Abstract

“Our acts shall be misunderstood [falsch verstanden], as Epicurus is misunderstood! […] I want to be misunderstood for a long time”.1 So proclaims Nietzsche in a notebook passage from 1883, thereby making one of several positive claims for identification with the Hellenistic Greek philosopher from Samos.2 Epicurus, the full remark suggests, was untimely—misunderstood, unappreciated by his contemporaries—much as Nietzsche himself aims to be untimely; and this point is hardly the only moment of convergence between the two thinkers. Although he is not quite the most discussed Greek philosopher in Nietzsche’s writing—Plato and Socrates appear more frequently— Epicurus is an undeniably persistent..