Lucretius On The Nature Of Things

Lucretius in “The Nature of Things” explains that there are only two entities that make up bodies in the universe: matter and void. Matter is ever-present and does not decay while the void is a nothingness that allows for motion and change. Marcus Aurelius in “Meditations” explains that matter and the soul are the components of the universe, with the soul in some sense filling the void. Lucretius’ “void” has a correlation to Aurelius’ “soul.” Both philosophers explain how the concept of the void is responsible and related to death, because it allows for disturbances to the balance within the being. Lucretius believes that the void is the cause of death, yet questions whether the soul travels with it. Aurelius questions how the soul can remain after death. Death is an abstract concept that Lucretius and Aurelius attempt to answer through matter and voids. Lucretius calls the void a nothingness, which is always empty, and matter a solid that is free of any void. Aurelius has an essence of somethingness to his void, the soul, and calls matter a static body. By adding the soul as a third component to reality, the Stoic Marcus Aurelius rejects the binary universe of Lucretius.

Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson has a lot to teach about how to respect the earth because it is a mighty force but Nature also teaches what it means to be connected with nature and the feelings that are associated with connection. During my close read of Nature I faced challenges, successes, and a greater appreciation for the writing from a world that is drastically different from the one I live in. One of my biggest struggles while annotating the piece was looking at the big picture and what the paragraph as a whole was telling me. While I am annotating I tend to focus more on the smaller pieces such as the meaning of words and decoding what a sentence is saying. It’s hard to pull back from that and connect the bigger pieces to find what the

For Descartes, this means that a substance is really distinct from anything else other than God whom Descartes credits as the creator of such an object. The ramification of such a principle leads Descartes to believe that the mind and body could exist completely separately of one another, allowing that God chose to create them in this particular way. Despite this, the possibility that the two could exist separately does not mean they actually do. This is an issue of its own entirely.

Descartes is considering that all of his experiences could be false and that everything is just the invention of a powerful being. This resulted in this argument:

In "On the Nature of Things," Lucretius argues that not a single thing can be created from nothing. Generally, Lucretius explains that the gods are not responsible for creation and that everything originally came from a fixed seed. In this paper, I will argue that Lucretius' argument becomes ineffective because no living organism came from a designated substance, but through the process of evolution.

In Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes does and experiment with wax to try to prove that things actually exist in this world. This essay is going to prove how we can tell that things actually exist and what can perceive the wax.

In this essay it will be argued that the soul is mortal and does not survive the death of the body. As support, the following arguments from Lucretius will be examined: the “proof from the atomic structure of the soul,” the “proof from parallelism of mind and body,” the “proof from the sympatheia of mind and body,” and the “proof from the structural connection between mind and body.” The following arguments from Plato will be used as counterarguments against Lucretius: the “cyclical argument,” the “affinity argument,” the “argument from the form of life,” and the “recollection argument.” It will be shown that Plato’s premises lack validity and that Lucretius’

In On the Nature of Things, Lucretius argues that not only is the whole of the human body (both tangible parts, like organs, and intangible concepts, like the soul) created from distinct types of atoms, but that this is the basis upon which an afterlife may be disproved.

2nd century emperor Meditations, a response within an ever-growing philosophical dialogue between the philosophers of the past and present. As the ruler of the known world, Marcus's worldview is surprisingly modest, positing that the human experience, regardless of length, is a thing of equality as every man possesses only the present moment in which he lives. Within this work, the emperor addresses the men of the Roman world (therefore, those who could read in Greek and had an interest in philosophy or learnedness) in an educated fashion and exhorts them to lead a balanced and good life without fear of death, “Bear in mind always that as a Roman and a man you should perform your duties well and with dignity and

Descartes’ Meditations take us through what can be called into doubt and what he concludes is absolutely certain. Descartes argues that the mind and body are two distinct things, but he acknowledges that they are somehow connected. Although, Scholars have noted Descartes’ argument of the separation of mind and body, they have missed the importance of how he justifies the connection between the two, because God willed it so.

Lucretius begins his argument by noting that the mind, far from being separate from the affairs of the body, has been observed to be directly affected by physical forces. He states that “the nature

The Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes is a thorough analysis about doubt. Descartes describes his method of doubt to determine whether he can truly know something. One of his major arguments is the proof of the existence of God. In this paper, I will attempt to unravel the flaws in Descartes proof that God exists.

The 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes believed that God exists. His proof of an all perfect being’s existence was explained by having an idea of God that had to have been caused by God. But simply having an idea of God is not enough for there to necessarily exist such a being. This paper will critically examine Descartes’s causal argument though its premises and conclusion.

In his work Meditations on First Philosophy, published in 1641, René Descartes sets out to establish a set of indubitable truths for the sciences. He begins by discarding all of his beliefs, then works to rebuild his beliefs based on careful thought. Descartes clearly states this goal, saying in the First Meditation, “I will work my way up… I will accomplish this by putting aside everything that admits of the least doubt” (I, 17). He is able to establish his own existence, but struggles to move beyond his internal thoughts to discuss external objects. Descartes decides that the Christian God is the bridge he needs to escape the confines of his own mind, and argues for the existence of God in the Third Meditation in order to move on to discussing the physical world. In this paper I will argue that Descartes’ rationalistic project would have been improved without an appeal to the Christian God, although I will also argue that Descartes thinks this appeal is necessary.

While similarities exist in all three examples such as someone else controlling our reality, enlightening those who are naïve about true reality and reactions to enlightenment that exist between the movie The Matrix, the excerpt from Allegory of the Cave by Plato and Meditation I of the Things of Which We May Doubt by Rene Descartes, there is a subtle difference in regards to being informed by others or seeking answers constantly yourself about what is real.