Professor Cripps
2-1-Q
Chapter 8
Student: Anthony Lacaprucia
2 – Offer 2 Specific Details from the chapter. For each, ID/quote and add 3-8 sentences of your own explanation
- “One simple name for the plague that Lucretius brought—a charge frequently leveled against him, when his poem began once again to be read—is atheism. But Lucretius was not in fact an atheist. He believed that the gods existed. But he also believed that, by virtue of being gods, they could not possibly be concerned with human beings or with anything that we do” (Greenblatt Page 1 of Chapter). I just found this quote to be very interesting. I struggled to really understand what was being said. Was his poem viewed as being atheist despite him not being atheist or was that his intention. I also just found it interesting how he believed gods could not possibly be concerned with humans.
- “ Lucretius insisted that such hopes and anxieties are precisely a toxic form of superstition, combining in equal measure absurd arrogance and absurd fear. Imagining that the gods actually care about the fate of humans or about their ritual practices is, he observed, a particularly vulgar insult— as if divine beings depended for their happiness on our mumbled words or good behavior” (Greenblatt 2nd Page of Chapter). Like the first quote I also found this to be a very interesting idea. Had I found this quote first I probably wouldn’t have bothered with the first one. I just think its really fascinating to consider that thinking gods cared about humans would be an insult.
1 – Make 1 Connection to Self, to World, or to Text – or Extend by offering a little detail about something mentioned in the text (some light research needed to Extend)
- “Neither creation nor destruction ever has the upper hand; the sum total of matter remains the same, and the balance between the living and the dead is always restored” (Greenblatt third page of chapter). This Lucretian idea is just like the law of conservation of mass. This means matter is not created or destroyed and this idea dates back to 1798. Antoine Lavoisier discovered that mass is neither created nor destroyed in chemical reactions. This means that the mass of any one element at the beginning of a reaction will equal the mass of that element at the end of the reaction.
Q – Give us a Good Question to chew on – 1-3 sentences
- Lucretius thinks “ Cause would follow cause from eternity, as the fates decreed. Instead, we wrest free will from the fates” (Greenblatt fourth page of chapter). Do we truly have free will or could every decision we make be fate?
