Eternally Recurring

Nietzsches Yes to Life

The story of Nietzsche is the story of a man who lived a life in solitude, but nevertheless
longed to affirm life in the face of the Death of God. Nietzsches life-affirmation, however, is not
modern optimism, but rather a calming uncannines, loaded with heavy thoughts that will for long
recur and resound within everyone who truly reads him.
Nietzsche, who stared into the eyes of the horror vacui (the horror of emptiness), tried to
find ways not to distract himself from nihilismour so-called culture today has perfected that
distractionbut to find a Great Yes to Life. A Yes to Life that accepts life as it is. How this is
possible, and what Nietzsche had to say about this age of ours is the topic of this essay.

Nietzsches Martinet
Nietzsches Yes to Life means to accept suffering as a necessary condition of life.
Nietzsche learned the focus on suffering from his martinet Arthur Schopenhauer. Young
Nietzsche stumbled upon Schopenhauers The World as Will and Representation when he was
a student in Leipzig. It is often neglected that Schopenhauer was not just unique, but also crucial
for the development of Western thought.
Hegel, whom Schopenhauer hated, had still proclaimed that the world is Geist (roughly
translated as spirit) and hence intrinsically meaningful. And as history evolves the world moves
towards a blissful end-state. Schopenhauer, however, was the first to argue that there is no
meaning at all. The world is just a blind Will that wills itself and as it continues to blindly will
itself the senseless suffering of all of the worlds inhabitants continues forever. Thus he
concluded that it would be best for all of existence not to be: All this sorrowwar, disease,
pain, sufferingis repeated thousands and thousands of times, year in year out.
Schopenhauers compassion drove him towards a No to Life. Nietzsche, who was greatly
moved by Schopenhauers insights into the darkness of existence (a truth denied by all of
mainstream Western philosophy up until Schopenhauerand still today), nevertheless, aimed to
find a Yes to Life despite suffering that is so much more senseless in a time of meaninglessness.
The Sinnverlust, the loss of meaning, which occurred in the 19
th
centurythe century of the Death
of Godis a still ongoing historical event whose consequences we cannot even begin to imagine.

Nietzsches Nihilism
We all know what meaninglessness is. We may feel it at times, or even all the time. The
immediate experience of the phenomenon of meaninglessness can shock and unsettle us. Its a
pre-theoretical feeling of falling, of emptiness. But this immediate feeling of meaninglessness or
intellectual debates about philosophical nihilism are not quite what Nietzsche means by nihilism.
They are consequences of nihilism. And they weigh heavier on us today than on any generation
of Western mankind before. Nihilism, Nietzsche writes, will be the history of Europe for the
next 200 years. The destructive forces of capitalism are but one clear indicator.
How did it come that far? Arent we enlightenedly empowered by Reason and therefore
safe from nihilism? Kant had notoriously opened his Critique of Pure Reason with the following
statement:
HUMAN reason has this peculiar fate that it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by
the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers,
it is also not able to answer.

Up until the 19
th
century, albeit in various forms (God, reason, rationality, Geist etc.) Western
thinking held itself indisputably in the thinking of the . Logos can roughly be translated as
reason, word, meaning, sense, spirit. Think of John 1:1: In the beginning was the
Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The postulation of the Logos is
the defining moment of Western history. It was a bulwark against nihilism. Nihlism in turn is, if
thought according to its essence, rather the grounding movement Grundbewegung of the occident.
(Heidegger). In order to deal with nihilism, Western thinking determined the world as inherently
and rationally meaningful. Our continuous efforts to rationally find meaning have brought us
here. Nietzsche calls that the Will to Truth.
Thus nihilism at its core is the history of Western civilisation as the Will to Truth. Be it
theological, philosophical, or scientific. Nihilism is the driving force. And as John Gray has
warned, it might be our only gift to the fate of the world, if we dont radically change. Our
continuous rationalistic quest for meaning only increases meaninglessness. Our quest for the
Logos is expressed in both too intellectual and dogmatic religions and in modern scientific
research. Our blind Will to Truth is the power-grab of Nothing. Nietzsche thus calls nihilism
Europes uncanniest guest: A guest that cannot tell us where he comes from and why he comes
to us. Platonism and Christianity were but good strongholds against nihilism. For more than 2000
years they provided meaning, but also set us on a course whose end we are approaching fast.
How crazy our rationalistic thinking is, reveals itself, for example, in continuous attempts to
prove Gods existence. As Heidegger wrote: A proof of God can certainly make perfect use of
formal logic. Nevertheless, it will not proof anything because a God whose existence He needs to
have proven is a very ungodly god. The proof of His existence is at the most blasphemy. What
we thus need, as Heidegger points out, are gods that we can sing and dance for.


Nietzsche and the modern World
The 19
th
century witnessed not only the Death of God, but also saw the emptiness of the
promises of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers had believed that the victory of the
rationalistic sciences would lead to a better life for all. Quite the opposite was and of course is
still taking place: The exploitation of human beings and nature. And after-Holocaust and
Hiroshima we must acknowledge that technological rationality is one of the most horrifying, and
destructive forces.
In an unpublished fragment, Nietzsche describes our future: the overall economic
management of the earth is inevitably in store for us. This will lead to an ever more economical
usage of man and humanity, to an ever more tightly interlaced machinery of interests and
performances. The obvious danger is that this will lead to adaptation, and fl attening, to a
modesty of instinct, the satisfaction in the shrinking of mana kind of standstill in the level of
man. The world will be an uncanny wheelwork of ever smaller, ever more finely adapted
wheels.
Nietzsche ends this note:
As one can see, what I fight is economic optimism; as if the fact that the rise of everybodys expenses
necessarily implied that everybodys benefits rise as well. It seems to me that the opposite is true: the
expenses of all sum up to an overall loss: man becomes less: so that one does not know any more what
this enormous process was good for. What for? A new What for this is what humanity needs

Isnt that precisely where we are today? Think of globalisation, the lessening of man to human
capital (what an unword!), the blind forces of the market that we cannot control, although, of
course, we praise ourselves that now we are in charge!, we are the Enlightened!, we are the new
gods! While our new gods are truly the ungodly gods profit, optimization, efficiency and so forth.
We need a new What for. A different What for than what globalisation promises us.
A first step is to abandon (destructive) ideals. Take our ideal of psychological happiness that
doesnt allow for any kind of existential crisis. If you dont comply to the ideal of dictated
optimism and happiness you better take that happy pill to fit into that uncanny wheelwork this
world is being reduced to. Nietzsche also mentions the bermensch in that note. The bermensch
is not superman. The bermensch is better translated as Over-and-beyond-man. That is, in
this context, those who do not fall for the pieties of our time that tell us to be flexible, to
optimise ourselves, to adapt. Nietzsche characterises the bermensch as someone who accepts
meaninglessness as the necessary condition of our time, and who is strong enough to deal with it,
who doesnt become a destructive force in the face of meaninglessness. That doesnt mean that
there is no room for despair. We need to deal with meaninglessness in a way that doesnt distract
from it. Nihilism is true for all of us because we are all heirs to our history, to our culture, our
Geist: the Western thinking.

AdaptationThe new God
In another passage from the Nachla Nietzsche notes that today we suffer from an
abundance of disparate impressions, which is greater than ever before. The problem, however,
is that this abundance of disparate impressions is one of the greatest most-upheld values of
today: The information age demands us to be instantly informed about everything, at any time.
Now, because being informed all the time is one of the greatest values today, but at the same
time its impossible for us to bear all that overflowing information, the result is, as Nietzsche calls
it adaptation that is necessary to even be able to cope with that many impressions. The
consequence of continuous adaptation is passivity. We become reactive talents. Contemporary
information society has as its dogma: Be informed about everything! But this pseudo-knowledge,
knowledge reduced to information, makes us unable to act.
Nietzsche writes: man unlearns how to act; he merely reacts to stimuli from without. This
leads to a deep weakening of spontaneity A Kantian notion for freedom. Who are we today?
Nietzsche calls us all reactive talents. We engage in an artificial trimming of our nature to an
image; we are all very interested, but at all times merely epidermally-interested. There is a
fundamental coldness about modern man. Contrast of the external mobility/flexibility to a
certain deep heaviness and tiredness on the inside. The increase of external means of distraction,
the multitude of everything, the more more more!, the better, better, better! are but distractions
and consequences of an incomplete, that is unaccepted, nihilism according to that our so-called
society lives. Overcoming nihilism means to accept it. Only then will we be able to affirm life.
Nietzsche argues that the acceptance of nihilism means that we need to stride through nihilism.
Thus to accept nihilism it isnt enough to just say yeah OK, life is meaningless, so lets just have
fun. You only live once. Anything goes! Thats what the last man does, who flattens the earth,
who brings the desert. Who in his quest for convenience and comfort and the accumulation of
stuff is willing to destroy the world. Incomplete nihilism reigns, where art is reduced to
entertainment, where education is but a means to get a good job that then pays your cars and
your clothes and your flat screen TV. In incomplete nihilism suffering is demonised, suffering
must be switched off. But without suffering, there can be no great art, no awe-inspiring, century-
building art. A world without suffering is a world of mediocrity. Without suffering there is no
life. Nietzsche warned that if we continue to demonise suffering, we might soon turn against
ourselves. If you listen to some of the leading transhumanists, then you see that this is exactly
what they want. Human beings should not exist in the way they are, because they are unhappy.
The best solution would be to enhance us genetically so that we must never suffer. Or lets just
create a virtual copy of the world, upload ourselves into it, and live in a state of totalised digital
bliss.

The modern haste

In Twilight of the Idols we find: To learn how to see. That is to grant the eye tranquillity, patience
to not immediately react to any stimulus, but to act upon ones highest instincts. To learn to
see is what we can call the strong will to react to everything immediately is a symptom of
exhaustion. To be open to everything at any time is bad taste.
O sancta simplicitas! Nietzsche writes in The Free Spirit, the second chapter of Beyond Good
and Evil. Oh holy simplicity! We free spirits have understood how to preserve our ignorance in
order to enjoy an almost ungraspable freedom, harmlessness, serenity, yes! to enjoy life. We
need a Will to Untruth, a will to ignorance. Instead of a continuous will to performance, to
optimization, to truth.
On self-optimization and our haste towards superficial goals, Nietzsche writes in Twilight:
And everywhere an obscene haste rules, as if one would miss out on something, if by the age of
23 a young man were not yet finished, did not know yet the answer to todays main question:
Which job? Higher men, if I may, have time, they take their time, they dont even dream of
being finishedat the age of 30, one is a beginner, a child, in high culture.

In another passage Nietzsche tells a telling anecdote about our educational system in the form of
a short dialogue:
What is the task of all higher education? To turn man into a machine. What are the means
to achieve that? Man needs to learn how to be bored. How do you achieve that? With duty.

Nietzschean Freedom
How can we be free in an age that bombards us with information, that dictates us constantly and
reaffirmingly how to live, and who to be, and how to look? (Just think of advertisements). We
grow being told: You live in free democracies. All other places on the planet are dictatorships!
Today in Postdemocracy were very free towellconsume, produce, and die. But please do the
latter silently.
Nietzsche challenges this simplistic modern understanding of freedom. He warns us of a freedom
that comes too cheaply, a freedom that is too absolute, and therefore empty. For Nietzsche
achieving freedom is hard work. It doesnt just come by birth (think of Rousseau).
The first and foremost ingredient on the road to freedom is: one needs to know how to
preserve oneself: strongest test of independence. This knowledge of self-preservation tells us:
Do not see most things, do not hear them, do not let all things affect you. In colloquial language
this is called good taste. Nietzsche praises the ability to say no, to be able to hear your own
voice. The Yes to Life is not a blind openness to everything, or a pragmatic anything goes!
Nietzsche also warns us of situations where you have to say no time and time again. There one
has to leave. One of the most beautiful chapters of Zarathustra is entitled Vom Vorbergehen,
(roughly Of passing). Vorbergehen means to go over and beyond. The chapter ends with
Zarathustras advice: Where you can no longer love, there you shall go over and beyond. Its
very important to understand, why Nietzsche uses vorber: it includes the ber of the bermensch,
and the ber of self-overcoming. What one thus needs to achieve in order to be free, Nietzsche
points out in Ecce Homo, is to create conditions under which one as good as never needs to
react, but where one can act. There you are free.
Thus freedom for Nietzsche is something that you have to earn. The next segment presents
Nietzsches thoughts on free spiritedness from the prologue of Human, All-Too-Human.

How to become free?
Men of a noble kindnot to be confused with elitismare those who value, who cherish their
provenance, background, family, history. They are deeply grateful for their upbringing. Yet, at
some point in life, from that very gratitude springs their urge to leave. Id rather die, than live
here, Nietzsche writes. The consequence is obviously meaninglessness, great loneliness. Think
about losing your faith, for example. This will to ones own freedom, Nietzsche describes not as
an enlightening wonderful empowerment, but as a disease. Our road to freedom is full of
suffering. And it is very likely that this will to freedom destroys us, ruins us.
You need to have the urge for freedom, then the strength to live in great loneliness. Those are
years of experiment. And who manages to come through, who overcomes that disease, achieves
overflowing certainty, and health. Important: Health for Nietzsche is not that ideal of health
that we have today, which is one of perfection, of berhygienic, clinical health. Health for
Nietzsche is always intertwined with disease. You are never entirely healthy in our modern sense.
Being healthy means to acknowledge our strengths and weaknesses. Being healthy for Nietzsche
is thus also possible when you suffer from an incurable disease. That is if you acknowledge your
boundaries, and do not give in to a great No to Life, do not give in to nihilism. Being healthy is
to fully accept disease: Being sick is a stimulant for a healthy being. The Yes to Life originates
from disease.
The road to freedom hence is long, but if reached it means, mastery of ones heart, self-control.
One wills always just so much so that one can still will more. One always has reserves left.
When this freedom is achieved, then we are open for all different sorts of mentalities, and ways
of thinking. For Nietzsche, we need to become free, self-aware, we need to have noble prudence.
Only then can we truly respect. When after years of suffering from your will to freedom, humble
freedom overcomes you, it is this Augenblick/look of an eye (moment) that remains with us as a
faint fine light and sun-happiness. And we will always remember the coldness on the road to
freedom. In recovery from our own longing for freedom, we become warmer, as we have found
a place where we can live, not die. And most importantly, Nietzsche writes, our feelings and
feeling-with-Others Mitgefhl become deep. Such free spirits, after having overcome their
illness, lean towards life again, and sing a quiet alleluia on life every day. Good, life-affirming
music for Nietzsche shall be cheerful and deep like an afternoon in October.
To remain a free spirit is not an easy task, however. It is a continuous attempt, a Versuch in
German, that is a searching. What is necessary at all times is to try to remain free from
resentment, free from a will to revenge.
Resentment is prohibited especially, when youre sick. Making yourself free from resentment is
the first step towards health. That doesnt mean that Nietzsche suggests that merely being free
from resentment can cure cancer. But thats not what Nietzsche means by health. If I suffer from
cancer, and I complain about it constantly, then I am full of resentment towards my fate, then I
am not healthy. If I accept the disease, stand fully in and on it, then I am healthy. Even though
scientific medicine will call me mortally ill.
In Ecce Homo Nietzsche writes: To become what one is, presupposes that one does not in the
least sense what one is. And grounding on that finding of yourself the highest form of egoism
that is love of oneself arises, which demands: To not want to be someone else, or any
different. That is to understand oneself as a fatum. And from this originates and grows the
Amor Fati, the love of what is necessary. The love of ourselves as tragic beings, and not of our
ideal of ourselves as perfectly optimised psychologically happy people.

Find a place where you can be
Unlike Kant, Nietzsche thought that place, time and climate play a crucial role for the well-being
of human beings. It is important for us to find the place and climate where we belong. We need
to find a climate that suits us in order to be able to fully grow.
In the wrong setting a genius can deteriorate to an average man. For Nietzsche the right setting
was certainly Sils Maria, Nice, Italy, and at the end Torino, a paradise for my feet! In Sils Maria,
Nietzsche found the inspiration for Zarathustra and the Eternal Recurrence of the Same. In
Germany, however, the weather was wrong, the food was wrong, and so his stomach couldnt
work right. Nietzsche despised Germany, and the German culture. That much on any alleged
Proto-Nazism or nationalism.
When Nietzsche arrived in Torino in spring of 1888 he called it a major discovery. It was the
first place, where I am possible. I am so delighted, I am so relieved, strengthened, Nietzsche
wrote in a letter to Georg Brandes. In Torino, Nietzsche was certain, thinking can return to life.
Architecture became the highest form of art for Nietzsche, because in it the ground phenomenon
of all art is best expressed, which is life. In great architecture a common culture can find lasting
strength and meaning. But what is being built today, wont stand any more in three years. What
would Nietzsche have to say about our buildings today? Dead concrete-glass-steal-coldness.
Yet, Torino was different. Its labyrinth-like architecture, the darkness under the portici (arcades),
is a mirror of the soul, in which we can get lost, but must inevitably wander. Nietzsche noted
down how to walk in Torino: Do not put glasses on on the streets. Do not buy books. Do not
walk with the masses. Drink water, never spirituosa. There is too much in those two lines to
cover. So I will just comment on no alcohol.
Nietzsche dismisses of alcohol, because it is an artificial Rausch. Rausch means rush, ecstasy, and
intoxication. The good and true Rausch, however, is one that we find within ourselves, when we
are surrounded by what and whom we are supposed to be surrounded with.
In Ecce Homo Nietzsche urges us to stay away from all and everyone impure. That is not to be
understood as a some sort of nasty elitism. It is quite an important advice for self-preservation,
and freedom. Only be with and among Others who are at peace with themselves. In German we
call that: To be in the pure with oneself (mit sich im Reinen sein). We all know people who arent at
peace with themselves, who are, therefore, impure. Envious, jealous, cynical, arrogant, ungrateful
people, who cannot praise their friends. From those we must part, we must go over and beyond.

The Eternal Recurrence
Before I turn to Nietzsches doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, Ill quote a dialogue
between Ivan and Alyosha Karamasow from Dostojewskis The Brothers Karamasow. Nietzsche
admired Dostojewski.
Ivan is a young atheist, an intellectual who lives in Moscow and who writes spoof articles on the
importance of religion just to please himself and to fool the readers. Alyosha is a young monk.
Loving, caring, a bit nave.
Ivan: Even though I am only going to a graveyard. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue
sky. Thats all it is. Its not a matter of intellect or logic, its loving with ones inside, with ones
stomach. Alyosha responds: I think everyone should love life above everything in the world.
Ivan asks: Love life more than the meaning of it? To which Alyosha replies: Certainly! Love it,
regardless of logic as you say, we must love regardless of logic, and its only then that one will
understand the meaning of life.

In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche warns that all philosophers are tyrannised by logic: and
logic in its essence is optimism. The eternal recurrence of the same is not a logical problem, it is
not something we need to argue about whether its logically possible or not. It is rather a decision
that we make, a judgment we form on the importance of our lives and our responsibility for it.
341 of the Gay Science:
The greatest weight: How, if one day or one night a demon stalked you in your loneliest
loneliness and said: This life, how you are living it now and how you have lived it, you will have
to again and countless times; and there will be nothing new to it, but every pain and every
pleasure and every thought and every sigh and everything ineffably small and great of your life
must recur for you, and everything in the same orderand equally this spider and this moonlight
between the trees, and also this moment and I myself. The eternal sand glass of Dasein,
existence, will be turned time and time againand you with her, you dust grain of dust! If that
happened, wouldnt you fall on your knees, grind your teeth and curse that demon who thus
spoke? Or have you ever experienced one such terrific moment, when you would answer him:
you are a god and never have I heard anything more divine! If that thought took control of
you, it would change you, and the way you are now, and maybe it would even crunch you; the
recurring question for everything you do and everyone you know will be: do you want this again
and a billion times more? This would be the greatest weight on all your actions. How would you
have to awaken to yourself, how good would you have to be to your life to demand nothing more
than this last eternal affirmation and sealing?