From Thought to Ethics

The characterisation of thought developed in the last chapter leads us directly to Epicurean and Deleuzean ethics, just as Lucretius himself quickly transitions from discussions of theoretical to practical philosophy in many places in De rerum natura. Between theory and practice, there is a continuum. For Lucretius, as a self-proclaimed Epicurean, ethics plays an important role in his atomism. The meaning of these ethical claims, though, is not as clear as we might expect. Without seeking to refute the standard interpretations of atomic ethics, we will argue for a more nuanced interpretation of Epicureanism, one that stresses health and affirmation as much as tranquillity and undisturbedness, a move that will allow us to connect Epicureanism to Deleuzean ethics. We will link Ancient Greece to contemporary France by means of what Deleuze calls a ‘great tradition’ that follows ‘a secret link between Lucretius, Hume, Spinoza, and Nietzsche’.

While Deleuze situates himself at the end of this tradition, the role ethics plays in his texts remains an open and difficult question. Still, there are ethical moments in Deleuze. Michel Foucault, for example, unequivocally identifies one of Deleuze's main texts as ‘a book of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long time’. Following Foucault's lead, we can contend that there is at least a minimal ethics in Deleuze, one that follows from his commitments to immanence and affirmation. To get a glimpse of this immanent ethics, we can look to some relevant themes in Epicurus and Lucretius. While these concepts will not exhaustively articulate the nature of a Deleuzean ethics, they will help illuminate some of the ethical characteristics that Deleuze most admires about this great tradition.

To begin this journey, let us imagine that we are in the ancient world, some time around the third century BCE. Imagine we are taking a short walk through Ancient Athens, heading north out of the Kerameikos, past the Diplyon Gate, on the way to Plato's Academy. After passing the Stoa, but before reaching the Academy, we come across a small plot of lush land.