Custom Essay on Lucretius’ “On The Nature Of Things”

Lucretius Carus is Roman philosopher, famous for his philosophical poem “On the Nature of Things”, written in Latin. The work “On the Nature of Things” is a complete encyclopedia on the content of ancient atomism.
The poem is composed of six books. The first part sets atomism. The poet argues that in the whole universe nothing exists except atoms and void. Lucretius proceeds from the fact that nothing can arise out of nothing and nothing becomes nothing.
In the second book of Lucretius shows how the perpetual motion of the atoms occurs all around us is a diverse world. Earth appears according to him only of dust, floating in a vast universe. The third poem develops the doctrine of the soul and spirit. The poet argues that the soul is material, it consists of the smallest atoms and dies with the body.
The fourth book refers to the sensations. Feelings therefore seems material maps of real objects. Thin material images visible, audible, sensible objects, penetrating the senses and cause different representations.
The fifth book is devoted to the earth’s history and cultural history. The state appears at a certain stage of development of society, and language arises from the need of communication between people. The poet criticizes religion, showing that faith in the gods sometimes leads to crime. In the sixth book, due to the natural scientific point of view of the menacing phenomena of nature., the poet tells about the origin of thunder and lightning, the reasons terrible earthquakes.
In the poem of Lucretius the most developed part is a teaching about nature. For me it was interesting to know that Lucretius explained and the emergence of the worlds by spontaneous deviations of atoms, which occurs, according to Lucretius, without interference of the gods. “Not for us – he wrote, – not the divine created this nature of things”. (Lucretius, part V, pp.198-199).
Materialist philosophy reveals the poet unprecedented opportunities for classical poetry images of the real processes occurring in nature and in human life. The natural world, based on the understandable human laws, it seems gaze to Lucretius, beautiful and useful. He admires the fancy with huge thunderstorm clouds, the distant peaks of snow-capped mountains, star-studded expanse of the sky:
You look like something like the mountains like the clouds
In the air, rushing forward, heeling over under the pressure of the wind.
Or look like they are in the high mountains of accumulated,
Heaps in the sky come together, pressing against one another,
And still standing when the winds stopped everywhere. (Book VI, pp. 189-193)
According to Lucretius in nature exists the infinite modified continuous formation and destruction of worlds. The universe is infinite, as infinite is also space. Lucretius believed that life arose through spontaneous generation of “first principles”.
The poem is full of high pathos, written with great poetic inspiration, Lucretius says that he spends sleepless nights over their work, looking for figurative words and sonorous poetry to inspire and ignite readers and friend Memmi, who is devoted to the poem. Any way it is very interesting and has a lot of philosophical thoughts, that reflect the views of the ancient philosophers to about life, nature and Universe.
Works cited:
Lucretius. “On the Nature of Things”. (translation by R. E. Latham). Penguin, 1994