Nietzsche and the Eternal Recurrence
Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence is a response to the death of God, to which one must decide between the nihilism of the ascetic ideal, and the affirmation of life of the Übermensch. Some demon tells us that ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’. To affirm life is to act, and adopt values on the notion that one’s life will eternally recur. Nietzsche exhorts us to ‘remain faithful to the earth’, to affirm earthly life; to live so as to become able to want the eternal recurrence. However, there remains contention concerning what this means- is it an ontological-cosmological fact, an ethical doctrine, a psychological maxim, or otherwise? The appropriate interpretation must foreground this selection function, and exhort one to embrace life.
Ontological Interpretation
On the ontological interpretation, the demon is telling us how things are, yet this appears to make choice futile, undermining the significance of the selection function, and failing to move one to embrace life. Nietzsche appears to be developing a notion found throughout history. For Empedocles, the universe is periodically annihilated, and reborn in an eternal cycle. In Ecclesiastes, ‘The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the…
