Under the Epicurean skies

Abstract

Whatever it is, bad weather or good, the loss of a friend, sickness, slander, the failure of some letter to arrive, the spraining of an ankle, a glance into a shop, a counter-argument, the opening of a book, a dream, a fraud—either immediately or very soon after it proves to be something that “must not be missing”; it has a profound significance and use precisely for us. Is there any more dangerous seduction that might tempt one to renounce one's faith in the gods of Epicurus who have no care and are unknown, and to believe instead in some petty deity who is full of care and personally knows every little hair on our head and finds nothing nauseous in the most miserable small service?

 Nietzsche The Gay Science § 277 1

Notes

Notes

1 For Nietzsche, I have made use of the following editions: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986); Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982); Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973); The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974); The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1968); Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968).

2 See A.-J. Festugière, Épicure et ses dieux (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1946); P. Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. Arnold I. Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); What is Ancient Philosophy?, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2002).

3 A distinction clearly described by H. Jones, The Epicurean Tradition (London: Routledge, 1989) 37.

4 The aphorism of The Gay Science that seems to promise an answer, § 375 “Why we look like Epicureans,” is addressed to a “we” of “modern men” whose Epicureanism is restricted to a combination of mistrust and “jubilant curiosity.”

5 Beyond Good and Evil, Preface.

6 The Anti-Christ § 58.

7 The Will to Power § 196 (Nov. 1887–Mar. 1888); see also The Anti-Christ: “Christianity as the formula for outbidding all the subterranean cults, those of Osiris, the Great Mother, of Mithras for example, and for summing them up: it is in this insight that the genius of Paul consists” (ibid.).

8 Nietzsche's view of the Platonic inspiration of the “subterranean cults” seems indebted to Johann Jakob Bachofen's 1867 work Die Unsterblichkeitslehre der orphischen Theologie auf den grabdenkmalern des Altertums nach Anleitung einer vase aus Canosa im besitiz des Herrn Prosper Biardot dargestellt.

9 The Will to Power § 438.

10 The Will to Power § 437.

11 The Will to Power § 449, a view exhaustively developed in Pierre Hadot's readings of Epicurus, readings which will be seen are close to the medical model of philosophising put into question by Nietzsche.

12 “As decadence: pendant to ‘Epicureanism’—Paradise, as conceived by the Greeks, also only the ‘garden of Epicurus’” (The Will to Power § 225).

13 The Gay Science § 370.

14 The Anti-Christ § 30.

15 Beyond Good and Evil § 7; in The Wanderer and his Shadow (in Human, All Too Human) § 227 “Eternal Epicurus,” Nietzsche reports that Epicurus is alive and well, having forgotten his own name and enjoying no reputation among the philosophers.

16 An opposition that informs the traditional perspective of Christian Epicureanism that begins with Gassendi continues to informs Festugière's classic Épicure et ses dieux first published in 1946.

17 The Wanderer and his Shadow § 295.

18 See the “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” to The Birth of Tragedy §§ 1 and 4.

19 The Wanderer and his Shadow § 7.

20 See B. Inwood and L.P. Gerson, The Epicurus Reader (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994) vi.

21 Inwood-Gerson 28; Epicurea nell’edizione di Hermann Usener, ed. Ilaria Ramelli (Milan: Bompiani, 2002) 170–71.

22 Ibid. 30; 180.

23 Ibid. 31; 184.

24 The Gay Science § 45: “Ich sehe sein Auge auf ein weites, weissliches Meer blicken, uber uferfelsen hin, auf denen die Sonne liegt, wahrend grosses und kleines Getier in ihrem lichte spielt, sicher und ruhig wie dies Licht und jenes Auge selber.”

25 See “The Sun Sinks,” in Dithyrambs of Dionysus, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1984) 49, and note also “To the Mistral: A Dancing Song,” in The Gay Science. The Dionysos Dithyramben are replete with weather metaphors, from the “abgehellter Luft” of the opening Nur Narr! Nur Dichter! to the “regenloser Land” of the closing Von der Armut des Reichsten.

26 For a summary of this complex philosophical debate, see the introductory note to the Letter to Pythocles in Ilaria Rarnelli's edition of Usener's Epicurea 123–27. Current consensus inclines towards accepting its authenticity.

27 Lucretius's opening evocation of Venus is cast in terms of the fertility occasioned by fine weather.

28 My understanding of ancient meteorology is indebted to Liba Taub, Ancient Meteorology (London: Routledge, 2003).

29 Aristotle, Meteorology 338a21.

30 Meteorology 339a8.

31 Meteorology 338a20.

32 Inwood-Gerson 17 and 18; Usener-Ramelli 108 and 114.

33 Ibid. 17; 110.

34 Ibid. 17; 110.

35 Ibid. 17; 110.

36 Ibid. 18; 116.

37 Ibid. 19; 124.

38 Ibid. 20; 124.

39 Ibid. 20; 126.

40 Ibid. 24; 146.

41 Ibid. 23 and 27; 160.

42 Inwood-Gerson 38; Epicuro Opere, ed. Graziano Arrighetti (Turin: Einaudi, 1973) 151.

43 Drawing attention in an important footnote (p. 57, n. 3) to the themes of the herald and the call, relating both to hermetic and mithraic sources.

44 Inwood-Gerson 37; Arrighetti 149.