Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Nietzsche’s Ethics:
The Eternal Recurrence
&
Dionysus
Rowan Tepper
1
Philosophers are commonly thought of as having a particular project or
projects to which their efforts bent no matter how unsystematic they may be a
my argument that one of Nietzsche’s projects spanning his works from The
Beyond Good and Evil, and all intervening and following works, is that of
most importantly morality and ethics. By the same token, he at the same time
opposition of Dionysian and The Crucified, the symbol of The Crucified has as
referent not only Christian metaphysics and morality, but also the modern
doctrine of progress towards a goal and all denial of the ultimate value of
Recurrence and his ideal of the Dionysian, much of his work coalesces into a
it was his penchant for coinages of his own, such as moraline and more
given to his ethical thought. Either that, or consequent to his frequent and
1
Karl Lowith, Nietzsche’s Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, in Journal of the
History of Ideas, Vol 6 Issue 3 pg.274
2
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, pg 335
2
venomous criticism of prescriptive morality3, his own ethical views were
immoralist, yet the meaning of this term becomes relatively clear upon a
Human All-Too Human and its sequels. In reference to Lou Salome, in a draft
that she had no morality - and I thought she had, like myself, a more severe
morality than anybody..."4 Here the distinction between the universal and
personal conceptions of morality are shown within Nietzsche’s life, and the
than would immediately seem and must be taken in the context of, and
morality, one must dissect and therefore kill morality, “only for the sake of
better knowledge, better judgement, better living, not so that all the world
shall start dissecting. Unhappily, however people still believe that every
moralist has to be a model and ideal in all he does and that others are
supposed to imitate him ... older moralists dissected too little and
preached too much.”5 In essence, his term immoralist is Nietzsche’s own way of
goes without saying that I do not deny – unless I am a fool – that many
3
Morality, read in the sense of universalized, proscriptive morality except
where otherwise specified. “Good for all, Evil for All”
4
Nietzsche, in The Portable Nietzsche, pg. 102 Letter to Dr. Paul Ree
5
Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow, pg. 310
3
actions called immoral ought to be avoided and resisted, or that many called
moral ought to be done and encouraged – but I think the one should be
encouraged and the other avoided for other reasons than hitherto. We have to
attain even more: to feel differently.”6 Thus in his early works, prior to the
values was declared. Such revalued values as Nietzsche would replace morality
with, could only be defined relative to each individual, and as such, could
Kantian morality, “A virtue must be our own invention, our most necessary
danger.”7
fairness, it must be noted that the stratifications are not by any means
which the Eternal Recurrence is discussed, that these stratifications are “of
of nobility, Nietzsche means “not a nobility that you might buy like
shopkeepers and with shopkeepers’ gold: for whatever has its price has little
value.”9
6
Nietzsche, Daybreak, pg. 103
7
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, pg. 577
8
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, pg. 38
9
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pg. 315
4
It is then evident that Nietzsche intended the thought of the Eternal
morality and moralism, and moreover, to at once provide that counterpoint and
also be a device by which the value of ones actions may be judged; and, it
intended to, in combination with other elements of his thought, both form
the basis for an ethics entirely independent of external moral dictate, and
Christianity and then lost with the death of the Christian God. The
in the idea itself and in Nietzsche’s works and letters. This preeminence is
5
the cosmological interpretation of the Eternal
recurrence”12
this fact. If the importance of the Eternal Return lay in its uniqueness,
fact that time was cyclical would have been taken as a matter of course. It
what was possible once could only be possible a second time if the
Pythagoreans were right in believing that with the same conjunction of the
heavenly bodies the same events had to be repeated on earth down to the
minutest detail.” pg. 16. In this, however, Nietzsche’s criticism is of this
form of recurrence on a measurable time-frame – it does not contradict his
later thoughts on recurrence.
12
Alexander Nehamas, The Eternal Recurrence, in The Philosophical Review,
Volume 89 Issue 3, July 1980, 339n
6
is improbable too that Nietzsche’s insistence upon the uniqueness of his idea
lay in the fact that it differed from the ancient notion in terms of scale
doctrine, when he has Zarathustra chastise the dwarf for “making it too easy
on himself”, when the dwarf, much like many modern critics of Eternal
cosmological doctrine as does the dwarf, because in doing so, one misses the
writes: ‘my doctrine teaches: live in such a way that you must desire to live
again, this is your duty, you will live again in any case!’”15 Here, the
Recurrence and in direct contrast to ANY prescriptive morality, that is, “He
13
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, pg. 270
14
Lowith, pg. 276
15
Pierre Klossowski, Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, pg. 60 - Klossowski
makes no distinction between Return and Recurrence, perhaps as a consequence
of the French language or of translation, but regardless, no distinction is
made.
7
for whom striving procures the highest feeling, let him strive; he for whom
repose procures the highest feeling let him rest; ... Provided that he
becomes aware of what procures the highest feeling, and that he shrinks back
than a morality that restricts life and results from an incapacity to live.
himself seems to have been caught between the two responses therein, torn
between gnashing his teeth and cursing the demon, or proclaiming that demon
Salome, “Life, in fact, produced such suffering in him that the certainty of
Likewise, Klossowski writes that with the thought of the Eternal Return,
Nietzsche may have thought himself to possibly be losing his grip on sanity,
to the same effect. Whatever the case regarding the character of Nietzsche’s
life, his life renders unconditional affirmation of life in all its cruelties
This attempt to found the doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence upon physics was
latent madness.
8
more communicable. “The verification of this lived
and at the same time would provide him with a formulation that
himself.”17
would not be tenable; and so he found that his fears about the fateful idea
explore the fact that in the time since, even those mistaking the Eternal
Return for a cosmological model have not been able to soundly refute it as a
cosmological model. It is also for the fact that one refutation of Georg
time.
9
interpretations are not in the least mutually exclusive, let alone
thought! for I am still far from being able to utter it and represent it. IF
doubly warrants examination, both in the sense that it bolsters belief and in
20
Klossowski pg. 100
21
Nehamas, pg. 337
10
The Cosmological Interpretation of the Eternal Return
Science , aphorism 341 and “On The Vision and the Riddle” in Zarathustra,
while very similar in imagery, it is only in the latter that the thought is
Return, the past and future are portrayed as two paths of infinite length
“From this gateway, Moment, a long eternal lane leads backward; behind
us lies an eternity. Must not whatever can walk have walked on this
lane before? Must not what can walk have walked on this lane before?
Must not whatever can happen have happened, have been done, have passed
by before? ... Must not this gateway too have been there before? And
are not all things knotted together so firmly that this moment draws
all that is to come? Therefore itself too? For whatever can walk - in
this long lane out there too, it must walk once more.”22
The present moment is that which binds an infinite past and infinite
future into one stream of time. The present moment is eternally the midpoint
of time with an eternity before and after. The moment of this portrayal is
22
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pg. 270
11
the gateway between the past and present, importantly a gateway at which it
The moment, while being the point of demarcation between past and present has
duration.
interpretation:
Corollary to this:
particular state.
23
αis defined either as a perceptual threshold or in terms of physics the
absolute threshold of simultaneity in Reichenbach’s formulation of a causal
theory of time, as indeterminate as to order – being incapable of being
2d
causally related to one another, being in seconds α = as the speed of light
c
is the fastest possible causal agent. Anything taking place in less than the
time that it takes for light to go between objects is simultaneous.
2d 2d
Reichenbach, pg. 40 Therefore, α must be greater than or equal to ,
c c
being the absolute value for non-subject-referential simultinaeity, when the
time requisite for observation is factored in, the value of α may be larger.
12
already have been. For in an infinite time the course of a
7. “If the world had a final goal, it must have already been reached.
If there were for it some unintended final state, this must also have
The cosmological form of the Eternal Return thus demands that in the
of time, the world returns to its initial state, and thence by virtue of the
most criticism of the doctrine of the Eternal Return has been levelled, and
criticisms is found.
above, namely that “a finite number of elements allows only a finite number
24
Heidegger, Nietzsche, pg. 42
25
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, pg. 546
26
Every other sequence having occurred in the course of the “initial”
repetition by returning to a similar, but distinguishably different starting
point and thus proceeding differently.
27
Small, pg. 127
13
speeds related by a whole number ratio: wheel B rotates at twice the speed of
1
wheel A. Wheel C, however rotates at a speed of π , thereby ensuring that
“according to the nature of the number π ... the third wheel will never
have finished a whole number of rotations when the first wheel has
†
completed a whole number of rotations... but because of the
first and second wheels will occur only after the first wheel has made
a whole rotation, the marked point of the third wheel never can pass
elements does not imply the finitude of their combinations.”29 Small continues
†
00001 rotations †
between the fractional approximation and that which would
result from the use of π , but then proceeds to argue a strict interpretation
†
that is absolutely indistinguishable but different in a negligible way(e.g. a
28
Georg Simmel, quoted in Robin Small, Incommensurability and Recurrence: From
Oresme to Simmel in Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 52 Issue 1, Jan-
Mar 1991, pg 128
29
Small, pg. 128
14
“Augenblick”, it appears that Nietzsche, in speaking of the Moment, is not
15
will return at a future time to a state which is closer to its initial state
than any given amount.”32 Thus, the difference between the universe at its
f ( t)
present repetition and its subsequent repetitions, , as t(time, defined in
and thence an infinite number of repetitions that are smaller than δ. Thus
†
from any point, t(defined within a range defined through causal
f ( t)
simultaneity), the number of points t where is larger than δ is finite
f ( t)
whereas the number of points where is smaller are infinite, all assuming
†
that t increases incrementally, and the period of observation is also of the
incremental value. †
†
most handily to the demonstration of the eternal return.
What follows is that when time is broken down into discrete but non-
zero units, every possible event and sequence of events happens, and in
perspective outside of time, all possibilities are laid out to be seen from
points out, this reconciles Will with Fate. With all possible sequences of
32
Small, pg. 133
33
δ is defined as observable state of the world within time unit α.
16
events governed by causal law and necessity, one is bound strictly to causal
interactions, yet ones actions still bear consequences from ones own
can be solved only ‘if free will were the highest potency of fate’”34 Thus
antinomical, every willed act being not only compatible with Fate, but in
beyond the human all-too human standpoint which renders will and fate
that “the time is gone when mere accidents could happen to me; and what could
still come to me that was not mine already?”35 Moreover, while thoroughly
writes in The Gay Science 277, a personal providence is realized that in the
moment that justifies the past, at that “high point in life … we can see how
palpably always everything that happens to us turns out for the best … very
profound significance and use precisely for us … and [one] finds nothing
17
also necessary to in retrospect “redeem the past, and to transform every ‘It
was’ into an ‘I wanted it thus.’”37 This retroactive willing is not only the
reconciliation of will and fate but also an expression of The Will to Power
in the personal sphere, “The will is a creator, all ‘it was’ is a fragment, a
riddle, a dreadful accident – until the creative will says to it, ‘but thus I
willed it.’ Until the creative will says to it, ‘But this I will it; thus I
shall will it.”38 Zarathustra then continues to ask the question whose answer
is himself after the experience of the Eternal Recurrence, “For that will
which is The Will to Power must will something higher than any
reconciliation; but how shall this be brought about? Who could teach him also
to will backwards?”39
consciousness of the Eternal Recurrence ever on one’s head, becomes the basis
another reality, and to be a different person. Thus one must act in such a
moment of cognizance of the Eternal Recurrence redeem all the past. The past
is identical to the future from the perspective of the moment. The future,
and thereby also the past are dependent upon the moment, and moreover, the
attitude held toward the self in that moment. Eternity, both in the literal
sense and in the sense of its significance depend entirely upon the
18
Whatever the reason, the Eternal Recurrence is not explicitly discussed
in Beyond Good and Evil and On The Genealogy of Morality. David Allison
essence, Allison argues that Beyond Good and Evil and the Genealogy serve to
Recurrence, particularly the overcoming of bad conscience and the other ill
circulus vitiosus deus in Beyond Good and Evil Section 56, his is an
incomplete analysis.
Throughout Nietzsche’s notebooks of the years 1884 and 1885 there are
Prophecy”42. These evolve from a title page and broad divisions, into a more
detailed plan, which seems to have been followed to some degree in the form
of the books which followed; only instead of a work entitled “The Eternal
Nietzsche’s work following Zarathustra was in keeping with these plans, then
it would be a form of aposiopesis that was used in Beyond Good and Evil and
19
The Eternal Recurrence.
First Part. The new truthful ones
Second Part. Beyond Good and Evil.
Third Part. The hidden artist
Fourth Part. The self-overcoming of mankind
Fifth Part. The hammer and the great noon43
course of either book, the intent was always present to tie these critiques
they demonstrate both the “No-Saying” to modernity and Christianity, and the
self. Each section in these plans can be seen as having been fulfilled in one
43
ibid, 27[82] translation my own
44
Ibid, 27[80] translation my own. Original reads:
Die ewige Wiederkunft. Eine Wahrsagung
Grosse Vorrede
Die neue Aufklärung – die alte war im Sinne der demokratischen Heerde.
Gleichmachung Aller. Die neue will den herrschenden Naturen den Weg zeigen –
inwiefern ihnen alles erlaubt ist, was den Heerden-Wesen nicht freisteht:
1. Aufklärung in Betreff “Wahrheit und Luge” am Lebendinge
2. Aufklärung in Betreff “Gut und Bose”
3. Aufklärung in Betreff der gestaltenden umbildenden Kräfte (die
versteckten Kunstler
4. Die Selbst-Überwindung des Menschen. (die Erziehung des hoheren
Menschen)
5. Die Lehre der ewigen Widerkunft als Hammer in der Hand der mächstigsten
Menschen. - - -
20
prologue, and Beyond Good and Evil is referred to similarly, indeed, in
truth and lie, good and evil, and the shaping reshuffling forces(the hidden
artist, the priestly man) can all be seen in Beyond Good and Evil, and later
education of the higher mankind are themes of Zarathustra and Twilight of the
Idols, and moreover, the last division clarifies what was meant of the
subtitle to Twilight of the Idols; How one philosophises with a hammer. The
hammer in question, that hammer which is used to sound out the idols is the
doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence, “the hammer in the hand of the most
powerful men.”
Throughout the time of these works, corollary to the assertion that his
silence was an aposiopesis, and that the real object of his writing was
Recurrence; the thought of Recurrence, was not far, as selections from his
towards the end of Beyond Good and Evil when Nietzsche writes, “Every
the fact that he stopped … that he stopped digging and laid his spade aside
hiding-place, every word also a mask.”46 During this time it is that the
Recurrence undergoes the shift from its primary understanding being both
which life is critiqued from the standpoint of life, and at the same time,
the Eternal Recurrence becomes the surrogate for the function formerly
anchored and given validity by God. This scheme of evaluation underlies even
45
Ibid 26[325]
46
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evill, pg. 216
21
the Recurrence’s function as a new center of gravity in contrast to Christian
metaphysics.
22
Circulus Vitiosus Deus?
Evil, the closest thing to a direct reference to the eternal Recurrence found
in the book. While Lampert asserts that this question is Nietzsche’s giving
“one has perhaps...opened his eyes...to the ideal of the boldest, most
vital, most world-affirming being who has not only made his peace and
learned to get along with whatever was and is, but who wills to have it
da capo not only to himself, but to the entire play and spectacle, and
not only to a spectacle, but at bottom to him who has need of this
himself - and makes himself necessary - how’s that? would this not be
eternal return. However, in the context of the whole of the aphorism, I think
that Heidegger, here, more so than elsewhere, misses the point. Despite this
47
Lampert, pg. 120-121
48
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evill, pg. 82
23
pessimism and nihilism, Schopenhauerian philosophy and Buddhism, the
is communicated by the eternal return, but have not taken the step and
“Would this not be - circulus vitiosus deus?” is rather the individual who is
the opposite of these nihilistic ideals, “the most exuberant, most living and
most world affirming man”, who has thought and willed the thought of
Recurrence and who has made that transformation from “it was” to “thus I
willed it”, rather than the deus within the question itself. The deus in
question seems to refer not so much to God or a god or gods, but to the
that in the phrase, there is an implicit est, that is, a form of the verb to
be. This makes the phrase into a sentence, but the est, being implicit, is
left to the reader to interpolate its proper location within the sentence.
“If the est is understood at the end, the proposition becomes “God as the
of the now-dead god, that is, as the guarantor of morality and the structure
of the cosmos, then the interpretation of the phrase as “the vicious circle
is God”, leads to the proposition “The function of the Eternal Return takes
the place of the function hitherto reserved for God.” That is, specifically,
becomes the anchor and evaluative of values. Now, in the context of the
object in question, the world-affirming man, the core meaning of the question
becomes clear, to this man, the Eternal Recurrence has taken the place
49
Krell, footnote to Heidegger, pg. 65n
Hollingdale suggests “A Vicious Circle as God or God as a Vicious
Circle”
24
It is no wonder that the circulus vitiosus deus is placed in a section
sacrificed? ... Did one not have to sacrifice God himself and out of cruelty
sacrifice God for nothingness – this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate act
of cruelty was reserved for the generation which is even now arising: we all
know something of it already. – “50 The final dash would be indicative of its
connectedness with the following aphorism. That is, it is this act of cruelty
ones metaphysical anchor is the origin of the vacuum that the circulus fills.
Through the agency of thought of the Eternal Return become the doctrine
of Eternal Recurrence the answer may be posited to the questions, “When will
all these shadows of God cease to darken our minds? When will we complete our
the most natural, newly redeemed comes to fill the void left by the death of
God and dispels the illusion of morality. As the thought of the Eternal
Return becomes the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, the last shadows of God
are dispelled as the last shades of his necessity are stripped away and
replaced. At the same time, the Recurrence is the remedy to the nihilism that
springs from the death of God. Rather than seeking “What water is there for
50
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evill, pg. 80
51
Nietzsche, The Gay Science , pp. 168-169
52
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evill, pg. 82
53
Ibid pg. 181
25
it”, the Eternal Recurrence becomes the world-affirming device which
This successor concept, which fills the void left by the final sacrifice of
With the function of the Eternal Recurrence now posited as a new center
which crawls in the moonlight”54, and that that just prior to the vision of
nihilism, the spider disappears with the dwarf and the gateway. While the
significance of the gateway and its name has already been explicated, the
that the spider is also present in the articulation of the Eternal Recurrence
in The Gay Science . In isolation, the spider means little, but in the
the symbol of the Christian God. Also in the third part of Zarathustra, On
spiders and teaches thus: ‘Under crosses one can spin well.’”55 Moreover, in
Daybreak, Nietzsche writes that the Romans, “Sought other antidotes to this
impulse of the head or heart was henceforth without hope, that the great
spider was everywhere, that it would implacably consume all blood wherever it
26
might well forth … at last discharged itself into Christianity.”56 That spider
all tied into one, binding the symbol of the spider to the Christian God,
“The Christian conception of God – God as god of the sick, God as spider, God
disappearance of the spider is right before the vision of nihilism? How can
its placement with the vision of the Eternal Return be coincidental? Does not
the circulus vitiosus deus answer in the form of a question the riddle posed
by Zarathustra in the Vision and the Riddle? That the circle of recurrence
replaces the functions of God and overcomes nihilism, would that not be the
answer to Zarathustra’s riddle? It is the hardest thought, and thus the one
requiring the greatest courage to think, and thus, it is the shepherd’s bite.
schwergewicht, the word which in the title for The Gay Science section 341
of this word runs to the core of the function of the doctrine, that it re-
centers ethical judgment around the subject, in this life, rather than in
some “beyond”. This center of gravity is also the hammer of Twilight of the
Idols, in essence, the evaluative schema for ethical judgment. The circulus
posits the act of recentering, making the circle take the function of God.
“the religious drive always dominated his being and knowledge. His various
56
Nietzsche, Daybreak, pg. 42
57
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, pg. 585
27
philosophies are for him just so many surrogates for God, which were intended
paper, what is more important than whether or not this motivated his work, is
that the Eternal Recurrence in this formulation can be seen as not so much a
surrogate for God, but a positive replacement for God. In the place of a flat
The Genealogy
nihilism. “Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as
it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of
he sketches out the character of that higher man to whom the thought of the
Eternal Return would occur, and to whom it would not bring despair. The
reaction of the higher man, the overman, to the Eternal Return is one of
reaction to the thought of the Eternal Return does not come without piercing
58
Salome, pg. 88
59
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, pg. 534
60
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, pg. 35
28
between the mode of moral knowing of the noble and slave moralities as
follows:
to that which is not self for the basis of its value judgments. The noble
group, defining itself in reference to that which is not part of that same
group. Perhaps the most defining characteristic of the slave morality is the
to such morality has not had chance to experience that loneliest loneliness
most basic level the antithesis to the ethics springing from the extreme
Dionysus
Dionysus and the associated ideal, the Dionysian are among the oldest
29
ideal, and in Nietzsche’s last works is transformed into a symbol, referring
Criticism, in which he writes, “for who could claim to know the rightful name
of Tragedy is the fact that to the Greeks Dionysos was an art deity63, more
becomes the deity of lived life, whereas Apollo is the deity of sculpture,
stasis and dreams, abstraction from life and the sovereign individual:
value for life as stasis. Dionysos in contrast to this is the “terror [and]
the blissful ecstasy that wells up from the innermost depth of man, indeed,
charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed
62
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, pg. 24
63
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, pg. 33
64
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, pg. 36
30
but nature … celebrates once more her reconciliation with her lost son,
man.”65 Under the spell of the Dionysian, the barrier between individuals is
breached and likewise, man and nature cease to be opposed; man and nature
life at the core of existence which abides through the perpetual destruction
of appearances.”67
Idols, Ecce Homo, and the notes collected regarding Dionysos in The Will to
Power, the concept of the Dionysian had not so much changed, but grown; in
its function however, the Dionysian had changed radically, from an aesthetic
the symbol of Christ of the Gospels, The Crucified. To the aesthetic ideal of
Dionysos of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche had attached the concepts of Amor
Fati, and most importantly the Eternal Recurrence. When Dionysos is re-
greater attention, in Twilight of the Idols and Ecce Homo, the Dionysian
65
ibid, pg. 36-37
66
ibid, pg. 62
67
ibid, pg. 62
68
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evill, pg. 220
31
becomes the symbol of the upward extreme of world-affirmation in opposition
the concept of the Dionysian becomes his concept, not a concept abstracted
from Greek Tragedy; the Dionysian becomes the concept of the character of
how his spirit who bears the heaviest fate, fatality of task, can
… that he has though the ‘most abysmal idea’, nevertheless does not consider
reason more for being himself the eternal Yes to all things… but this is the
concept of Dionysus once again.”70 Dionysos becomes at once the symbol for the
“most world-affirming man” of the circulus, the symbol for Amor Fati – “a
Dionysian relation with existence – my formula for this is amor fati.”71, the
Recurrence, the symbol of the replacement of the Christian God with the
morality.
§1
69
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, pg. 484
70
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, pg. 306
71
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, pg. 536
32
Whether or not one accepts the arguments for the preeminence of the
in the Eternal Return there exists an implicit ethical position. Perhaps more
referred to as “the hammer in the hand of the most powerful man” in the
more to my liking – is sounding out idols … For once to pose questions here
with a hammer …”72 In this work, and presumably in others, the hammer with
which one philosophises, sounds out idols and evaluates is the doctrine of
Twilight of the Idols, and indefinitely his other late works as his attempts
evaluative schema. Thus with ideas, the doctrine can be seen primarily as the
its imposition; that is, how well disposed to oneself would one be if that
presented in The Gay Science , a question of “what would you do, if”. This is
how well disposed to myself am I, such that I can will my life to repeat. To
72
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, pg. 465
73
Nehamas, pp. 342, 345
33
complicate matters further it is as Nehamas writes that corollary to (C) “…
(C’) If anything in the world recurred, then everything in the world would
demands that one, in each and every action act in such a way that an eternal,
one that their life and actions be affirmed in a totality, both retroactively
and in foresight.
Return in the evaluative sense75; that is, “If, therefore, I am, even for a
retrospect to have been essential to, and therefore constitutive of the self
which I would want to repeat. What is thus changed is not the past but its
the ethics consequent to the Eternal Recurrence, it does not venture far
enough, for while valid considering only individual moments whose recurrence
can be willed, and thus justifying the whole of the past. I feel that this
must be a continuous process extended into the future, and that the moment of
affirmation changes not only the significance of the past, but of the entire
74
ibid, pg 346
75
It should be noted that Nehamas works primarily from Zarathustra and as such
is not taking into account much that is said elsewhere.
76
Nehamas, pg. 349
34
future. Otherwise, unless one finds by some fortuitous event that the moment
ones life would not have been redeemed. The identity of the past and future
the totality of ones subjectivity and become the evaluative by which “good,
bad and evil” may be determined. Ultimately it is the evaluation of the past
that constitutes how one has lived and “how one becomes who one is”. Thus
“One can thus either incorporate a past event into a complex, harmonious and
unified patter, or one can simply not take it seriously; in the latter case
present and past. If the realization is assimilated into the self as doctrine
and evaluative schema one must continue to act in such a way that ones life
henceforth can be affirmed in the same manner as the past and present moment.
That is, unless one lives with such exuberance and abandon that all that may
“On Passing By” in the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “Where one can
no longer love, there one should pass by.”78 Resentment and hostility to ones
experience and most importantly the past are ruled out. Thus, with regards to
77
Nehamas, pg. 350
78
Nietzsche, Zarathustra, pg. 290
35
the attitude taken toward events in one’s life, only two options exist; to
concern. The essence then of un-ethical action would be found in the case
where, in the face of eternity one were to desire something in the past to
have been different and then to condemn this world for not being that which
it ought to be. This is the case of the ressentimant of the herd and
shifted from the subject to the external world; from an affirmation and self-
is, one condemns both the self for not being what one wants to be, and the
other for being what one desires to be. It follows that such a self-
gravity outside of oneself, outside of the world that is. This makes actions
for now, but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man”79. Virtue
rather than being the principle guiding action, becomes contingent upon a
dependent upon the self, for the fact that that not only does the situation
of the individual recur eternally, but likewise, the state of the world and
the intertwined causes and conditions of the world that produced the
individual. While referring to the self for the reaction to the infinite
extensible to the world as a whole. On the individual level, one must act in
such a way that one may affirm that action eternally and wish for nothing
different, but also by the same token affirm the same for the world.
79
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, pg. 485
36
Ultimately the ethic that emerges is of the form: “I act as I will, for my
own reasons, such that I can will an eternal repetition of these same acts
morality: “You act according to moral laws, for reasons beyond you, and you
must feel shame for any act violating these precepts, reward and punishment
likewise, the consequent ethics are “Beyond Good and Evil”. They are in the
sense that actions and actors no longer look outside of the self for approval
it is not born out of hostility toward the self or toward the world. Through
Recurrence, one becomes even more so the source of his own highest values;
ethics on the subject and restores a center of gravity to ones actions in the
recentering occurs. The subject now is ALWAYS at the midpoint of time, the
eternal noon and midday. Above all, an ethical evaluation based upon the
Zarathustra in the section entitled “On The Spirit of Gravity”, “He, however,
80
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, pg. 577
37
has discovered himself who says, ‘this is my good and evil’; with that he has
reduced to silence the mole and dwarf who say, ‘good for all, evil for
all’.”81
§2
extended into social life, two principal problems arise: a lack of a socially
normative ethical function, and the lack of a device by which the distance
between individuals can be bridged and ethical proximity brought about. The
commonality of the human condition does not suffice to bridge the gap, and
That is, Christianity commands love thy neighbour for no other reason than he
is your neighbour and that God commands it. It would be prudent not to pick a
enforcement of standards of morality. Those who do not conform, and who are
real connection coupled with the disintegration of the power that binds them
healthier self than one acting out of ressentiment and out of fear or promise
81
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pg. 306
38
of a beyond. However, this is insufficient to form a basis for ethical
have . . . ,’ can ever be true. Accordingly the ideal life is to realize that
this is so and to make oneself into such a person that one would not want and
terms of the Eternal Recurrence along the same model that would be used to
judge a literary character, that is, to be consistent with oneself and with
the totality of ones existence. Nehamas sees the problem that “A literary
subjugation of the other can be justified in the drive to fulfil the Will to
in the Genealogy, in Beyond Good and Evil, and even in Zarathustra, Nietzsche
makes it clear that unpalatable actions are quite often justified and
repugnant, for the fact that they can be no other way. Nietzsche, in many
passages also speaks to this necessity, of the kinship between hard deeds and
always so, especially in the case where it is enforced, and when so applied
82
Nehamas, pg. 353
83
Nehamas, pg. 354-355
84
If the Will to Power is understood as the collective will to life and
continued life then the subsuming of one life by another can still be in the
interests of life as a whole. If the Will to Power is understood as the
individual will to life and continued life and willing, then either the harm
of another can be justified or not situationally.
39
becomes “the will to the denial of life, as the principle of dissolution and
at the root of any society of equals. Therefore, in order for the ethical
there must be a way of bridging the gap between equal individuals, not based
between “Beyond Good and Evil” and “ignorant of good and evil, and merely
who fights monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a
monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes back into
you.”86 Actions transcend the moral definitions of good and evil, outside of
such dualistic simplifications, but at the same time actions carry the danger
of falling prey to the dichotomy and becoming one pole or the other, becoming
potentially not only evil, but contemptible. Thus it is a fine line that he
who has accepted the Eternal Recurrence walks, not between good and evil, but
is the motif of over and under, ubermensch, untergehen, etc., then to find
the personal realm is seen in Beyond Good and Evil: “One can truly respect
only him who does not look out for himself.”87 That is, the decadent at once
time, this decadent condemns those who “look out” for their own self-
from without the self. This downward movement of the self is the movement of
85
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evill, pg. 194
86
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evill, pg. 102
87
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evill, pg. 205
40
the self toward the domination of that which is not self. This self then
loses its selfhood until it is but a part in a great herd. The overflowing
master morality looks at the world as something which is defined from the
self in terms of the self, as opposed to the decadent, slavish morality which
people, the example most often used by Nietzsche, the tragic, pre-Socratic,
Attic Greeks. Moreover, even as typifying a higher type, the Greeks were but
exception, never as something willed.”88 But in the modern era, “at once, in
all higher and mixed cultures attempts at mediation between the two are
them, indeed sometimes the harsh juxtaposition of them - even in the same man
individuals, but then to decadent and healthy, elements of which can coexist
repeated life in its entirety, hence the title of aphorism 342 of The Gay
Origin
of the solitary, isolated individual, the Eternal Recurrence can form not
only a principle of evaluation for ones actions, but a device which can
88
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, pg. 570
89
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evill, pg. 194-195
41
define an overflowing, healthy ethic. It is literally the device by which the
the structure of the thought, that is, the world repeats as it must be,
even that which one cannot stomach. And thus, the mark of the nobility
exceptional human being treats the mediocre more tenderly than himself and
his peers, this is not mere politeness of the heart – it is simply his
duty.”91
Recurrence as the mark of the higher man or even the overman, his relations
with others are divided into those of two natures, those between equals, and
those between him and the ordinary man. Where the Eternal Recurrence is
consciously derived and then assimilated into one’s self as a doctrine, the
functioning and nature. Nietzsche, in Twilight of the Idols and Ecce Homo
90
Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pg. 270
91
Nietzsche, The Antichrist, pg. 647
42
intention, my ability grows, I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysos
The nature and functions of the Dionysian are many, yet they all are
facets of the same principle93 - that is, the ability to affirm existence in
its ever changing nature, to be able to overcome the self in its attempts to
as a Greek aesthetic ideal, and in its later formulations as a symbol for the
a simultaneous willed negation and affirmation of both the self and non-self.
the same time, one of the “surrender of individuality and a way of entering
affirmation of the world as it is, not as a state of being, but in its many
“the shattering of the individual and his fusion with primal being.”96
92
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, pg. 563
93
In Nietzsche’s later works, the Dionysian and tragic, essentially become a
symbol for the Eternal Return in its ethics consequent entirety “The Tragic
Artist is no pessimist: he is precisely the one who says Yes to everything
questionable, even the terrible - he is Dionysian.” Twilight of the Idols,
pg. 484, in this later formulation, one can see why the Eternal Return as a
doctrine is given little mention in Nietzsche’s late works, the concept has
merged with that of the Dionysian. Dionysian in Nietzsche’s last works is
also in a sense nearly synonymous with Noble and herein is treated as such.
94
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, pg. 64
95
ibid, pg. 64
96
ibid, pg. 65
43
Moreover, in this symbol of affirmation, the “symbol of the ultimate limit of
existence are broken, so that the individual seems to melt into the totality
the “noble”, the Dionysian, and then the mass, the herd, the slaves. Yet the
herd, masses, slaves are not slaves to the master/noble, they are slaves to
their own morality. They are contemptible in the sense of the noble looking
down upon that which is undesirable in the manner pointed out in the
Genealogy, how “One should not overlook the almost benevolent nuances that
the Greek nobility, for example, bestows on all the words it employs to
distinguish the lower orders from itself; how they are continuously mingled
below, or even to an equal, that too must be embraced and affirmed, for it
had to be so.
97
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, pg. 271
98
Salome, pg. 18
99
Nietzsche, On The Genealogy of Morals, pg. 36
44
Concluding Remarks
To bring this full-circle, the case for the Eternal Recurrence, in its
the idea had long been current - one might say that it had recurred
Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche gives the most telling statement regarding
45
the Dionysian as an aesthetic ideal and the Dionysian as an opposition to the
last works, points most convincingly back to the ethical interpretation, that
Idols, What I Owe To the Ancients). Nietzsche proclaims himself the last
the context of the Eternal Recurrence, the distinction between past and
future is blurred and last can also mean first, and hence, the last disciple
pieces”103 is an imperative to live life such that one cannot be tempted into
regret or wishing for a better life. Life will return in the same way, not
better, not worse; in the same world, not one “hereafter”. This is in direct
contrast to the sign of the Crucified that compels one to seek a better life
form encompassing the Eternal Return of the same life impels us to live life
the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence provides a viable, and at the same time, a
far more human and utterly beyond human alternative to Christian morality.
103
Nietzsche, The Will to Power, pg. 543 Kaufmann’s footnote points to a
connection in the edition of 1911, that this was opposite a draft for BGE 56,
the section containing the circulus vitiosus deus.
104
Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, pg. 335
46
Dionysus Gegen die Gekreutzigten
47
References
Klossowski, Pierre. Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, Trans Daniel W. Smith
(Chicago:University of Chicago Press,1997).
48
On The Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, Trans. Walter Kaufmann and
R.J. Hollingdale, (New York:Vintage, 1967).
49