Nietzsche and Epicurus

Vinod Acharya, Ryan J. Johnson, Vinod Acharya, Ryan J. Johnson

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781350279162
• eBook ISBN: 9781350086326
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ecology

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.

Part One

Encounters: Body, mood, geography and the aesthetic

1

The philosophical literature after Plato: literary prose and philosophical style

The case of Epicurus

Carlotta Santini

Introduction¹

The question of Nietzsche’s relationship with Greek philosophy, or rather with specific figures and personalities of ancient philosophy, constitutes a complex field of study that has yet to be exhausted. Nietzsche engaged directly with many philosophers: Socrates and Plato in particular, Aristotle and the debate on the Poetics and even pre-Platonic philosophers such as Heraclitus. Within this panorama, the figure of Epicurus is perhaps not one of the most apparent. In fact, he received much less attention than the aforementioned ancient authors, and Nietzsche’s attitude towards the philosopher from Samos can often be said to be ambiguous.

Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s treatment of Epicurus can be considered in many ways exemplary. In a brief series of texts and excerpts, Nietzsche’s reading of Epicurus reveals the same criticisms levelled towards ancient philosophy in general, which always manifest themselves on different levels: from metaphysical–theoretical to ethical–moral, social–historical to existential, through to stylistic and literary. In this chapter I will adopt this latter approach, focusing in particular on Nietzsche’s criticism of Epicurus the ‘writer’ and his style, and reconstructing his role within the literary landscape of antiquity. I will base my analysis in particular on 1) Nietzsche’s Lessons on the History of Greek Literature, given in Basel between 1874 and 1876; 2) some letters he exchanged with the musician Heinrich Köselitz (better known as Peter Gast) concerning Epicurus; and 3) on a group of Posthumous Fragments from 1874 (group 35), particularly significant for treating the question of style in relation to Epicurus. As we will see, this kind of historical–literary observation has important implications for the philosophical evaluation of the author.

Epicurus polygraphus

Among the few well-circumscribed textual passages concerning the figure of Epicurus, Nietzsche’s letters to Heinrich Köselitz offer perhaps the best-known and most coherent context.² The first mention of the philosopher from Samos in his correspondence with the musician dates back to 1879, reaching its peak in 1883. In particular, in a letter dating from the end of August 1883 (KSB 6:460), Nietzsche comments with great enthusiasm on the ‘news’ (not especially up-to-the-minute if truth be told) of an archaeological discovery in the city of Herculaneum, which had brought to light an entire archive once belonging to a patrician of Epicurean sympathies.³ Nietzsche’s enthusiasm stemmed from his hope that the site would provide access, sooner or later, to fragments or even entire scrolls of Epicurean works.

What interested Nietzsche, therefore, was the possibility of having direct access to Epicurus’s texts, to the ipssissima verba. This interest in the original (or the occasional Roman copy) had a double philological motive. The first and most obvious one was to draw directly from the source of Epicurean thought without having to go through ‘Epicureans’ or anti-Epicurean detractors (which always implies an interpretation or manipulation). Even today, in fact, our knowledge of Epicurean doctrine mostly passes through the simultaneously ‘turbid and refined lens’ of Lucretius (D 72) or that of the historical contenders to the Epicurean school, the Stoics – notably, as Nietzsche reminds us, through Seneca (KSB 6:446).⁴ It is not only the idea of gaining access to Epicurus’s thought that interests Nietzsche, however, but also the availability of his writings tout court; that is, the possibility of being able to read works written ‘by the hand’ of Epicurus. Nietzsche’s primary interest in Epicurus is, in fact, an eminently literary one.

The ‘irony of fame’ (KSB 6:446) and the inscrutable fatum libellorum (KSA 1: 811) made that few testimonies and no complete works by one of the most prolific authors of antiquity have survived, despite the fact that Epicurus was best known for his writings. In his Lessons on the History of Greek Literature, Epicurus is mentioned in a list of the most famous ‘polygraphs’ of history, alongside others including the grammarian and poet Callimachus and the philosophers Chrysippus, Aristotle and Theophrastus. In Raphael’s famous fresco The School of Athens, Epicurus is depicted surrounded by wine leaves (a Dionysian attribute) with his head bowed over a book, in the act of writing. Tradition recognizes him as the father of 300 books.⁵

In the wake of Diogenes Laertius, whose Lives of Eminent Philosophers represents the most important source for the life of Epicurus, Nietzsche reports that the philosopher’s followers were particularly proud of their master, who was always original despite writing a lot. The ancient confrontation or even clash between Epicurus and the philosopher Chrysippus also focused on this particular aspect of polygraphy.

Apollodorus of Athens in his Collection of Doctrines, wishing to show that what Epicurus wrote with force and originality unaided by quotations was far greater in amount than the books of Chrysippus, says, to quote his exact words, ‘If one were to strip the books of Chrysippus of all extraneous quotations, his pages would be left bare.’ So much for Apollodorus. Of Chrysippus the old woman who sat beside him used to say, according to Diocles, that he wrote 500 lines a day. Hecato says that he came to the study of philosophy, because the property which he had inherited from his father had been confiscated to the king’s treasury. (Diogenes Laertius 7.181)

In his text Diogenes Laertius warns us that many of the testimonies concerning Epicurus have been distorted by his detractors.⁶ The news reported at the end of the quotation by Diocles and Hecato, for example, conceals two very precise criticisms that were levelled at Epicurus, and which can be summarized as follows: writing too much and writing tout court.

Let us start with the latter. Criticism of the practice of writing in the Greek world is a very complex issue, on which ancient authors expressed themselves on several occasions. Writing has been accused variously of being detrimental to memory, of providing an illusion of knowledge,⁷ of weakening reasoning and of prejudicing philosophy,⁸ which should only be carried out in the true dialectic. The Socratic Diktat, according to which philosophy is exercised only in free speech, was also one of the traditional elements used to distinguish the true philosophers from the false masters, the Sophists. Hecato’s allusion to the economic hardships endured by Epicurus after the confiscation of his patrimony is a clear insinuation that risks placing him on an equal footing with the Sophists and those who, like them, commercialized knowledge through public teaching. The very act of writing can be compromising, according to Nietzsche, who once again quotes Plato in support of this thesis: ‘You know yourself that the most influential and important men in our cities are ashamed to write speeches and leave writings behind them, through fear of being called sophists by posterity’ (Plato 1913: 257d; KGW II/5, 31).⁹

But Epicurus himself would not have been insensitive to this anathema towards writing. One of the dictates of the ‘Epicurean wise man’, mentioned by Nietzsche in his Lessons on the History of Greek Literature, was, in fact, ‘to leave written words behind him, but not to publish them’.¹⁰ For example, a dialogue’s transcription was intended to spread and facilitate its reception among the students of the Epicurean School, as well as to hand down to posterity a sort of portrait of the teacher; it could not and should not, however, go beyond its circle of sympathizers to become widespread in the public domain or, ev en worse, to become a business tool. Now, the extraordinary editorial fortune of Epicurean writing tells a different story. In fact, the unsatisfactory formulation of this ambiguous precept is proof in itself of the conflicting attitude of Epicurus – one of the most famous polygraphs of antiquity – towards writing. In a not dissimilar way, recalls Nietzsche, another famous opponent of writing in philosophy, Plato, ‘wrote a lot for someone who considers writing only a beautiful παγΚάλη παɭδιά’.¹¹

If Hecato insinuates that Epicurus, just like the Sophists, became a writer for venal reasons, even the information reported by Diocles, according to which the philosopher wrote up to 500 lines a day, conceals latent criticism: not only did Epicurus feel the reprehensible need to write but he also wrote a great deal, and wrote quickly. Throughout his lifetime Nietzsche repeatedly accused the contemporary publishing industry of being compulsive and bulimic. He is well known for his reserved attitude towards journalism, which swamped the world with books of dubious interest, devaluing literature and demeaning style.¹²

In his Lessons on the History of Greek Literature Nietzsche provides many examples in favour of parsimony in the art of writing, careful balance in the choice of vocabulary and ongoing honing of style. That prolificity (and prolixity) were rare and unwelcome in antiquity can be proven by an anecdote concerning the tragedian Euripides:

Euripides once told a tragic poet that he had finished three verses in three days with great effort, to which the poet replied that he had instead composed a hundred verses. In response to these words Euripides replied: ‘But here is the difference: your verses will only last three days, mine will last forever.’ (KGW II/5, 123)¹³

But even the modern age offers Nietzsche some good examples of economy in writing: Goethe speaks of how, when writing the second part of Faust, he transcribed, in one good day, as many lines as his hand could cover (KGW II/5, 317).

Writing a lot and writing rapidly means writing badly, that is, without care, re-reading or leaving time for the language to settle down and the style to develop. The damage is first and foremost aesthetic, but it could easily become ethical since the absence of ‘rumination’ harms not only the language in question but also the thought processes developed and expressed through it. But Nietzsche’s position towards Epicurus seems to suspend the judgement on this point. Epicurus wrote a lot, therefore he wrote badly? His detractors would certainly seem to think so. The grammarian Aristophanes judges Epicurus’s way of writing as uncultivated (ὶδιωτικωτάτη) and Cicero, in Brutus, defines the Epicurean education as very unsuited to eloquence.¹⁴

Nietzsche is less strict on this point. This is not just a case of excessive writing or journalistic superficiality. Among the aforementioned duties attributed to the Epicurean sage, enumerated in Nietzsche’s Lessons on the History of Greek literature, the second one warns against speaking well:

οὔτε ρητορεύειν καλῶς [Don’t speak well]: so states another precept. Of course, the Epicurean sage is accused not only of being pure in expression, but also of being ἀμαθής [uncultivated]. The Epicurean wise man challenged the education of the time precisely in relation to linguistics and polyhistory.¹⁵ Athen, XIII, 588 states: ‘Knowing everything does not mean being an initiate.’ Epicurus himself in his letter to Pythocles says: ‘Raise your sails, my friend, and escape all kinds of culture.’¹⁶

A spe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One Encounters: Body, mood, geography and the aesthetic
• Part Two Comparative studies
• Part Three Appropriations and ambivalences
• Part Four Critical assessments
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright