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D. Konstan, a prominent figure in the world of classics, gives a revised version of his book, Some aspects of Epicurean Psychology, published by E.J. Brill in 1973, which became quickly a classic of the studies on Epicureanism. A great amount of books and articles have been written over these last decades on the Epicurean doctrine, and a lot of new texts were studied with great accuracy, especially through new editions of the Hercunaleum papyri. However, Konstan's intuitions and interpretations have remained a permanent reference for scholars since they brought a rich amount of fresh and suggestive concepts which, always backed up with thorough philological analysis, continue to open, more than thirty years after, new paths to research. A new edition of this book, with a rich introduction entirely new and an accurately revised bibliography, will be welcomed by all those who work on Hellenistic philosophy, but, at the same time, it will be read with great interest by those who try to understand the history of the main concepts of occidental psychological language. It is an evident topic that one and the same word may have very different meanings in different doctrines. Pathos was a technical word of Greek philosophy, frequently used in diverse contexts by a large number of philosophers. In his introduction, Konstan tries, with great accuracy, to establish which were the exact relations in Epicureanism between concepts such as passion, sensation, pleasure and pain. This configuration is studied in Greek of course, but also in Latin, with many interesting remarks about the nuances between the two languages. But it is also interesting to see how Konstan connects traditional problematics with such a fascinating and always actual problem as the relation between consciousness and unconciousness.
Especially illuminating in the first chapter is the decision to read Lucretius as a real philosopher and not only as a gifted adaptator, a tendency which is always vivid among scholars. The relation between irrational fears and irrational desires is described in a very convincing way, with interesting references to the Platonic Philebus as a paradoxal source for some aspects of the Epicurean doctrine of pleasure. But irrational fears and desires cannot be isolated from social aspects. For Epicureans, soul was not only a very complex organization of atomic mechanisms and conscious superstructures, but also a historical entity the functioning of which can't be understood without refering to a conceptual archaeology of language and institutions. All this is associated with a subtle study of the attitude of the Epicureans towards established political authority, which is one of the most often misunderstood points of the doctrine.
The last part of the book is devoted to epistemology. The connection relies on the fact that irrational fears and desires have their origins in false opinion or believes. In this third chapter, Aristotle is intensively present, on the line of Furley's interpretation. One of the most interesting ideas developed by Konstan in these last pages is the fascinating idea that in the descriptions of purely subjective states of awareness, the Epicureans defended a serious application of the language used by Plato, and in the mystery cults with respect to religious or idealistic notions that Epicureanism rejected. This ability to find real and deep convergences between such different doctrines is one of the characteristics of this very valuable and useful book, the publication of which I endorse warmly.
—Carlos Lévy,
Professeur à l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne
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