Herm with Portrait Heads of Epicurus and Metrodorus. 341-270 BCE. Roman. marble. Louvre.    http://hadrian6.tumblr.com