Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence

Philip Adams

This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you-all in the same succession and sequence-even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a grain of dust.

-Nietzsche

In his philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche presents the idea of eternal recurrence as an answer to nihilism. Nietzsche addresses the idea of eternal recurrence in his work Thus Spake Zarathustra. In this work, Zarathustra finds himself on a path up a mountain, a path that ends at a gate marked "This Moment." Two paths come together at this gate, going opposite directions, and neither having an end. Zarathustra ponders this and discusses it with the dwarf who has been riding on his shoulders. (I know it sounds strange, but yes, a dwarf on his shoulders.) Together, Zarathustra and the dwarf work on this problem of the two eternal paths, one of which runs backward, the other forward. And Zarathustra asks about the path running backwards, "Must not whatever can run its course of all things, have already run along that lane? Must not whatever can happen of all things have already happened, resulted, and gone by?" Zarathustra thinks that if everything has already run along this eternal path, then everything has already existed, including the gate at which they stand. It is there that the idea of eternal recurrence is presented.

Maybe a story about a guy named Zarathustra and a dwarf makes things a bit confusing - at least it did for me and my fellow classmates. Eternal recurrence is simply the idea that everything has already happened for an eternity in the past, and will continue to happen over and over for an eternity. What I gathered from the story was that Zarathustra and his short friend were seeing the same path. There aren't two different paths. Nietzsche says time is circular. Instead of thinking of the paths as straight lines, think of one path that makes a huge circle. That's why everything happens again and again. That is the nature of the circle. One always ends up where one started.

I think the idea of eternal recurrence is rather interesting, even though it may seem a bit off-the-wall. Whether one believes it or not is up to them, just like everything else. Actually, I question whether Nietzsche believed it himself. It is more my opinion that Nietzsche just offered eternal recurrence as an incentive to do things in your life that you wouldn't mind doing over and over again for eternity. What better aid in decision making could there be? Every time you were confronted to with a decision, all you had to do was decide which consequence you would rather have for an eternity. I think that the idea of eternal recurrence is exactly what Nietzsche needed to motivate people to do positive things. And by doing positive things, these people could better themselves and continue on their way to becoming Nietzsche's ideal Overman. That's the problem with the idea of eternal recurrence, though. Nietzsche says it's circular and inescapable, and yet he offers an escape from it. According to Nietzsche, the Overman is to humans what we are to the apes. Apparently it should be everyone's goal to achieve the status of Overman, since that is the only escape from eternal recurrence. Instead of being an escape, perhaps becoming an Overman is just part of the cycle. Once you reach that goal that's when you start over again. Why would anyone want to start over again? Well, maybe becoming an Overman is just that good. So you don't want to be an Overman? Even if you don't, I think the idea of living the same life over and over would compel me to make more careful decisions.

How about starting an eternal quest for knowledge. (Can an eternal quest ever begin? )

Click Mr. Nietzsche to send me some mail. I'll get it over and over and over...