Bloomsbury Academic Nietzsche and Epicurus: Nature, Health and Ethics

Product 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. Review "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 Vinod Acharya is Instructor of Philosophy at Seattle University, USA.Ryan J. Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Elon University in North Carolina, USA.