Was Vizzini Right?

Philosophers and Morons

Dear Friends,

Step into my study. Shall I fill you a pipe? Pour you a dram? Excellent!

I’ve been on a particular rabbit trail. It is a rather long story that I will tell you more about at some point. It all started with a passage I read in the first volume of Peter Gay’s incredible The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (1966). It resonated with a passage I recalled in N.T. Wright’s History and Eschatology (2019). Which then made me think of another relevant passage in Charles Taylor’s, A Secular Age (2007). Which then caused me to consult Anthony Kronman’s Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan (2016) and Simon Critchley’s The Faith of the Faithless (2016). One thing led to another and suddenly I find myself reading “On the Nature of Things” by Lucretius (99-55 B.C.). Like I say, it’s a pretty wild rabbit trail.

This trail is leading me toward a conclusion that is coming more and more clearly into focus; namely, I more than suspect that “postmodernism” does not, in fact, exist. There is no “breach” between what people call “modernism” and this supposed thing called “post” modernism. It is all one cohesive strand (well, as cohesive as an incoherent system of thought can be). And one dominant—perhaps the dominant—thread of that strand is the 18th century revival of Epicurean philosophy, most notably articulated by Lucretius, the Roman philosopher.