Word: epicurus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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JEAN-FRANÇOIS REVEL, French author (Neither Marx nor Jesus): A great leader has original ideas and succeeds in having them accepted by millions or billions. These ideas can be wonderful or dreadful. Thus I have chosen the Athenian philosopher Epicurus and Adolf Hitler-the best and the worst. Epicurus because he defined a model way of life that was followed and is still followed today by many billions of people, which makes them happy without hurting anyone. Hitler because he had as much influence, although of an evil sort, through his ideas, which meant misery and destruction...
...Notebook) encounter a remnant of the ancient past-an old house with statues intact and frescoes that look, unfortunately, like WPA murals. Air from the outside is eating rapidly away at the paintings, turning them to dust. Later Fellini recruits Gore Vidal, perhaps the closest living descendant of Epicurus, to discourse ironically on Rome's inevitable disintegration. The film ends with shots of helmeted motorcyclists roaring over dark, deserted streets...
Meanwhile, 34 authors of merely "good" books, chosen from the 100 or so that Adler reads each year, have been added, including works by Epicurus, Martin Luther and six writers of the 20th century: Historian Arnold Toynbee, Physicist Max Planck, Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and Novelists Henry James, Franz Kafka and Alexander Solzhenitsyn...
Contemplating the script and his relationship to Eric and Erika gives Vidal yet another opportunity to do his Epicurus act: pleasure seen as the beginning and end of the good life, death seen as nothing more than the beginning of a blessed reduction into soulless, primordial atoms. He observes that power is customarily pursued for its own sake and dismisses idealism from political behavior. Wearily he views America as a violent, uncivilized land full of literal-minded people with no sense of paradox. Its writers are inferior to those of Europe, ditto its food, and its attitude toward taboos...