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Nietzsche and Epicurean Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

A. H. J. Knight
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Extract

Nietzsche's opinions on philosophy and aesthetics developed under strong and lasting impulses from classical antiquity. These were not always the same, for at various periods in his life Nietzsche placed Heraclitus, Empedocles, Aeschylus, and even Socrates and Plato on the highest summit of wisdom. In his so-called first stage of development the pre-Socratics (especially Heraclitus) were generally his favourite thinkers, and in the third and last stage these same figures tend to come into prominence again. On the other hand, in the works of Nietzsche's second, rationalistic period, when he was particularly influenced by Comte, Voltaire, and Darwin, Socrates and Plato—usually so hated and despised—are mentioned with affection, with gratitude or even with warm enthusiasm; and so, over and over again, is Epicurus.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 8 , Issue 32 , October 1933 , pp. 431 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1933

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References

page 431 Note 1 Andler, Charles, in Nietzsche, sa vie et sa pensee, 6 vols., Paris, 1920–1931;Google Scholar and Muckle, Friedrich, in Nietzsche und der Zusammenbruch der Kultur, Vol. I, pp. 137 ff., Munich, 1920.Google Scholar

page 431 Note 2 Aphorism 68.

page 436 Note 1 This Nietzsche always says of Epicureanism that it is a view of life which makes men more sensitive and more intelligent.

page 436 Note 2 This seems as if it must have reference to the period of suffering through which Nietzsche himself had now passed.

page 437 Note 1 Usener, , Epicurea, Fragment 219.Google Scholar

page 437 Note 2 Hicks, R. D., Stoic and Epicurean, p. 153. (London, 1911.)Google Scholar

page 438 Note 1 I.e., those who do not take a materialist view of the world, who seek for another reality behind phenomena.

page 438 Note 2 Epicurea, paragraphs 79, 80.

page 438 Note 3 Here in the case of both philosophers we have to do with a form of pluralism, which proceeds from the scientific positivist thought of epochs akin to one another. See Muckle, , op. cit., pp. 137 ff.Google Scholar

page 439 Note 1 It seems to me scarcely necessary to bring forward any evidence that Nietzsche was above all a moral philosopher, that he valued and cultivated Ethics above all other parts of philosophy, and that the non-ethical portions of his work are the least valuable.

page 439 Note 2 Cf., e.g., Nietzsche, , Philologica, p. 329 f.Google Scholar

page 439 Note 3 Epicurea, pp. 59 ff.

page 440 Note 1 And also passages like the Midnight-song in Zarathustra.

page 440 Note 2 Except in Nietzsche’s middle works.

page 440 Note 3 Op. cit., p. 173.

page 440 Note 4 By this it is not meant or suggested that Zarathustra’s style was influenced by the style of the Epicurean letter.

page 440 Note 5 The not uncommon school-forming power of ethical pathos.

page 440 Note 6 Epicurea, p. 75, sect. 3.

page 441 Note 1 Epicurea, p. 78, sect. 8.

page 441 Note 2 Ibid., p. 72.

page 441 Note 3 Ibid., p. 77, sect. 11.

page 442 Note 1 De Rerum Natura, I, 146 seq.

page 442 Note 2 Except at the time while he was undergoing a reaction against Wagner.

page 443 Note 1 Namely, in the deviation of the atoms from the straight line: compare passages such as Lucretius, II, 216 seq.

page 444 Note 1 Epicurea, paragraphs 76, 77.