Enrico Piergiacomi

I am an assistant professor in History of Ancient/Modern Philosophy at the Department of Humanities and Arts of the Technion | Israel Institute of Technology, who is specialized in Presocratic thought and Hellenistic philosophy. His main research field consists of the study of ancient philosophy, early modern philosophy, philosophy of science, and theology/religion, with a special interest in its contemporary ethical implications. He also works on aesthetics and the history of theatre, in particular on the dissemination project Teatrosofia.

Since starting my research career I have pursued a number of major interdisciplinary projects that combined the history of philosophy, theology, ethics, as well as the history of the sciences. My first monograph (Storia delle antiche teologie atomiste [History of Ancient Atomistic Theologies], Sapienza University Press, 2017) investigates the “atomistic theologies” of Democritus, Epicurus and the later Epicureans and their moral implications. My book highlights the ways in which ancient atomism engaged with the scientific theories of the time. It shows that ancient atomistic theology was heavily influenced by disciplines such as: 1) physics, from which the above-mentioned philosophers derived the belief that nature could work without any kind of divine control; 2) medicine, which gave them an understanding of the matter and of the mind/body union; 3) and epistemology, or, more precisely, the study of the origins, formation and nature of ideas.

In 2019 I was awarded the International Grant “The Reception of Lucretius and Roman Epicureanism from the Middle Ages to the 18th Century” for a project on the reception of the theological verses of the De rerum natura by the Christian philosopher Pierre Gassendi. This grant has allowed me also to write my second monograph («Amicus Lucretius». Gassendi, il «De rerum natura» e l’edonismo cristiano [«Amicus Lucretius». Gassendi, the De rerum natura and Christian He-donism], De Gruyter, 2022). My goal was to fill an important gap in existing scholarship on the reception of Epicurean philosophy in the early modern period by producing the first-ever systematic monographic study of Gassendi’s engagement with Lucretius. The book’s main thesis is that Gas-+sendi uses the scientific and ethical verses of Lucretius in order to develop a theory of “Christian Hedonism”, i.e. the idea that God wants humankind to experience the good of pleasure, which, according to Epicurus, is the absence of pain from the body and the soul. At the same time, Gassendi makes some “corrections” to what he perceives as the “errors” of Epicurean theology, namely its belief in the mortality of the soul and the independence of nature from the divine will, and its rejection of providence and final causes. My monograph also tries to reconstruct the historical context of Gassendi’s project. On the one hand, I compare Gassendi’s use of the De rerum natura with the study of the poem by Renaissance scientists, such as Girolamo Mercuriale and Girolamo Fracastoro. On the other hand, I reconstruct the antecedents of Christian hedonism. Before Gassendi, the idea that God’s will consists in allowing human beings to experience the good of pleasure was advocated (e.g.) by Coluccio Salutati, Francesco Filelfo, Lorenzo Valla, and Erasmus of Rotterdam.

My current research interests lie in the following four areas: A) the ancient roots of early modern philosophers’ scientific/ethical perspectives; B) the history of science in connection with ethics and theology; C) the theory of matter and its medical applications and premises; D) the justification of human action and free will within the framework of atomistic physics. In July 2021, I started writing my third monograph provisionally entitled The Pleasures of Piety. The History of a Neglected Religious Tradition. This book stems from the project I have been working on during my time as Francesco de Dombrowski Fellow at Villa I Tatti | The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (July 2021 – June 2022). Its aim is to investigate the relationship between pleasure and religion and the reception of Epicurus’ thought in the works of a number of early modern philosophers, including Coluccio Salutati, Francesco Filelfo, Lorenzo Valla, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Pierre Gassendi. Although the focus of this study is on early modern ethics, it will also devote significant attention to the history of science, for the notion of pleasure that emerges from the works of the above-mentioned thinkers is not only moral, but also physical and psychological.

During his affiliation with the Center for Religious Sciences (FBK-ISR), I carry on this last project within the research areas Spirituality and Lifestyle and Innovation in Religion. I focus especially on how religious discourse operates innovative transformations on the social / cultural level.

Finally, he is responsible for Di peste e passione. It is a project dedicated to the history of human emotional reactions to the pandemic.