Nietzsche and Epicurus: Nature, Health and Ethics

Description

This volume explores Nietzsche’s decisive encounter with the ancient philosopher, Epicurus. The collected essays examine many previously unexplored and underappreciated convergences, and investigate how essential Epicurus was to Nietzsche’s philosophical project through two interrelated overarching themes: nature and ethics. Uncovering the nature of Nietzsche’s reception of, relation to, and movement beyond Epicurus, contributors provide insights into the relationship between suffering, health and philosophy in both thinkers; Nietzsche’s stylistic analysis of Epicurus; the ethics of self-cultivation in Nietzsche's Epicureanism; practices of eating and thinking in Nietzsche and Epicurus; the temporality of Epicurean pleasure; the practice of the gay science, and Epicureanism and politics. The essays also provide creative comparisons with the Stoics, Hobbes, Mill, Guyau, Buddhism, and more. Nietzsche and Epicurus offers original and illuminating perspectives on Nietzsche’s relation to the Hellenistic thinker, in whom Nietzsche saw the embodiment of the practice of philosophy as an art of existing. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgements Contributors Abbreviations Nietzsche Epicurus Introduction Why Nietzsche and Epicurus? Epicurus and modern malaise Contributions Part One: Encounters: Body, mood, geography and the aesthetic Chapter 1: The philosophical literature after Plato: literary prose and philosophical style Introduction Epicurus polygraphus Struggle for prose, struggle for science? Conclusion: A difficult facility Chapter 2: The Gastrosophists! Amuse-bouche: Why food and eating? Potage: Metaphor or truth (or neither) Hors d’oeuvre: Historical parallels Entrée: Food and morals Plat principal: Gastronomy, or the laws of the stomach Dessert: Savouring philosophy Digestif: Eating Nietzsche Chapter 3: ‘Wisdom that walks in bodily form’ The earth, the garden and the ‘Nearest Things’ 2 Paths to affirmation Chapter 4: Epicurean gardens and Nietzsche’s white seas Over tranquil seas: Hermeneutics and palimpsests Reading ambiguity: Between Nietzsche and Epicurus Prescribing happiness: The list Garden gods and Epicurean skies ‘How little is needed for happiness’ Nietzsche’s white seas Chapter 5: What reason is there in the body? What reason is there in the body? What reason is there in Epicurus? What reason is there in Epicurus’s body? Coda: What reason is there in my body? Part Two: Comparative studies Chapter 6: Eternal recurrence 1 Epicurean oblivion 2 Stoic consolation 3 Nietzschean cultivation Conclusion Chapter 7: Nietzsche and Guyau on the temporality of Epicurean pleasure Guyau and Nietzsche ‘The Afternoon of Antiquity’: Nietzsche on Epicurus Guyau on Epicurus: The time of a lifetime Modes of temporality: Guyau and Nietzsche on eternity and the instant Conclusion Chapter 8: Nietzsche, Hobbes and the tradition of political Epicureanism Introduction Nietzsche on Epicurus Epicurus on politics Epicurus on the contract Social contract theory Hobbes on the social contract Hobbes and religion Hobbes and the will Hobbes and Nietzsche Nietzsche on contracts Chapter 9: Passionate individuation I Introduction II.1. Mill on ‘originality’ in human flourishing II.2. Nietzsche’s individualized ideal of ‘becoming what one is’ III Two views on contemporary human flourishing IV Epicurean self-cultivation in Mill and Nietzsche V Conclusion Part Three: Appropriations and ambivalences Chapter 10: And Epicurus triumphs anew’ I Introduction II Situating Epicurus; confronting modernity III Moral decay and modernity IV Epicurean triumph Chapter 11: Enjoying riddles I How are we to gain an insight into what ‘Epicurean’means in Nietzsche’s writings? II Why are Nietzsche’s ‘Epicureans’ called Epicurean? III ‘Epicureanism’ as an affirmative philosophical drive: The mask as a deity Chapter 12: Great politics and the unnoticed life A buried Epicurean teaching Great politics and the Platonic philosopher-legislator Concealment and the discreet therapeutic philosopher Beyond the garden The hidden, helpful Life Part Four: Critical assessments Chapter 13: Nietzsche con/tra Epicurus Introduction I II III Conclusion Chapter 14: ‘The milieu in which he moved as a foreign figure’ I II III IV V VI Conclusion Bibliography Index