The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

“Liberated from superstition, Epicurus taught, you would be free to pursue pleasure.” 

Epicureans believe the gods have no concern for the activities of so puny a creature as a human being. Thus, it is senseless to pray to divinities who, even if they exist, won’t bother to answer. It’s better, then, simply to live one’s life in as happy a manner as possible, especially if one’s soul cannot survive death or enter an afterlife. 

“Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.” 

Unfortunately for the citizens of Herculaneum in 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius blows its top and buries them under many feet of ash, which hardens into a stony tomb. Fortunately for archaeologists, the ash preserves the buildings and artifacts of the ancient Roman coastal town, even down to some of the manuscripts housed in private libraries. From these remains, historians have pieced together much of the lifestyle of the citizens, including the texts of their Epicurean beliefs. Wars, bad weather, and religious repressions, on the other hand, have wrought havoc on other ancient texts. 

“In one of the great cultural transformations in the history of the West, the pursuit of pain triumphed over the pursuit of pleasure.” 

Christians of the late Roman Empire and the Middle Ages believe, not in the pleasures of life, but in the need for self-punishment to cleanse the soul of sin and prepare for the afterlife. This neatly reverses the old attitudes, replacing them with a newer and more severe purpose. 

“It was by chance that a copy of On the Nature of Things made it into the library of a handful of monasteries, places that had buried, seemingly forever, the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure. It was by chance that a monk laboring in a scriptorium somewhere or other in the ninth century copied the poem before it moldered away forever. And it was by chance that this copy escaped fire and flood and the teeth of time for some five hundred years until, one day in 1417, it came into the hands of the humanist who proudly called himself Poggius Florentinus, Poggio the Florentine.” 

One of Epicurus’ beliefs is that the things of the world shift, or “swerve,” onto new paths, creating random opportunities. The rediscovery of Lucretius’ momentous poem is itself the result of a series of chance occurrences, ironically highlighting the power of “swerves” to change the world. 

“The bishop of Rome had a large household staff, as befitted his princely rank; he had a huge entourage of courtiers, advisers, clerks, and servants, as befitted his political office and his ceremonial significance; he had an enormous chancery, as befitted his juridical power; and he had a massive religious bureaucracy, as befitted his spiritual authority.” 

The pope, in the early 1400s, is one of the most powerful men in Europe. His spiritual authority, largely unchallenged for a thousand years, is matched by his secular power as a world leader. The pope’s court, as elegant as any king’s, presides over a huge land area in central Italy, protected by a large military and an army of diplomats.

“Ambitious young intellectuals, living by their wits, the papal scribes and secretaries looked about and felt that they were cleverer, more complex, more worthy of advancement than the overstuffed prelates they served. Theirs was, predictably, a world of resentment: we complained, Poggio writes, ‘of the inadequate men who hold the highest dignities of the Church, discreet and learned men being left out in the cold, whilst ignorant and worthless persons are exalted.’” 

Poggio labors for the papal court; his expertise in matters spiritual, intellectual, and legal, coupled with his extensive knowledge of Latin texts and his supreme skill in innovative handwriting, make him one of a small group of scholarly elites. He and his fellows soon realize that they may be smarter and more talented than the powerful clerics they answer to, church leaders who are vastly more famous and wealthier than their underlings. This leads to no small amount of carping among the papal secretaries over the unfairness of life. 

“The papal court had, to serve its own needs, brought into being a class of rootless, ironic intellectuals. These intellectuals were committed to pleasing their masters, on whose patronage they utterly depended, but they were cynical and unhappy. How could the rampant cynicism, greed, and hypocrisy, the need to curry favor with perverse satraps who professed to preach morality to the rest of mankind, the endless jockeying for position in the court of an absolute monarch, not eat away at whatever was hopeful and decent in anyone who breathed that air for very long?” 

The work demanded of papal secretaries makes them witness to the corruption, venality, and petty politics of the Vatican. It can’t be easy to work at the very center of western Christendom and realize that its spiritual leaders have feet of clay and who intone pious words that ring hollow given their adultery, greed, and vanity. 

“You should be suspicious of anyone who ‘displays an excessive purity of life; walks barefoot through the streets, with a dirty face and shabby robes; shows in public a disdain for money; always has the name of Jesus Christ on his lips; wants to be called good, without actually doing anything particularly good; attracts women to him to satisfy his wishes; runs here and there outside his monastery, seeking fame and honors; makes a show of fasting and other ascetic practices; induces others to get things for himself; refuses to acknowledge or return what is given to him in trust.” 

Medieval Christianity, with its demands of penitence, chastity, and simplicity, becomes a hotbed of fraud, with clerics posing as virtuous and spiritual in order to attract money, sex, and power. 

“He had no idea what he would find; he only knew that if it was something ancient and written in elegant Latin, then it was worth rescuing at all costs. The ignorant, indolent monks, he was convinced, were locking away traces of a civilization far greater than anything the world had known for more than a thousand years.” 

Inspired by the discoveries of Petrarch and others, Poggio wants to find yet more of the tantalizing ideas and beliefs of a civilization long dead. The harsh life of medieval Europe holds little allure for him, now that he has sampled the vision of the ancients. In fact, over the decades, Renaissance thinkers repeatedly will assert the superiority of Greek and Roman culture over their own. It is this questing after the old ways that inspires innovations that lead to a newer, more modern Europe. 

“Divided into six untitled books, the poem [On the Nature of Things] yokes together moments of intense lyrical beauty, philosophical meditations on religion, pleasure, and death, and complex theories of the physical world, the evolution of human societies, the perils and joys of sex, and the nature of disease. The language is often knotty and difficult, the syntax complex, and the overall intellectual ambition astoundingly high.” 

Lucretius’ poem charms and delights late-medieval thinkers and artists with its beauty, complexity, and the sheer number of intriguing ideas it contains. Over and over, as the Renaissance blossoms—its bloom nurtured in great part by this very poem—great thinkers and creators will be stunned and delighted by the work. The poem’s eloquence shapes its compelling ideas into concepts whose time has finally arrived. 

“What is the use of a god who is uninterested in punishing or rewarding? Lucretius insisted that such hopes and anxieties are precisely a toxic form of superstition, combining in equal measure absurd arrogance and absurd fear. Imagining that the gods actually care about the fate of humans or about their ritual practices is, he observed, a particularly vulgar insult—as if divine beings depended for their happiness on our mumbled words or good behavior. But that insult is the least of the problems, since the gods quite literally could not care less. Nothing that we can do (or not do) could possibly interest them.” 

On reflection, it seems illogical that people should pray to beings whose extreme power and sophistication almost certainly dissuade them from deigning to stoop to consider the problems of such puny creatures as human beings. It’s as if a person were to become obsessed with the progress of a line of ants. Why bother? Thus, even if they exist, gods are quite unlikely to offer assistance to people. Far better it would be, suggest the Epicureans, if humanity were to look elsewhere—perhaps to its own creative resources—for solutions to its problems. 

“Humans project images of the power and beauty and perfect security that they would like to possess. Fashioning their gods accordingly, they become enslaved to their own dreams.” 

The great irony of spiritual worship is that people imagine their gods to be exemplars of themselves. That we have, within us, abilities and powers barely tapped seems to occur to almost no one. Were we to explore our own strengths, and polish and perfect those we deem deficient, we might accomplish so much more that we could free ourselves from the need to annoy the gods with our petty desires. 

“But nothing is more blissful than to occupy the heights effectively fortified by the teaching of the wise, tranquil sanctuaries from which you can look down upon others and see them wandering everywhere in their random search for the way of life, competing for intellectual eminence, disputing about rank, and striving night and day with prodigious effort to scale the summit of wealth and to secure power.” 

It is a great relief to let go of the blind avarice of a life of grasping, and to relax and enjoy the simple virtues of a happy life, free from worry. From that perspective, the hurried, anxious lives of many of our fellow humans can seem ridiculous and painful. One might be tempted to offer help up onto dry land to those still caught in the sea of fear and superstition, if only they would look up and see the proffered hand. 

“Though they are finite and mortal, humans are gripped by illusions of the infinite—infinite pleasure and infinite pain. The fantasy of infinite pain helps to account for their proneness to religion: in the misguided belief that their souls are immortal and hence potentially subject to an eternity of suffering, humans imagine that they can somehow negotiate with the gods for a better outcome, an eternity of pleasure in paradise. The fantasy of infinite pleasure helps to account for their proneness to romantic love: in the misguided belief that their happiness depends upon the absolute possession of some single object of limitless desire, humans are seized by a feverish, unappeasable hunger and thirst that can only bring anguish instead of happiness.” 

Not only are people caught up in the fear of a hell and the promise of a heaven, but they falsely believe that infinite pleasure can come from everyday objects of desire. It is one thing to love one’s family and friends, but quite another to expect them to offer us perfect reliability and relentless love; likewise, it’s good to appreciate the bounty of Earth but quite another to expect it to pour out in endless perfection. From time to time, we are lonely and hungry; that is part of life, and to expect exemption from trouble is as illusory as to expect infinite pleasure or pain in the afterlife. 

“Do we not every day, and in all countries, meet with priests, monks, abbots, bishops, and dignitaries of a still higher order, who have families of children by married women, widows, and even by virgins consecrated to the service of God?” 

Poggio responds to Vatican clerics who criticize his out-of-wedlock family. He knows full well that his critics are two-faced because they also partake in similar sins, and they will not carry their critique too far lest they, too, be found out. 

“Couched in its beautiful, seductive poetry, the Lucretian vision was a profound intellectual and creative challenge.” 

Part of the appeal of Lucretius is the beauty of his verse. Had his work been, not a poem, but a turgid essay by some pompous scholar, it might never have had its huge impact on modern thought. The poem's loveliness, by itself, seems to advertise the wisdom and value of its philosophy. Lucretius practices what he preaches, and his expertise in the art of poetics suggests that the philosophy he presents has the power to create the very pleasures it argues for. 

“What mattered was not adherence but mobility—the renewed mobility of a poem that had been resting untouched in one or at most two monastic libraries for many centuries, the mobility of Epicurean arguments that had been silenced first by hostile pagans and then by hostile Christians, the mobility of daydreams, half-formed speculations, whispered doubts, dangerous thoughts.”

Once copied and shared, Lucretius’ poem is like the cat out of the bag, nearly impossible to recapture. As well, Epicurean beliefs are highly adaptable to a variety of circumstances and beliefs; eventually, even the Catholic hierarchy will bow to the power of these ideas, adapting to them as the church becomes less severe and more open-minded. 

“Poggio may have distanced himself from the content of On the Nature of Things, but he took the crucial first step in pulling the poem off the shelf, having it copied, and sending the copy to his friends in Florence.” 

Ever the political adept, Poggio refrains from publicly adopting Epicurean beliefs. He even goes so far as to accuse his professional rival, Valla, of heretically praising Lucretius’ ideas in an essay, “On Pleasure.” Poggio’s enthusiasm for all things ancient, however, hints at a private support for Epicureanism, a support that he would never be so foolish as to announce to the world. 

“More clearly grasped that the pleasure principle—the principle given its most powerful expression in Lucretius’ spectacular hymn to Venus—is not a decorative enhancement of routine existence; it is a radical idea that, if taken seriously, would change everything.” 

More understands full well the power of Lucretius’ poem and succumbs, in large part, to its allure. However, More is a strict Catholic, and he truly believes that a world without God would be a world gone mad with selfishness. For this reason, he presents Epicurean ideas in his book Utopia with the proviso that the citizens of that faraway state retain a fear of God and the afterlife. 

“[...] the pagan texts recovered by the humanists were at once compellingly vital and at the same time utterly weird. They had been reinjected into the intellectual bloodstream of Europe after long centuries in which they had been almost entirely forgotten, and they represented not continuity or recovery but rather a deep disturbance.” 

It’s hard to imagine, in the Internet Age with its enormous variety of ideas and beliefs, how difficult and strange it must have been to encounter Lucretius’ text with its alien ideas, concepts unimagined during the thousand years the manuscript went missing. In the late Middle Ages, the only permitted thought is Christian, and the sudden appearance of vastly different ideas brings with it the stunning and perhaps frightening realization that there might actually exist viewpoints other than those of the clerics. This in itself can cause the medieval mind to reel. 

“Utopia is a visionary, detailed blueprint for this application, from public housing to universal health care, from child care centers to religious toleration to the six-hour work day. The point of More’s celebrated fable is to imagine those conditions that would make it possible for an entire society to make the pursuit of happiness its collective goal.” 

More’s book Utopia dares to envision a society that exists to benefit its people rather than merely prepare them for an afterlife. The church doesn’t wish to have to compete with worldly happiness; for this reason, More wisely couches his story as a faraway fantasy that, for all its daring, is yet delimited by the religious piety of the Utopians. More suggests that the world can do better than it has, but not without the spiritual leadership of the church. 

“There are moments, rare and powerful, in which a writer, long vanished from the face of the earth, seems to stand in your presence and speak to you directly, as if he bore a message meant for you above all others.” 

For all its ancient age, Lucretius’ poem manages to speak to Montaigne and others as if it were being uttered for the first time by the author, directly into the ear of the listener. True classics of art have this way about them, as with old paintings that seem alive on the wall, or symphonies written centuries ago that display all the vigor and fervor of fresh inspiration. It is, ultimately, a human quality of liveliness, and that humanity speaks to us even today, even though it was written thousands of years ago. Its freshness, its modernity, is part of its appeal. Lucretius’ words refresh an audience of medieval readers enchanted by its feeling of newness, a feeling that inspires them to dream of things they’d never realized they were missing. Lucretius’ enormous appeal proves irresistible, and it helps to launch the Renaissance. 

“Like Lucretius, Galileo defended the oneness of the celestial and terrestrial world: there was no essential difference, he claimed, between the nature of the sun and the planets and the nature of the earth and its inhabitants [...] Like Lucretius, he insisted on the testimony of the senses, against, if necessary, the orthodox claims of authority. Like Lucretius, he sought to work through this testimony toward a rational comprehension of the hidden structures of all things. And like Lucretius, he was convinced that these structures were by nature constituted by what he called ‘minims’ or minimal particles, that is, constituted by a limited repertory of atoms combined in innumerable ways.”

Galileo’s work, inspired by Epicurean philosophy, constitutes an early proof of the validity of that philosophy. By applying curiosity and logic to the world itself, Galileo demonstrates not only that the planets revolve about the sun but that widely different weights obey the same law of gravity and that a pendulum of a given length will swing at the same speed as another of the same length; each of these discoveries validate the Epicurean concept of atoms and their obedience to natural instead of divine law. Most importantly, Galileo shows how the Epicurean philosophy of science works effectively to generate new knowledge of the world.