"The Swerve"

Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve: How the World Became Modern is a wonderful understanding of the development of Western culture and philosophy.  Greenblatt scours ancient and Medieval history to present the discovery of a poem, written thousands of years ago by Lucretius, and the Italian Renaissance man, Poggio Bracciolini, who planted the seed of discourse that would uproot the religious establishment in Europe. 

Below is a key passage, that I find personally inspiring and enlightening:

Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder.  The realization that the universe consists of atoms and void and nothing else, that the world was not made for us by a providential creator, that we are not the center of the universe, that our emotional lives are no more distinct than our physical lives from those of all other creatures, that our souls are as material and as mortal as our bodies-all these things are not the cause of despair.  On the contrary, grasping the way things really are is the crucial step toward the possibility of happiness.  Human insignificance-the fact that it is not all about us and our fate-is, Lucretius insisted, the good news.

It is possible for human beings to live happy lives, but not because they think that they are the center of the universe or because they fear gods or because they nobly sacrifice themselves for values that purport to transcend their mortal existence.  Unappeasable desire and fear of death are the principal obstacles to human happiness, but the obstacles can be surmounted through the exercise of reason.

The exercise of reason is not available only to specialists; it is accessible to everyone.  What is needed is to refuse the lies proffered by priests and other fantasymongers and to look squarely and calmly at the true nature of things.  All speculation-all science, all mortality, all attempts to fashion a life worth living-must start and end with a comprehension of the invisible seeds of things: atoms and the void and nothing else.

It might seem at first that this comprehension would envitably bring with it a sense of cold emptiness, as if the universe had been robbed of its magic.  But being liberated from harmful illusions is not the same as disillusionment.  The origin of philosophy, it was often said in the ancient world, was wonder: surprise and bafflement led to a desire to know, and knowledge in turn laid the wonder to rest.  But in Lucretius' account the process is something like the reverse: it is knowing the way things are that awakens the deepest wonder.