Petere imperium quod inanest nec datur umquam

Abstract

Luciano Canfora takes the lucretian sentence petere imperium quod inanest nec datur umquam for the purpose of criticizing the bourgeois political forms of representation. However, he ends up suturing the category of void while interpreting a conception of time and temporality wrongly in De Rerum Natura, which leads him to conceive the Lucretius’ political position as a pure utopia, as a projection of an original anteriority as a political solution, which the central element would be the friendship. I intend to reestablish the category of time/temporality in Lucretius and to propose a hypothesis of reading through a comparative examination of the structure of thought of Spinoza articulating the relationship between utility and friendship and, thus, trying to indicate another understanding of the lucretian political project conception.