Epikur w dziele Nietzschego i Foucaulta: nauczyciel sztuki życia czy dekadent?

The picture of Epicurus that emerges from Nietzsche’s writings (from Human, All Too Human onwards) is radically different from the way Foucault presents the Greek philosopher in his lectures entitled Hermeneutics of the Subject, given in 1982 at the Collège de France. The difference is also visible in Nietzsche’s and Foucault’s attitude to the ancient Greeks – the former admired them as “the best turned out, most beautiful, most envied type of humanity to date, those most apt to seduce us to life,” the former called them one big misunderstanding. The separate views, however, do have something in common: both philosophers underscore the anti -Platonic character of Epicurus’ thought: in Foucault’s writings it is manifested as the opposition of paideia -physiologia in his narrative of the art of living, whereas in Nietzsche’s case it is also entangled in his criticism of Christianity. But whereas for the French philosopher Epicurus was only one of many representatives of the ancient ethics of caring for self (and not much more than a footnote for Foucault), the relation between Nietzsche and the ancient Greek thinker is much more dynamic – it is not free from identifications, and it is severed abruptly the moment Dionysus and the genealogy of power enter Nietzsche’s work.