Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence (Eternal Return) In Relation To Lucretius

I hesitate to open this thread at the moment because I don't have time to continue it, but we'll now have this here in case someone searches for "Eternal Recurrence" or "Eternal Return" and wants to talk about how it may relate to Lucretius Book 3:

Today I finally made some progress in reviewing the book "Nietzsche and Epicurus." I am probably only about half way through it. While there is definitely a lot of useful information in it, at least at the present I would not recommend it.

Here's an example, which I find to be a represenhensible outlook, but also an outlook that is indicative of people who want to place "relief from pain" as the center of Epicurean philosophy rather than pleasure. Because of course if relief from pain is your main concern, you wouldn't want to live forever (because you'd just keep encountering more pain and suffering.

And you would NOT want to experience eternal recurrence, whether you could remember yourself from lifetime or lifetime or not, because of course by golly that would mean that you or someone else was experiencing the pain and suffering of being alive.

To repeat I find this to be both profoundly inaccurate and truly reprehensible ---totally opposite to both the spirit of Epicurean philosophy and the specific statement of Epicurus in the letter to Menoeceus that life is desirable.

But this is where you get to when you analyze Epicurus from an essentially negative / Buddhist perspective and conclude that the most important thing for any Epicurean is to avoid even a moment of pain. Truly a death-wish and death-worship:

Quote from Epicurus and Nietzsche Chapter 6 - Eternal Recurrence - Epicurean Oblivion, Stoic Consolation.... - Michael Ure and Thomas Ryan

Let us sum up the Epicurean treatment of the doctrine of eternal recurrence. Lucretius claims that a proper grasp of recurrence demonstrates the irrationality of our anxiety about future recurrences. We believe that we have grounds for anxiety about our future selves because we assume that this recurrence of the same configuration of atoms means we will once again experience the same sufferings we presently endure. Yet, Lucretius argues, we ought to have no fear for the future because we are psychologically insulated from our future selves. Just as we will not be there when we die, so too Lucretius claims we will not be there when we recur. As we have seen, Lucretius’ argument is flawed on two separate fronts: on an ‘identity’ reading, Epicurean metaphysics does not warrant the non-identity of recurrent individuals, and on a ‘concern’ reading, it provides non-mnemonic grounds for anticipating or fearing future recurrences

Indeed, against Lucretius, it seems that the Epicurean notion of recurrence must compound my present suffering. Epicurean physics requires that I must admit that I will suffer again, rather than sink into eternal oblivion at the moment of death. The knowledge of my return must intensify and compound my present suffering because I know that I will experience it again and again. I cannot live tranquilly in the knowledge of eternal oblivion, but I must suffer in anticipation of the repetition of my past, present and unknowable future sufferings.

Lucretius’ Epicurean therapy aims to show that death is redemption from the recurrence of life. Epicureans do not want recurrence (the return to life) or, indeed, immortality (the extension of life). To Lucretius the prospect of definitive death is preferable to immortality or recurrence because it eliminates all possibility of pain and sorrow. Since the only pleasure Epicureans value is the absence of all pain, death delivers this end definitively. Lucretius suggests that death is not terrifying since it is like a restful sleep, except it is an eternal, unbroken sleep in which ‘no longing for ourselves [will] trouble us’ (3.920).

Yes I will readily admit that some people come at this for reasons that are understandable due to unfortunate personal situations, and I have no desire to criticize any individual who may be sincerely in a bad place or mistaken as to their rhetoric.

But words have consequences, and the choice to focus on a "half empty" view of life has many bad ones, and should not be held up as an accurate or desirable view of Epicurus.

There's a philosophical conflict going on in the world that is creating a lot of unnecessary suffering. The embrace of life is the the right direction, not normalizing a fixation on suffering as an acceptable attitude for most people in most normal situations.

If you read the part I quoted, this is not being written by people who are saying that they are coming from a particularly bad place. This is written by people who think that they are accurately categorizing Epicurean philosophy the way that Epicurus promoted it. And I don't doubt their sincerity either -- this viewpoint has become the drumbeat for hundreds of years and you're not going to escape from it if you don't affirmatively work to punch your way out.

I find find the attitude i quoted offensive, and I feel offended on behalf of the ancient Epicureans that the modern "authorities" would take their philosophy of pleasure and embrace of life and turn it into into an excuse for seeing death as the ultimate reward of life rather than pleasure.

Thank Apollo or whoever that Epicurus did include in his letter to Menoeceus a reference to the desirability of life and ridicule of those who say it would be better to never have been born, or once born hasten to death.

If he hadn't included those references we'd be facing an even steeper hill to climb than we already are!

EDIT: And for the sake of absolutely clarity I will repeat: I am not intending to criticize Jack Gedney or anyone else in particular. We are hundreds of years into a major problem and no person alive now was a major contributor in creating that problem. All each of us can do now is decide if we are going to be part of perpetuating the problem or helping push back against it.

While the "big picture" issue of how to present Epicurus was what spurred my additions to this thread, I do think it is probably also worth confirming issues raised in the quoted section which presumed a negative answer:

(1) Would we wish to live indefinitely (or immortally) if we could?

(2) If we did remember past lives and knew that we would return after death, would that be viewed as a good thing.

I would say the answer to (1) is clearly yes, and the answer to (2) is only slightly less clear.

As with any hypothetical the devil is in the details.

Option one is not altogether different than the decisions we already make which influence how long we are going to live. We can eat right and exercise and take care in our activities and live longer, or we can disregard those and say "we don't care" how long we live. So option one is easier to relate to without hedging too much on the details of the hypothetical.

Option two would require more definition of the hypotheticals terms, but I think that too can be viewed relatively simply (as Nietzsche seemed to be doing it). It can be framed simply as if your consciousness could return in the same form as you are now in some future world, would you want that to happen? Given a basic framework of the desirability of life I would say that too is a clear yes.

But I won't be surprised if there is some discussion needed on these.