Prize Scholar: Eric Sheng

I am a doctoral student in philosophy. My thesis is a study of the defence of hedonism (the view that happiness, well-being or the ultimate end of action consists in pleasure), and the interpretation of the hedonism of Epicurus, by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, scientist and scholar Pierre Gassendi. Though acknowledged as one of the most important early modern philosophers, Gassendi has been quite little studied, in part because his writings are in a fairly difficult Latin and little is available in translation. My thesis takes the form of an edition and translation of, and commentary on, part of Gassendi’s Animadversiones in decimum librum Diogenis Laërtii. A wider question by which it is partly motivated is that of how hedonism, still marginal in sixteenth-century European thought, became mainstream by the eighteenth century. I have also worked in the past few years on early modern European epistemology, nineteenth-century British philosophy, and various topics in (contemporary) political philosophy and metaphysics.

I have received travel grants from the college for presenting my work at several conferences in Europe and America. Through an exchange programme between Merton and the École normale supérieure, I spent a year at the ENS in Paris. I am grateful to the Warden and Fellows for these forms of support and for electing me to a prize scholarship. Merton is, moreover, an exceptionally well administered college, which makes good provision for the practical needs of members.