The Epicurean Republic

This book 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:

I. Setting the Stage - Clues from a mountain man
II. Deism - Functional atheism?
III. The Power of Ideas - Tracing a path
IV. The Pursuit of Happiness - Well beyond hedonism
V. The Heart of the Matter - Religious sentiment, exceptionalism and the future



About Ideas Roadshow Conversations:


This book is part of an expanding series of 100+ Ideas Roadshow conversations, each one presenting a wealth of candid insights from a leading expert through a focused yet informal setting to give non-specialists a uniquely accessible window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn't otherwise be encountered through standard lectures and textbooks.