Lucretius on Love

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Lucretius on Love

Nell Cohen

October 17, 2005

Rempel

Phi 151

MW 2:00

        Titus Lucretius Carus was an epicurean poet writing in the first century BC.  His six-book Latin hexameter poem De rerum natura (DRN for short), variously translated On the nature of things and On the nature of the universe, survives virtually intact.  In this book he extensively discusses love and sex from the epicurean vantage point.  He offers his reader not just cosmological understanding but the full recipe for happiness, as a complete Epicurean.  Book 4's treatment of sex (1037-1287) includes denouncing and deriding the folly of enslavement to sexual passion (1121-1191).  

        Lucretius begins his narrative on love and sex  with puberty, describing it as “The stirring of the seed within us takes place…when adolescence is just beginning to strengthen our limbs.”  He continues to explain that humans can be aroused by different things, but “human seed can be elicited from the human body only by the influence of a human being.”  His reasoning of an orgasm is the seed travels from multiple parts of the body and culminates at the genitals.  The genitals are then enticed to “emit the seed toward the object of our dire craving.”  He explains ejaculation by the mind being “wounded with love.”  He furthers the violent analogy by stating that whenever one is wounded, he would fall towards same direction from which the wound was given.  This is a direct comparision to one wishing to ejaculate towards the enticer that has caused such a love-struck wound.  Lucretius’ explanation of sex and sexual desire is obviously Epicurean in its nature because it is very technically written and emotionally lacking.  Although his moral philosophy was hedonism, Lucretius did not over indulge in the Epicurean system,which is based on the pursuit of pleasure (1040-1060).

        

        Epicureanism elevated intellectual pleasure and tranquility of mind, while dimming the view of the world of social strife and physical pleasure.  Lucretius is almost preaching to beware of lust and sexual encounters, because one might get harmed from the encounter.  Epicurus considered sexuality in itself as overindulgence, so it is only logic that Lucretius wrote on the subject very precisely.  Sex, according to Epicureanism, is “natural-but unnecessary.”  One must beware of the pain that can be easily acquired along with the physical pleasure, especially when in excess (1040-1060).  

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        The defensive acts to rid oneself of love according to Lucretius, are “to abstain from all that feeds you love, and to turn your attention elsewhere:  you should ejaculate the accumulated fluid into any woman’s body rather than reserve it for a single lover.”  Lucretius is therefore advocating casual, loveless sex.  He continues on about if one waits for his respective loved one to have sex, then “inevitable anguish and anxiety” will befall him.  He attempts to attest that love, if given means to flourish and grow, will ultimately cause one’s mental saneness to perish.  He states this in 1069-1037: ...

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