Nietzsche and Epicurus - by Vinod Acharya & Ryan J Johnson (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

The editors have put together an astonishingly rich volume of essays that demands the attention of all readers of Nietzsche, as well as anyone interested in the possibilities of philosophy, and philosophy as a way of life, today. Each essay in the volume contains fresh insights, as well as thoughtful proposals for novel ways of thinking and living. In staging such an instructive series of encounters between Nietzsche and Epicurus the volume provides new directions for philosophical thinking, and nothing could be more vitally pertinent to our contemporary planetary situation than this.

This wide-ranging and impressive volume brings together essays on the Nietzsche-Epicurus relationship by established and emerging scholars. By examining in detail the diverse ways in which Epicurus was an influence upon and a spur to Nietzsche's philosophy, and why Nietzsche developed criticisms of Epicurus, the collection fills a gap in the available scholarship.
Rebecca Bamford, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Quinnipiac University, USA and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, University of Fort Hare, South Africa

About the Author

Ryan Johnson is assistant professor of philosophy, Elon University, USA. He is the author of The Deleuze-Lucretius Encounter (2018) and Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics (2018).

Vinod Acharya is Senior Instructor in Philosophy, Seattle University, USA. He is author of Nietzsche's Meta- Existentialism (2013).