Lucretius I: An Ontology of Motion - Paperback

by Thomas Nail (Author)

Thomas Nail argues convincingly and systematically that Lucretius was not an atomist, but a thinker of kinetic flux. In doing so, he completely overthrows the interpretive foundations of modern scientific materialism, whose philosophical origins lie in the atomic reading of Lucretius' immensely influential book De Rerum Natura.This means that Lucretius was not the revolutionary harbinger of modern science as Greenblatt and others have argued; he was its greatest victim. Nail re-reads De Rerum Natura to offer us a new Lucretius - a Lucretius for today.

Front Jacket

'Thomas Nail's inspired reading of Lucretius leaves us moderns with the kind of excitement the Romans must have felt as they first scrolled through that founding text of materialism. Nail makes ancient ideas erupt in a contemporary context, demonstrating their necessity to cutting-edge science and philosophy. Antiquity has never felt so alive.' Ryan Johnson, Elon University 'Following in the footsteps of Deleuze and Series, Thomas Nail has rescued Lucretius as a philosopher of flux. In a reading at once daring and patient, the De Rerum Natura emerges as a text still capable of surprising us. Nail shows us that Lucretius truly is our contemporary.' Brooke Holmes, Princeton University The most original and shocking interpretation of Lucretius in the last thirty years After centuries of abuse by modern atomists and mechanistic materialists, Thomas Nail argues that it is now time to return to De Rerum Natura from the perspective of a new materialism. Nail shows that some of the most important contributions of Lucretius' poem have been completely overlooked or misunderstood. He reinterprets this classical text as an absolutely contemporary one defined by motion and gives us a genuinely new Lucretius - a Lucretius for today. Thomas Nail is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver. Cover image: The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, 148385 Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN (cover): 978-1-4744-3467-6 ISBN (PPC): 978-1-4744-3466-9 Barcode

Author Biography

Thomas Nail is Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver. He is the award-winning author of eight prestigious University Press books which cover a wide range of topics including migration, borders, technology, digital media, history, science, economics, contemporary politics and climate change. His current research focuses on the influence of mobility on society and the arts in the 21st century. His work has been translated into ten major languages and cited across more than 20 academic disciplines. His published books are Marx in Motion: A New Materialist Marxism (Oxford University Press, 2020), Lucretius II: An Ethics of Motion (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Theory of the Image (Oxford University Press, 2019), Being and Motion (Oxford University Press, 2018), Lucretius I: An Ontology of Motion (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), Theory of the Border (Oxford University Press, 2016), The Figure of the Migrant (Stanford University Press, 2015) and Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari, and Zapatismo (Edinburgh University Press, 2012). He also writes for Aeon: Ideas and Culture, The Huffington Post, Quartz, Pacific Standard: The Science of Society, History News Network and Monthly Review.