Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special
  • Published: 26 June 2013
  • ISBN: 9780143570431
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $17.99

Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special

Formats & editions
EBook
14 Dec 2012
Paperback
26 Jun 2013
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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.' Sun-Herald

'Thought-provoking.' West Australian
  • Published: 26 June 2013
  • ISBN: 9780143570431
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $17.99
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About the author

Luke Slattery

Luke Slattery is a Sydney-based journalist and editor. He has spent most of his career in newspapers writing about the world of ideas for a wide audience. He has served as higher education editor at The Australian, The Age and the Financial Review, and has been the recipient of the Higher Education Journalist of the Year Award, the European Union journalist award, and the Australia Council's Keesing writing fellowship in Paris. His journalism and writing have been published in the main Australian metropolitan newspapers and internationally at the International Herald Tribune, the LA Times, the London Spectator, The Scotsman, and the US Chronicle of Higher Education; a number of his articles have been republished online at the Arts & Letters Daily web portal. Slattery is the author of Crisis in the Clever Country: Why Our Universities are Failing (with Geoffrey Maslen), Dating Aphrodite: Modern Adventures in the Ancient World, and Reclaiming Epicurus: Could an Ancient Philosophy of Happiness Save the World? He is a doctoral candidate at the University of Technology, Sydney. The First Dismissal is his fourth book.

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Praise for Reclaiming Epicurus: Penguin Special

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.

Sun-Herald

Thought-provoking.

West Australian