Shelley's Intellectual System and its Epicurean Background

Scholars do not agree on how best to describe Shelley’s philosophical stance. His work has been variously taken to be that of a skeptic or a skeptical and subjective idealist. The study presents a new interpretation of Shelley’s thinking – an interpretation that places ‘intellectual system’ squarely within the Epicurean tradition of Lucretius, casting both poets as theistic empiricists.

To establish Shelley as working in the Epicurean tradition, this study explores Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura...