Anti-Anti-Naturalism: Translating Lucretius

Thought is division. Thought creates difference. Analogy reforms sameness across apparent difference. In existence, there is both atom and void – difference and sameness. They do not add into a whole, and neither overtakes the other. This un-whole ontology is unfulfilling for our monkey brains, but any perturbations of a full system, a ‘whole’ picture of the universe, would embrace a false image – a phantom of Being.

In Lucretius’ only surviving work, De Rerum Natura (DRN), the 1st century BCE Roman poet-philosopher uses verse to connect cosmic physics and minute ethics. Following Epicurus, he asserts that atoms and void are the basis of reality. Atoms here are defined as the smallest possible things that can be thought: the smallest thinkable part of the universe. These atoms are homogenous, only differing in shape and size. How then do things proliferate? Where does my chair come into this? And where do I come into this?

Things are any conceptual identities that we interact with – e.g., a chair, me, the earth, a pear, the NBA, your mind – in short, subjects and objects. These are created through perceived difference. It is a function of the mind to create separate things – so that existence isn’t an unending blizzard of sense-perceptions. These are all apparent differences that come about through segmenting and cutting – secare. Because everything is made up of the same principal part (atoms), the division of identities is based in thought – i.e., in the mind’s projection onto reality. 

In book five of DRN, after briefly positing possible causes for the stars’ movement, Lucretius shifts to describe the world and its organization. He explained the world as a gradation of densities, with the heaviest substances sinking to the bottom (e.g., rock sinks in water). Lucretius’ single-substance matter (atoms) became differentiated through chaotic clashing (with underlying patterns) – which created these separate densities.

Mundus can refer to the earth, the sky, and the universe. The Latin words for these represent the Romans’ more geocentric view, here connecting things we take as separate. To maintain this connected perspective, I use “world” to signify the earth and its surrounding area. I use ‘world’ because it includes more than just the big rock, Earth – it also includes a sense of humanity. I don’t mean the added humanity element, but I use it to help connotate a larger view of our planet: a grouping of the earth and the sky. As a part of this ‘world,’ terra and tellus point only to the Earth. The sky and the heavens then, the other part in the subset of the world, are referred to as caelum.

However, Lucretius doesn’t use a binary to represent the world. Departing from the earth/sky grouping, he further separates caelo from partibus aeriis mundi – creating a difference between the sky and the “airy parts of the world” (DRN 5.553). This non-binary distinction allows for more a more complex universe that isn’t divided into just two categories. Duly note, my caring reader, that Lucretius is not the first to split the sky further, e.g. stoic Seneca’s caelesita, sublimia, and terrena.

Lucretius then parallels these three subsets of the world with three of humans. The body is referred to as corpus; this is compared to the terra/tellus – the heaviest matter of the self and the world. The mind is the masculine mens/animus, which takes the control seat and can be most compared with the modern concept of the brain. And the spirit as the feminine anima, which is less a control center than a corporal life force; this can be compared with the nervous system. Animus and anima also both connotate breath – the wind of the body. Just as the separation between caelum and partes aeri are vague, animus and anima lack a clear distinction. The masculine mens/animus take on the more conscious, concrete, and virtuous aspect in the deeply patriarchal Roman culture. Anima takes on a more spiritual aspect – it refers to the breath, the spirit, the vital force of life, etc. 

This section of the poem begins with the world and its intwined operation. Line 547 alliterates an ah sound six times with three internal ah’s. Unique in its amount of phonetic repetition, the line can draw one out of the poem’s content towards the technical ability of the author; in the far more content-centered Lucretius, however, the alliteration here affords a lavish tone to the point of facetiousness. Within a non-possibility, this claim is then disdainful to those who believe it. Lucretius asserts here that earth obviously couldn’t have formed separate from its environment.

Coniuncta is used four times in this section. Etymologically, cum is added to iuncta, meaning ‘to join or attach or put in a harness.’ This conjunction adds a layer of interconnectedness: that which is joined is taken “with;” this alludes to a union of the things joined together. Further, coniuncta’s root is intransitive – differing from transitive iuncta. And it is only used in the perfect passive because the objects already are this; bodies aren’t suddenly joining to another at this point (with the world and such already differentiated).

Nevertheless, the coniuncta’s are interspersed with transitive verbs, which signify binding: reuincta and sustineat (5.553, 557). This affords a connection while still maintaining difference. Things are connected yet hold separate identities – e.g., the sky binds the earth, yet they remain different.

Analogy, metaphor, and simile are all methods of comparison across difference. Similes are subsets of metaphors, using ‘like’ or ‘as’ in their comparisons. For simplicity, I’ll use a simile to illustrate metaphor: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” In this Gumpian statement, life resembles a box of chocolates and takes on the qualities of the box – the uncertainty of what lies inside, one’s taste preferences, etc. Life, here, is imitating the box of chocolates – taking on its characteristics. This paints life as taking on the image of a box of chocolates; life is a kind of reproduction of the box. The description creates a hierarchy in which the box exists in itself, while life is simply imitating it. This then produces a ‘signifier’ and a ‘signified’ (box as the signifier).

Analogy, contrasting simile and metaphor, does not create a hierarchy of images and reproduction. The comparison of analogy doesn’t create the signifier/signified binary. For example, in A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze explains a relationship between a mating wasp and a flowering orchid where both, through evolution, have come to resemble each other:

“It could be said that the orchid imitates the wasp, reproducing its image in a signifying fashion (mimesis, mimicry, lure, etc.). […] There is neither imitation nor resemblance, only an exploding of two heterogeneous series on the line of flight composed by a common rhizome that can no longer be attributed to or subjugated by anything signifying” (Deleuze 10).

In other words, neither the wasp nor the orchid represents the other, which would create a binary; instead, they both have taken circumstantial paths and met in a web of relationships. This is the kind of analogy that Lucretius uses here.

Lucretius begins this section’s analogy between the world and the human with the conservative quasi (‘in a manner’ and ‘as if’) linking tellus to membra on line 549. By conservative, I mean that quasi’s meaning is more hypothetical and less direct than, for example, connecting the two with ‘est.’ It is conservative because it doesn’t assert that the two are equal. Latin, compared to English, uses this soft adverb to mark comparison far more often. The conjoining and binding (coniuncta atque uniter apta) of the earth, air, and sky is exactly paralleled by the conjoining and binding spirit and body (555, 558). This draws the comparison further, as the world and person groupings are mirrored by syntax and context. He then asks about the spirit controlling the body – no explicit parallel. This is possible because the two things are already interlinked so that the analogy is anticipated.

In the last line, the world and person are both taken under a more definitive ‘ut’ and connected by ‘et’ (563). The et now connects them under a shared question about the power of fine atoms. The analogy between world and person is completed and the two are no longer quasi, but now by et. For Deleuze, the universe is composed of et’s: “Nature is not attributive but conjunctive: it is expressed by the ‘and’ and not by the ‘is’” (Deleuze 246). The world and person are no longer linked just by analogy – but are coniuncta in their being connected parts both heavy and fine. So, for Lucretius and Deleuze, the world is made of these conjunctions adding to each other with et’s.

Quasi is Lucretius taking part in the traditional vehicle of comparison, much how DRN begins with a prayer to the goddess Venus in Lucretius’ godless poem. Opening with Venus, his poem “fills up the space (cosmic religiousity) with irreligious materialism” (Conte 4). In the same way, the section begins with quasi and moves to et. Instead, he moves to et – which sets both in tandem with the other, both equally connected.

Because “they cling to each other with common roots,” separated things, identities, reveal their solidarity at baseness. This repaints the universe as not simply different, but also same at another level. This allows for thought and phenomena to cross with each other because there is no block between the understood reality of things (made up of teeny-weeny atoms) and the seen reality of things (identities). So, one can move back and forth between thought and sense-experience. 

Lucretius’ analogy is not comparing two levels in the way that Plato does – with the transcendent cave or with the realm of forms that’s removed from our world of chaotic change. This is detachment. This is the transitive iuncta – this is “aliena” (DRN 5.546). In contrast, Lucretius’ analogy doesn’t create a new realm nor depart from phenomena; rather, it maintains the physical to establish formations across boundaries. The world and the person both have shared qualities, as drawn throughout this section of DRN. But if Lucretius were to maintain the quasi as link, one would always have to be compared to the other – creating one real and one representation. Plato’s metaphor creates representation and Lucretius’ creates connected diversity. Plato separates Being and Becoming, rejects the world in favor of a realm of forms. The observable universe is downvoted in favor of a brittle phantasm of the mind. Instead, Lucretius’ work finds that “there is no opposition between these two points of view, but rather correlation” (Deleuze 11).

Metaphor can also be used to understand difference through an over-arching, simplifying structure. In contrast, analogy creates a connection across disparate things – “not condensing Being’s unity into little quantities” (Conte 13). This enlarges knowledge as a repetition forms across gradients – e.g., atoms and water and air all exist differently, yet have similarities ways of functioning and being. Analogy “lets us overcome the dividing line that separates us from the unintelligible; it is the path that leads from the known to the still unknown” (Conte 13). 

In Lucretian metaphysics, the universe is made of atoms, and they coagulate into a diversity of densities. Despite their common growth (communibus radicibus iuente aevo), these things do not coagulate into a unified totality (DRN 554). Instead, they keep their diversity. They don’t join into one body, but are separate things connected by et. They are an infinite “sum that does not totalize its own elements” (Deleuze 245). This is necessary, a totality, added-up universe is beyond our perception – it is a false image, a phantom of the mind.

The strength of Lucretius’ analogies, for Deleuze, is that they “line up what is sensible, its sensible parts, and the minimum of what can be sensed with what can be thought, the parts that can be thought (i.e., the parts of the atom), and the minimum of what can be thought” (Holmes 327). “Sensible” can be seen as phenomenological and thought can be seen as mental structures. So, analogy allows one to cross the boundaries of sense (like the sky, a person, the finest silt etc.) and thought (like concepts, atoms, the Dow Jones, etc.).

Humans can only perceive within a small bandwidth of the universe – think the visible light spectrum (and whatever new machines add to it). To assign the universe to One, to summation, is to produce a false image of nature. Instead, we must perceive a universe that works alongside our senses. It is philosophy’s purpose to fight these false phantasmic simulacra, to create free humans. This is Deleuze’s naturalism. Experimentation of physics and of the self. We must operate through difference and similarity, through analogy, through the world, through our bodies and minds, and through et.