Reddit reviews The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

These scrolls are a really big deal. IIRC, only the outer layer was carbonized, which meant that some of the writing is preserved in the interior layers. Some fragments from finds like this were what brought the ancient work "De Rerum Natura" (On the Nature of Things) to the attention of early scholars.

According to Greenblatt in The Swerve, the rediscovery of this work is what kicked off much of the secular/scientific turn in European history.

I read the Swerve a while back and I'm currently reading a translation of De Rerum Natura when I'm on the shitter, and it's utterly fascinating. It's an epic poem that basically lays out the vision of a secular/scientific view of the universe. It's one of those works (like the dome of the Pantheon, etc.) which makes clear how much was lost in the fall of the Roman Empire.

Ah, De Rerum Natura! I have fond memories of reading that book back in college. One of our classics professors did a translation of the work.

There's actually a book by Stephen Greenblatt written about "On the Nature of the Universe" and its rediscovery during the Renaissance.

Edit: Found it! And it actually won a Pulitzer Prize! http://www.amazon.com/The-Swerve-World-Became-Modern/dp/0393343405

Greek.

Epicureanism is the first modern way of thinking about the world. It's worth a lot of further study. He had an enormous influence on the development of the modern world.

If you want to read more, The Swerve by Greenblatt is a good if somewhat hyperbolic introduction.

Last year I read Stephen Greenblatt's [The Swerve: How the World Became Modern] ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393343405). It concerns itself with the effect that the book "On The Nature of Things" by the Roman philosopher Lucretius has on renaissance thinkers. He argues that many pre-modern, secular, and scientific ideas are reflected in Lucretius' thinking and that the dissemination of the book was a key event in flowering of the Italian Renaissance. I think it'll answer a lot of your questions/ serve as an entry point.

I would recommend Franco Moretti and Stephen Greenblatt. They're both controversial authors, but even people who disagree with their arguments tend to agree that they're enjoyable to read. They're also more accessible than your average critical text.

Moretti writes a lot about using statistical analysis to make critical arguments. He's the more enjoyable of the two, but also the more controversial. Here's one of his most famous essays, Style, Inc. Reflections on Seven Thousand Titles (British Novels, 1740–1850)

For as much hate as Greenblatt has gotten over the years, he's actually (in my opinion) a fairly safe, established, non-combative critic. He's primarily held responsible for New Historicism, a school of critical theory that places a ton of importance on the culture and society that the writer wrote in. Some folks don't like it because they think it distracts from what's actually on the page - what the writer wrote, not what might have been in the back of his head as he was writing. Other people think he sometimes uses New Historicism to make weak arguments - to base his reading of an important passage on what some random guy in 1596 said about fashion or politics.

I haven't read it, but apparently Greenblatt's The Swerve: How the World Became Modern won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award.

Edit: I should say that neither of these authors are writing surveys (although Greenblatt edits the Norton anthologies of Shakespeare and of English literature). But for me, I find a well-written book about a limited time period stays with me longer than a broad survey text.

Was search for the Yanis capitalism/democracy post & returned here instead. Reading the article, i couldn't get past this near the opening:

>Karl Marx, a 29-year-old philosopher with a taste for epicurean hedonism and Hegelian rationality

Which led down a few rabbit holes... His dissertation was on Epicureanism, which isn't mere foodie-ism, and there were some interesting bits on hedonism in the mix. Quite a clever quip from Yanis...

edit to add a few leads:
http://epicurus.today/epicureanism-after-epicurus-the-influence-of-epicurus-on-western-thought/
(notes "Marx wrote his doctoral thesis on Epicurus. Marx saw Epicurus as a kindred rebel spirit. Thus Epicurus sought to overthrow the philosophy of Aristotle, just as the post-Hegelians — including the young Marx–rose up against Hegel." -- so maybe Yanis wasn't quite on point about Marx being rationally Hegelian? hm.)

This book looks super interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Swerve-How-World-Became-Modern/dp/0393343405

Also, this argues against the hedonism label:

https://np.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/1uvl9n/does_marxist_thought_promote_hedonism_does_it/cem7w8w/?context=3

On my summer reading list, I have:

• Player Piano
  
  
• Lolita (re-reading. Nabokov's use of language is sublime)
  
  
• The Swerve: How The World Became Modern
  
  
• The Conquest of the Incas
  
  
• Let The Great World Spin
  
  
• Theodore Rex
  
  
  I'm currently half way through The Conquest of the Incas. If anyone has interest in the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica, I highly recommend it. It's a very vivid account of the political games Pizarro and his generals played to take over the Inca empire and solidify their grip in the New World.

The book is The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. The writer kind of exaggerates the significance of both Poggio and Lucretius but it is really engaging and gives you a good idea of the precariously fine line many humanists walked in adhering to the Church and pursuing intellectual advancement.

Or perhaps you simply weren't taught about all the times Christians have done it.

If you're interested in learning more about the Christian Church's early culture wars, you should check out The Swerve

I think "The Swerve" by Greenblatt is one of the most popular books on Epicureanism, though there are plenty:

https://www.amazon.com/Swerve-How-World-Became-Modern/dp/0393343405

I'd also recommend reading some Epicurus if you are interested. Not many texts out of his large collection have survived, but there are a few, and they are very illuminating, especially on the ethical side of his philosophy, which Lucretius does not tend to discuss at great length:

http://www.epicurus.net/

I'd especially recommend the Letter to Menoeceus.

This is a one hour lecture by an award winning, Harvard professor on an Epicurean, Lucretius: Stephen Greenblatt on Lucretius and his intolerable ideas. I've watched it twice and will read his book, The Swerve.

We have a running experiment in the world today on the subject of Bible vs. no Bible.

Some parts of the world operate without it, other parts with it.

I'm not a historian, and am curious as to what one would say on the subject.

Going on what little I know of history, here's what it looks like to me:

Europe and the Middle East have had the "benefit" of the Bible for at least 2,000 years. These areas have had varying degrees of civilization in that time. As I understand it, officially sanctioned slavery existed in Europe until the conspicuous slave-taking and trafficking that the Vikings practiced made it a crime, in the case of Christian slaves. It is still practiced in parts of the Islamic world. Serfdom continued until the Middle Ages, and marriage-slavery of women continued until a century ago in Europe and is still practiced in parts of the Islamic world. Genocide or attempted genocide happened whenever it was religiously or politically called for, such as wiping out various kinds of heretics in the first millennium, and entire swathes of red-headed women (interestingly, red hair is apparently a marker for Neanderthal blood) around the Middle Ages, and much of the population of the so-called New World in the more recent past. Abortion was universally practiced whenever people had access to the technology, for obvious reasons, until the most recent American religious revival came along. As for the Sermon on the Mount, a collection of moral precepts basically calling for love and humility, it has occasionally inspired people (Dietrich Bonnhoefer for example) and groups of people (the Hutterites for example) to be more loving, at least to each other, and to be more humble, at least as regards some areas of personality. I think it is these teachings that Christians must mean when they say that things are better because of the Bible?

The rest of the world had not heard of the Bible until about 1500, I'm pretty sure. These areas also have had varying levels of civilization. Slavery seems to have been pretty common, but it has had more benign forms than found in Christendom/the Islamic world as well as more miserable forms. Buddhism is explicitly anti-slavery, and "the Chinese Emperor Wang Mang, a Buddhist, may have been history’s first powerful abolitionist—he outlawed the slave trade in 9 A.D." (https://www.freetheslaves.net/take-action/faith-in-action-ending-slavery/) I think you have to look at each area and tribe to find out about slavery, it's not a monolithic thing. In the same way, women had varying levels of freedom, from near-equality to levels approaching the (Bible-based) Saudi-Arabian level of oppression. Abortions were universally practiced whenever people had access to the technology, for obvious reasons. Values such as loving everyone also seem to be pretty variable, though I think calling it a primary virtue may actually be limited to Christianity until recently (is this true?). Humility, of course, is a value that any hierarchical culture demands of non-aristocrats.

What seems pretty clear to me is that until the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the lot of most Christians was dreadful, especially of women but also of men. It took humanism to make things tolerable for the majority of people. See https://www.amazon.com/Swerve-How-World-Became-Modern/dp/0393343405/ref=sr_1_1?crid=PVWLX0X7TJ2C&keywords=the+swerve+how+the+world+became+modern&qid=1566105291&s=gateway&sprefix=the+swerve+how+the+w%2Caps%2C231&sr=8-1

Today we outlaw slavery (though it is still present everywhere, especially enslavement of women, see https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/data/maps/#prevalence for example), we mandate certain but not all rights for women, and most of us agree at least in principle that compassion is a good idea but humility should be contingent. Wherever birth control is available, the abortion rate is relatively low. These are Enlightenment values, not Biblical ones.

I'd be interested to hear from somebody who actually knows the subject.