Abstract
In this essay I examine Lucretius' poem De Rerum Natura in the light of of its materialism and contribution to natural science, which reveals itself to be at the service of ethics and a philosophical therapy, and not the other way around. Through some reference to Hans Blumenberg and Martha Nussbaum, it is argued that Lucretius' Epicurean philosophy expels the threat of monsters from its system by trying to erase the role of the passions almost completely from human affairs. This was seen by Epicureans like Lucretius as a more effective way to cure human fears than that offered by myth or previous philosophies. The challenge for early modern philosophy, which was attracted to the materialism of Epicureanism but not to its taming of human curiositas, was to re-naturalize the passions. Another way to look at this re-naturalizing of the passions is that it took monsters out of human consciousness, as Lucretius saw it, and put them back into the world again.

Bio
Morgan Meis is an Instructor in Greek and Latin at the Graduate Faculty, New School for Social Research, Senior Consulting Editor of the Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, and founder of the Flux Factory in Queens, New York, where he co-edits the Old Town Review.