Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Specials

Epicureanism is not just for gourmands – journalist Luke Slattery argues that it can help us rethink out materialist ways and face the challenges of man-made climate change. Epicureanism is not just for gourmands – journalist Luke Slattery argues that it can help us rethink out materialist ways and face the challenges of man-made climate change. Rather than appealing to altruism, or calling for economic revolution, the Epicurean philosophy counsels that genuine happiness comes from the quieting of desire: from less, not more. And that might just be the mindset we need to rein in unsustainable development. Could answers to the big questions faced in the twenty-first century be found on fragments of petrified scrolls in the Villa of the Papyri, buried along with Pompeii? 'Writing with a pleasing lightness of touch, Slattery argues that Epicurus and his followers were greens centuries before the modern environmentalist movement, and that their emphasis on community and cultivation is more relevant now than ever.'