Karl Marx wrote his doctoral dissertation on Epicurus. :o
And what pleasure Marx' own epicurean-inspired philosophy brought to the athiestic "worker's paradise" in Russia! So it is no surprise that Marx is heavily emphasized in The Swerve. Not one mention. אף לא אחד. Instead, this is the concluding sentence of the book:
"I am, [Thomas] Jefferson wrote to a correspondent who wanted to know his philosophy of life, "an Epicurean."
:) T.J.! There He Is: Thom-as Jef-fer-son. Auth-or of the Dec. of Ind.
Was not Marx as much a part of the "modern," which is "how the world became" (book's subtitle) after "the swerve" in the Renaissance as Jefferson? He was. Luther, Darwin, Nietzsche, Einstein, Freud, Hitler? Yes.
Professor Greenblatt makes...selective use of history...Goodness gracious, that is unconscionable. Did he really do that? He did.
Why would he do that? It pleasured him? Helped sell books? Helped win Pulitzer Prize, make money? Drawing a line that starts with Epicurus, ends with Jefferson and swerves around Hitler and Marx would sell more books than one that included or ended with Hitler and Marx. Unconscionable history.
Great marketing, though.
It's also psychological. Professor Greenblatt is in pain: from his childhood, from historical Jewish persecution, from his fear of death, fear and hatred of Christianity. He wants to tell a feel-good story here, so that he can feel good. Epicurus and Lucretius are part of his attempt to escape his pain and fear:
"...On the Nature of Things struck a very deep chord within me. Its power depended to some extent on personal circumstances--art always penetrates the particular fissures in one's psychic life. The core of Lucretius' poem is a profound, therapeutic meditation on the fear of death, and that fear dominated my entire childhood."
Poor man. "Therapeutic:" He used epicureanism to try to escape. He failed. He dyed his hair, got hair transplants and remarried a much younger woman to, psychologically, fend off aging. Professor Greenblatt is, understandably, hostile towards Christianity and just as understandably fascinated by it. He has studied it as a scholar. Wikipedia lists two people as "influences" on Greenblatt: Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. Not Epicurus. Not Lucretius. (Not Jefferson.). The influence of Nietzsche and Foucault on Greenblatt is, like his use of history, selective. The allure of Epicurus for Greenblatt is pleasure, unadulterated pleasure. It was not so for Nietzsche and Foucault.
Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran minister. Also influenced by Epicurus, Nietzsche became anti-Christian (not anti-semitic in the consensus of contemporary scholarship), calling Christianity a "slave's morality." Yet...
Hitler, would-be destroyer of European Jewry, was also influenced by Nietzsche, often visiting a Nietzsche museum and being photographed next to a Nietzsche bust, in homage. Neitzsche also praised "the discipline of suffering--great suffering." Christ suffered. Professor Greenblatt decries "the endlessly reiterated, prominently displayed images of the bloody, murdered son" that have come to "dominate" in the West. He includes this painting in The Swerve:
Michel Foucault, not anti-semitic, was raised in a nominally Roman Catholic household but religion was not a prominent part of his life. Sadomasochism was. There is in Christianity, in the images of the crucifixion, in the self-flagellation practiced by monks, sadomasochism.
On Christian self-flagellation Greenblatt writes:
"It had taken a thousand years to win the struggle and secure the triumph of pain seeking [under Christianity]. 'Did our Redeemer not endure scourging?' [Benedictine monk Peter] Damian asked those critics who called into question the celebration of the whip...in a world in which Christianity has triumphed, we have to do the whipping for ourselves."
The "celebration of the whip," ha! Actually, Foucault really did celebrate the whip. Swerve.
The Swerve as history, as scholarship is a Fail. As palimpsest, about Stephen Greenblatt's psyche, his loves, hates, fears?
Great success.
And what pleasure Marx' own epicurean-inspired philosophy brought to the athiestic "worker's paradise" in Russia! So it is no surprise that Marx is heavily emphasized in The Swerve. Not one mention. אף לא אחד. Instead, this is the concluding sentence of the book:
"I am, [Thomas] Jefferson wrote to a correspondent who wanted to know his philosophy of life, "an Epicurean."
:) T.J.! There He Is: Thom-as Jef-fer-son. Auth-or of the Dec. of Ind.
Was not Marx as much a part of the "modern," which is "how the world became" (book's subtitle) after "the swerve" in the Renaissance as Jefferson? He was. Luther, Darwin, Nietzsche, Einstein, Freud, Hitler? Yes.
Professor Greenblatt makes...selective use of history...Goodness gracious, that is unconscionable. Did he really do that? He did.
Why would he do that? It pleasured him? Helped sell books? Helped win Pulitzer Prize, make money? Drawing a line that starts with Epicurus, ends with Jefferson and swerves around Hitler and Marx would sell more books than one that included or ended with Hitler and Marx. Unconscionable history.
Great marketing, though.
It's also psychological. Professor Greenblatt is in pain: from his childhood, from historical Jewish persecution, from his fear of death, fear and hatred of Christianity. He wants to tell a feel-good story here, so that he can feel good. Epicurus and Lucretius are part of his attempt to escape his pain and fear:
"...On the Nature of Things struck a very deep chord within me. Its power depended to some extent on personal circumstances--art always penetrates the particular fissures in one's psychic life. The core of Lucretius' poem is a profound, therapeutic meditation on the fear of death, and that fear dominated my entire childhood."
Poor man. "Therapeutic:" He used epicureanism to try to escape. He failed. He dyed his hair, got hair transplants and remarried a much younger woman to, psychologically, fend off aging. Professor Greenblatt is, understandably, hostile towards Christianity and just as understandably fascinated by it. He has studied it as a scholar. Wikipedia lists two people as "influences" on Greenblatt: Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. Not Epicurus. Not Lucretius. (Not Jefferson.). The influence of Nietzsche and Foucault on Greenblatt is, like his use of history, selective. The allure of Epicurus for Greenblatt is pleasure, unadulterated pleasure. It was not so for Nietzsche and Foucault.
Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran minister. Also influenced by Epicurus, Nietzsche became anti-Christian (not anti-semitic in the consensus of contemporary scholarship), calling Christianity a "slave's morality." Yet...
Professor Greenblatt had to swerve a lot to get around Nietzsche.
"It had taken a thousand years to win the struggle and secure the triumph of pain seeking [under Christianity]. 'Did our Redeemer not endure scourging?' [Benedictine monk Peter] Damian asked those critics who called into question the celebration of the whip...in a world in which Christianity has triumphed, we have to do the whipping for ourselves."
The "celebration of the whip," ha! Actually, Foucault really did celebrate the whip. Swerve.
The Swerve as history, as scholarship is a Fail. As palimpsest, about Stephen Greenblatt's psyche, his loves, hates, fears?
Great success.
