SOURCE: Nichols, Jr., James H. “Conclusion: Lucretius and Modernity.” In Epicurean Political Philosophy: The “De rerum natura” of Lucretius, pp. 179-210. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976.

In the following excerpt, Nichols examines elements of Lucretius's thought present in the works of Thomas Hobbes, Charles-Louis Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Of the Stoics, those famous rivals of the Epicureans, Nietzsche has written:

“According to nature” you want to live? O you noble Stoics, what deceptive words these are! Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power—how could you live according to this indifference? Living—is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature?¹

Nietzsche goes on to assert that the Stoics by no means live according to nature; rather, they...