7 September, 2019 | created using FiveFilters.
org
The Challenge of Eternal
Recurrence | Issue 93
Your complimentary articles
You’ve read one of your four complimentary articles for this month.
You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to
the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please
Nietzsche Reloaded
Kathleen O’Dwyer considers Nietzsche’s
method of self- assessment.
“I am content to live it all again
And yet again…”
(Yeats, ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’)
Friedrich Nietzsche has been read and assessed differently by many
commentators and students. Some consider that he was the first
existentialist, putting forward ideas and arguments that were later
developed by Jean-Paul Sartre and others; some consider that he was
primarily a psychologist – an analyst and commentator of human
behaviour and motivation, and a precursor of Freud; others see him as
a radical poet, using a clever and sometimes shockingly abrupt
aphoristic style to express his ideas; many label him as a madman,
citing biographical details, particularly of his later years, as evidence
that his work should not be taken seriously; and some ascribe to him
the inspiration for the assumption of the superiority of the German
race fostered by Hitler and the Nazis. As with all writers, in any
endeavour to understand his thinking, the best place to start is the
work itself. We can read Nietzsche’s own words, consider them with or
without reference to biographical accounts, and decide for ourselves
whether what he is saying is meaningful or relevant for us as
individuals.
One of Nietzsche’s most interesting and challenging ideas is a method
he offers for assessing one’s attitude to life. In his doctrine of ‘the
eternal recurrence’, he offers a formula for a test for whether life is
accepted, embraced and loved.
Self- Creation and Beginning Again
Echoing Rilke’s exhortation “to be always beginning,” Nietzsche insists
that “Existence begins in every instant” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
trans. R. J. Hollingdale, p.234). He claims that an individual’s life is a
continuum of creation, intertwining past, present and future, and that
this life is constructed and reconstructed again and again. This
emphasis on ‘beginning’, on starting anew over and over, might be
rejected in favour of a desired for completion and achievement, but
Nietzsche does not consider this a viable possibility, since for him life
is the ongoing creation of the self and of one’s life. Accordingly, the
idea of a fixed, definitively known or knowable self is a mere fiction:
there is no being, only becoming. Life is synonymous with change:
avoidance of the risks inherent in change may provide illusory
comfort and security, but only at the cost of stagnation and death.
The Irish poet Brendan Kennelly suggests that this aspect of the
human condition, this need to embrace change, and the willingness to
begin again, is a source of celebration and consolation. In his beautiful
poem ‘Begin’, Kennelly asserts that to love one’s fate, to ‘keep on
going’, to lose and to find meaning over and over again, to have the
determination to continually seek to transcend the limitations that
confine us, is to have an intimate appreciation of being alive.
In the poem, Kennelly embraces the birth and death at the core of
every experience when he states that “every beginning is a promise /
born in light and dying in dark”; he recognises the “bridges linking the
past and future”; and he admits the necessity of “the loneliness that
cannot end /since it is perhaps what makes us begin.” (Familiar
Strangers: New & Selected Poems 1960–2004, p.478). The mystery of
hope in the face of despair, the resilience of restarting after failure,
and the affirmation of life as something worth striving for, combine in
the poet’s confident assertion that life is meaningful, and that the
search for that meaning is in itself worthy of our effort:
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
That always seems about to give in
Something that will not acknowledge conclusion
Insists that we forever begin.
The sentiment of these lines, the rejection of easy surrender, is close
to Nietzsche’s admiration of a fervour “for seeking the truth, a search
that does not tire of learning afresh and testing anew.” (Human, All
Too Human, trans. Marion Faber and Stephen Lehmann, p.264). Such
an affirmation of life requires an acceptance of its fluidity, and a
simultaneous acknowledgement of the individual’s unique power of
self-creation as a continually evolving endeavour. However, this is not
a response to selected experiences, but rather a love of life in its
totality. Nietzsche argues that an affirmative attitude towards life
involves accepting all that one’s life has entailed: the good and the
bad, the light and the dark, the success and the failure. A positive
response to life must integrate every experience – joyful and
sorrowful, proud and shameful, loving and hateful – for, Nietzsche
argues, one can only accept a particular experience if one accepts all
the events and experiences of one’s life that have directly or
indirectly led to that moment. If anything had been different, the
resulting and present conditions of one’s life would also be different.
Nothing can be denied or regretted: everything is essential to the
process, and what one is at any moment encompasses all one’s
experience, past and present.
Challenging Questions
Nietzsche puts forward this challenge by posing the following
question:
“What if some day or night a demon were to steal into
your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as
you now live and have lived it you will have to live
 once again and innumerable times again; and there
will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy
and every thought and sigh and everything
unspeakably 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 question in each
and every thing, ‘Do you want this again and
innumerable times again?’ would lie on your actions as
the heaviest weight! Or how well disposed would you
have to become to yourself and to life to long for
nothing more fervently than for this ultimate eternal
confirmation and seal?”
(The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, p.341)
The demon’s assertion is the frightening possibility of endlessly
replaying the single life we each have, and the demand that we affirm
everything that we have experienced in it. The image of the ‘demon’
suggests that such a visitation would be seen as dangerous and
unwelcome. Nietzsche also situates the asking of the question in a
moment of utter privacy – “your loneliest loneliness” – a moment free
of the need to consider the opinions of others, free of the performance
and reaction which is concerned with one’s public image, and free of
the fear that one’s response might be unacceptable, misunderstood, or
otherwise negatively judged by another. It is also a moment of private
reflection conducted without the aid or validation of ‘expert’ advice,
friendly direction, or objective guidance: the question, the test of
eternal recurrence, is asked of the self, by the self, and can only be
answered by the self. The question ‘do you want this again and
innumerable times again?’ is how Nietzsche suggests we might
measure “how well disposed” we are to ourselves and our lives and
our reality. It is a method of assessing the value, the significance, and
the extent of our ownership of our choices and actions. This is ‘the
heaviest weight’ to accompany our decisions, because it demands that
we accept our choices as being an integral part of who we are. But the
question of eternal recurrence might also serve as a filter for what we
wish to prioritise in our lives, the (self-created) values we wish to
espouse, and the choices, decisions and actions for which we accept
responsibility, and which we will not regret. For Nietzsche, this is an
approach by which we can strive towards a celebration of life as it is,
and a celebration of how we live it. In this life-affirming stance, the
past is embraced; mistakes, losses and disappointments are
acknowledged, as are joys, achievements and fortuitous encounters;
and the future is seen as the offshoot of the present.
Nietzsche’s challenge relates to his conviction that we are the authors
of our own lives, or could be. This authoring involves the tasks of self-
creating, self-mastery, self-overcoming; working out what an affirming
life could be, and developing a worldview which has no remorse, no
melancholy, no end. Self-honesty, self-direction and self-empowerment
enable one to be the artist of one’s life, and to answer affirmatively
Nietzsche’s question, “Do you possess courage?… Not courage in the
presence of witnesses, but hermit’s eagles’ courage, which not even a
god observes any more?” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p.298). Nietzsche
acknowledges that this self-creation is a difficult path, as it needs the
humility of self-honesty and the courage of individual responsibility in
place of the comfort and security of the ‘herd’: “One has to get rid of
the bad taste of wanting to be in agreement with many” (Beyond Good
and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, p.71). Taking responsibility for the
creation of one’s life defines one’s life as an ongoing process of
becoming; one is always beginning anew. It also promotes a constant
revaluation of the values one adopts. This perspective sees ‘truth’ as
the practice of one’s own values – the way one lives one’s life.
Furthermore, “A human being’s evaluations betray something of the
structure of his soul” (Beyond Good and Evil, p.206); indeed, one’s
actions are surely the clearest expression of one’s values.
Nietzsche acknowledges the tremendous difficulty of living within such
expansive honesty, but he offers it as an ideal for which to strive. He
doesn’t tell us that we must to live a fuller, happier or more meaningful
life: he merely offers the possibility. He repeatedly asserts that these
are only his ideas: “these are only – my truths” (ibid, p.163). He urges
us to discover and acknowledge our own truths.
The Love of Fate
The idea of living one’s life in such a way that one wants it again and
again, helps us identify what’s important and significant for us. It also
fosters appreciation of the moments of genuine wonder which speckle
the symphony of life:
“Life consists of rare, isolated moments of the
greatest significance, and of innumerably many
intervals, during which at best the silhouettes of those
moments hover about us. Love, springtime, every
beautiful melody, mountains, the moon, the sea – all
these speak to the heart but once.”
(Human, All Too Human, trans. Marion Faber and
Stephen Lehmann, p.247)
Yet these ‘rare, isolated moments’ can impact all of life. Nietzsche
clearly believes in the interconnectedness of all our actions and
experiences: that what someone is at any moment is influenced and
created by all of their past. We can see this when he recasts the test
of eternal recurrence in a more particular form: “Did you ever say
Yes to one joy?… then you said Yes to all woe as well. All things are
chained and entwined together, all things are in love” (Thus Spoke
Zarathustra).
The affirmation and acceptance of the whole of life is called by
Nietzsche ‘amor fati’, ‘the love of fate’. This implies an acceptance of
one’s fate, a delight in all aspects of life, an accommodation of chance
and uncertainty, and a simultaneous acceptance of freedom and
responsibility in the manner in which we choose to encounter life. This
is a life lived without regret, remorse or guilt, but open to love; of self,
others, and the world as it is experienced in all its manifestations.
(Nietzsche’s advocation of the love of fate appears paradoxical, as it
is complemented by his insistence on the need for self-creation and
responsibility. The apparent paradox between determinism and
autonomy is an issue which continues to be debated in many areas of
philosophy.)
In a poem entitled ‘A Dialogue of Self and Soul’, W.B. Yeats echoes the
connection between eternal recurrence and amor fati:
I am content to live it all again
And yet again…
I am content to follow to its source
 Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.
The question is, do we consider “We are blest by everything”?
Never- Ending Conclusions
The theory of the eternal recurrence does not provide a definitive
answer, nor a foolproof methodology, for an assessment of our lives.
Like much philosophical discourse, it leaves many questions
unanswered. For example, it is unclear whether Nietzsche’s test urges
an acceptance of all the experiences, voluntary and involuntary, of
one’s life. It is perhaps easier to concur with the acceptance without
regret of our voluntary choices and actions; but even here, there
remains the question of learning and growing, and of seeing one’s past
choices in a new, more critical light. Is it always life-affirming to
dismiss the possibility of mistakes, of remorse, and of regret? And for
those experiences outside of one’s control, it is difficult to accept
without complaint the reality of tragedy, loss and injury. It may be
argued that acceptance, of self and of reality, is the key to happiness
and integrity. However, we are also emotional beings, and sometimes
our emotional response is in conflict with such reasonable advice. Our
emotions, as well as our rational minds, are valid sources of personal
truth and knowledge, and are very often a determining factor in our
assessments of our lives.
The acknowledgement of potential conflict in the interpretation of
one’s experience, consequently affecting the possibility of knowledge
about one’s life, suggests the need for a re-examination of the doctrine
of eternal recurrence. Nietzsche is urging a joyous acceptance of the
totality of our experiences as a prerequisite for an authentic,
responsible and life-enhancing mode of being, but there are difficulties
inherent in this attempted integration. For another problem, memory
is the door to the past, but we are susceptible to selective
remembering and forgetting.
In his narrative poem The Prelude, William Wordsworth describes his
own development as a poet and as a man, but he acknowledges the
difficulties encountered in the attempted recreation of his life-story:
I cannot say what portion is in truth
The naked recollection of that time
And what may rather have been called to life
By after-meditation.
Foreshadowing Freud’s notion of ‘repression’ as a voluntary or
involuntary removal of unwanted or uncomfortable memories,
Nietzsche offers a familiar example of psychic ambivalence and
disavowal. The apparent paradox inherent in the concept of self-
deception – How is it possible to deceive ourselves? – is given at least
partial resolution by Nietzsche via the inevitable gap between the
unconscious dimension of the psyche and the mind’s manifestation in
conscious activity. Nietzsche expresses this as the victory of pride
over memory: “‘I have done that’, says my memory. ‘I cannot have
done that’ – says my pride, and remains adamant. At last – memory
yields” (Beyond Good and Evil, p.91). Freud agrees that “there’s no
guarantee whatever for what our memory tells us” (from The Penguin
Freud Reader, p.553). Freud explains this phenomenon from both an
individual and a social perspective: “it is inherent in human nature to
have an inclination to consider a thing untrue if one does not like it…
society makes what is disagreeable into what is untrue” (Introductory
Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey, p.48). The stories
we tell ourselves about ourselves are not always truthful or
comprehensive; and the stories we tell to others about ourselves are
sometimes coloured by our quest for recognition and approval.
In the light of the insights developed by Nietzsche and Freud,
complete self-knowledge looks like an unattainable ideal. Moreover,
our assessment of our lives is dependent on and determined by forces
such as our moods, momentary circumstances, and varying degrees of
insight, which are invariably subject to revision and reinterpretation.
Therefore, any assessment of one’s life, and so any attempted
integration and joyous acceptance of all that one’s life has entailed –
an affirmative response to Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence – is at the
mercy of the ambiguity, complexity and fallibility which characterizes
the spectrum of human knowledge, and in particular, of human self-
knowledge.
© Dr Kathleen O’Dwyer 2012
Kathleen O’Dwyer’s book The Possibility of Love: An Interdisciplinary
Analysis (2009) is published by Cambridge Scholars Press.
• Dr O’Dwyer also examined this topic in ‘Nietzsche’s Challenge:
Eternal Recurrence’ in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, April
2011; Vol. 51, No. 2.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/93/The_Challenge_of_Eternal_Recurr
ence

That is, any acceptance of the past is necessarily coloured by (if not
essentially based on) one’s recollections: memory is crucial to one’s
assessment of one’s life. But memory is subjective, often necessarily
selective, and frequently erroneous: one’s narrative memory is
fragile, and this fragility is coupled with the always-present potential
for self-deception.