Lucretian

Lucretian is an adjective and noun related to Lucretius or to the philosophy and poetry attributed to him. Lucretius, Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99–55 BCE), was a Roman poet and philosopher best known for De rerum natura, a long didactic poem that expounds Epicurean natural philosophy. In Lucretian thought the universe consists of a void and an infinite number of atoms in constant motion; all phenomena arise from the mechanical interactions of atoms and void, without purposeful design or divine intervention.

Perception and nature: The Lucretian system treats sensation, memory, and thinking as physical processes in matter, and it holds that the mind itself is material. The void and atomism provide natural explanations for weather, growth, disease, and other phenomena. The poem argues that fear of gods and fear of death stem from superstition and ignorance, and that happiness comes from knowledge of nature and moderation of desire. The concept of the clinamen, or swerve, is invoked to account for occasional deviations in atomic motion, which some readers interpret as a source of contingency or agency within a largely deterministic framework.

Reception and influence: Lucretius's work survived through the Latin manuscript tradition and influenced later medieval and early modern thought, contributing to the revival of atomism and secular natural philosophy. In modern scholarship, the term Lucretian is used to describe Lucretius’s philosophy or, more broadly, Epicurean, materialist, and naturalistic approaches to philosophy. The label may also appear in literary analysis to indicate a stylistic or poetic influence drawn from Lucretius’s Latin verse.