The Epicurean Republic is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and award-winning author and independent scholar Matthew Stewart. In his later years, Thomas Jefferson referred to “the revolutionary part of the [American] Revolution”, which for him meant the founding ideals that would serve as a model for the world on how to build a modern state, as opposed to an incidental squabble between one country and its former colonists.
This wide-ranging conversation explores how many of these ideals that Jefferson referred to are part of an intellectual thread that passes through key Enlightenment thinkers such as Spinoza and can be traced all the way back to Epicurus.
This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, The Collective Unconscious, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter:
- Setting the Stage – Clues from a mountain man
- Deism – Functional atheism?
- The Power of Ideas – Tracing a path
- The Pursuit of Happiness – Well beyond hedonism
- The Heart of the Matter – Religious sentiment, exceptionalism and the future
Available in electronic format on all major booksellers, including:
The Epicurean Republic is also part of the five-part Ideas Roadshow Collection, Conversations About History, Volume 3, which is available in hardcover, paperback and electronic format.
Matthew Stewart is also featured in 3 documentary-style compilations together with several other renowned scholars. Available on Ideas Roadshow’s digital resources platforms plus Kanopy and Boclips.
