Explain Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Return of the Same.

 Explain Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Return of the Same.

In this essay, I will argue that Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Return acts as an existential catalyst in helping us to overcome the problem of nihilism by affirming life. Along with this, I will argue that the literary style of Thus Spoke Zarathustra acts as a metaphor expressing the doctrine, illustrating it, how it affects us, and how it could change us. I will also argue that the doctrine does not need to be epistemologically true in order for it to have its intended effect. I will begin by briefly explaining how the problem of nihilism arises for Nietzsche. I will then go on to explain what the Return actually states through its first expression in The Gay Science and examine the main explicit articulations of the idea in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This will include a brief examination of interpretations of what the ‘spirit of gravity’ might actually be, as it is presented as antagonistic to the Return. 

To understand the need for the Return, it helps to briefly explain the context of Nietzsche’s thought in which it appears: in response to the problem of nihilism (nihilism being here understood as the belief that nothing has any value/meaning or the belief in something that has no value/meaning). After the death of God (proclaimed in both The Gay Science and Zarathustra), all religions and their teachings, any transcendent goals and ideas of the afterlife lose their meaning. This leaves us with nothing to believe in, hence nihilism. For Nietzsche, all followers of religion are nihilistic: they speak of God, but if there is no such being, or it has died, the religious must therefore believe in nothing, and are therefore nihilistic. 

Later in The Gay Science, we get the first mention of the Return. In an aphorism entitled ‘the greatest stress’ (depending on the translation, ‘stress’ can also be read as ‘weight’ or ‘burden’), we are given a succinct outline of the essence of the doctrine, but it is important to note how Nietzsche chooses to express it. 

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.

He writes this section of the text as a hypothesis and puts the actual expression of the doctrine into the mouth of a demon, inviting us to wonder: “How, if […] a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you…” This is obviously not a systematic teaching of the doctrine as fact; rather Nietzsche seems to be trying to get us to wonder how we would react if it were true by telling us a story. Perhaps through literature and narrative Nietzsche is trying to convey to us an idea not expressable in terms of logical argument.

In the Return, time is infinite, with no beginning or end, but everything in our lives return to us in exactly the same sequence an infinite number of times. Nietzsche considers how we might react to such a thought, concluding that: “If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you […] or perhaps crush you.”

We are given two alternatives here: either the thought changes us in some way (presumably positive), or it crushes us. If the latter is the case, we would not be able to surmount the following: “Do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” Would weigh upon your actions as the greatest stress.”

One reading of this could be that Nietzsche is asking us to consider this as a moral imperative, but considering his prior proclamation of the death of God in the story of the madman and the destruction of values imposed on us by religion, his proposing a new moral system seems unlikely (although he would later call for a ‘revaluation of all values’). Rather, the function of this thought when the rest of the passage is examined seems to suggest its purely existential value. “How well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this eternal confirmation and seal?”

When we consider the idea of everything returning to us infinitely, it seems like a terrible proposition. Yet Nietzsche asks how much we would have to love life and ourselves in order that we should will this on ourselves. This seems to suggest that the Return, whilst not being a moral imperative, could change how we live and how we view ourselves. If we love ourselves and life to the extent that we will nothing more than it all to happen again, infinitely, we would be able to affirm life, living better, and without religion. 

Nietzsche writes about the Return in such a literary way that we might question the seriousness of what he is trying to convey. Traditionally, philosophers express their ideas through rigorous academic texts.  It may be for this reason that Walter Kaufmann admits “most interpreters of Nietzsche’s thought have simply disregarded the recurrence,” although the fact that the idea only explicitly appears a few times in Nietzsche’s works may also have contributed to this. Kaufmann does however admit that “the symbolism of Zarathustra invites misunderstanding.”

It is true that Zarathustra is littered with rhetorical devices, metaphor and narrative, with little to no straightforward explicit exposition of philosophical ideas. Moreover, the style in which it is written seems to evoke the idea of what could be seen as a parody of religious texts, especially the Bible. However, parody might be too strong a word here, as elsewhere Nietzsche certainly displayed a certain, warped kind of respect for the Bible and the Old Testament in particular, writing:

In the Jewish ‘Old Testament’, the book of divine justice, there are men, things and speeches in so grand a style that Greek and Indian literature have nothing to compare with it. One stands in awe and reverence before these tremendous remnants of what man once was.

The most significant and explicit expression Zarathustra gives of  the Return in Thus Spoke Zarathustra comes in the form of a vision he has seen, a “vision of the loneliest”, which seems to hearken back to the ‘loneliest loneliness’ of The Gay Science. He speaks of the infinite nature of time to a dwarf, who replies (“contemptuously”): “all truth is crooked; time itself is a circle” However, the dwarf is not as struck by the idea as Zarathustra, who becomes angry that the dwarf has not fully grasped the implications of the Return, saying: “you spirit of gravity […] do not make things too easy for yourself!” Zarathustra realises that the idea, when grasped properly, is not an easy one to bear, made evident by his calling it an “abysmal thought” and says that the dwarf “could not bear it.” Zarathustra calls the dwarf ‘spirit of gravity’, implying that the persona of the dwarf could be seen as an embodiment of such. In a later section entitled ‘on the spirit of gravity’, Zarathustra says:

The man who has not yet learned to fly. Earth and life seem grave to him; and thus the spirit of gravity wants it. But whoever would become light and a bird must love himself: thus I teach.

Here Nietzsche talks of those for whom the earth and life “seem grave”: those that cannot affirm life, and that is how the spirit of gravity would have it, according to Zarathustra. N. F. Gier in his text advances a criticism of Laurence Lampert’s view of the ‘spirit of gravity.’ Lampert suggests that it is the embodiment of rationalism, i.e. the values of the primacy of reason and knowledge. Gier attacks this view, arguing that a rationalist would more likely prefer a linear view of truth and time. This seems like a flimsy criticism. It could be argued that a rationalist may see a natural perfection and mathematical beauty in the shape of a circle, and in light of Einstein’s work on relativity (which of course was not available to Nietzsche), time does not present itself as ordered and simple anymore. Furthermore, rationalism is traditionally associated with exercising restraint of bodily pleasures in the pursuit of knowledge, as is evident in the writings of Plato. Earlier in the narrative of Zarathustra, Zarathustra and his disciples come across a group of girls dancing in a forest, and Zarathustra speaks: “Do not cease dancing, you lovely girls! No killjoy has come to you with evil eyes, no enemy of girls. God’s advocate am I before the devil: but the devil is the spirit of gravity.”

It seems here that the spirit of gravity is being presented as that which is antagonistic to fun, to joy. The dancing girls seem to be an embodiment of joy in life, of affirming life, and the spirit of gravity the enemy of such pleasures. This is more evidence to suggest that rationalism is a valid way of reading what the spirit of gravity is. What we can say for certain, though, is that whatever the spirit of gravity is, if it is indeed one particular thing, is that it is hostile to affirming life, and taking joy in earthly pleasures. This compliments the dwarf’s antagonistic nature in the vision of Zarathustra, further suggesting the spirit of gravity is something to be overcome and thrown off, and the facing the Return is how we achieve this. 

There are many other references to the Return in the narrative of Zarathustra, but the prior vision seems the most significant, and I do not have the word count to do every other reference justice. I will however, make mention of one more that seems important in completing the metaphor Zarathustra’s story implies. In a later section called ‘The Seven Seals’, we find Zarathustra is no longer afraid of or shying away from, the Return, and is joyful in affirming life, though the exact nature of this affirmation remains unclear. “Oh, how should I not lust after eternity and after the nuptial ring of rings, the ring of recurrence? […] For I love you, O eternity!”

In Zarathustra, the Return is presented as being fact but obviously this is a fictional, yet philosophical narrative. Nietzsche, in his unpublished notebooks, did attempts proofs of the Return, and wrote that it must be considered “the most scientific of all possible hypotheses” The validity of such proofs and claims, I would suggest, is not a necessary consideration when the Return is considered as an existential catalyst in the face of nihilism. If we truly think on the Return, the thought can still have an effect on us whether it is true or not. Like the story of the demon we saw earlier, the thought functions in our mind as a hypothesis, as a ‘what if it were true?’ If we wonder about the possible truth of such a thing, we wonder what the consequences and implications of such a thing would be. It seems these thoughts are precisely what Nietzsche wanted to get us to consider in his published works. 

In conclusion, we have seen that for Nietzsche the Return, whether a true hypothesis or not, can, for Nietzsche, be used as a catalyst for affirming life in the face of nihilism. In Zarathustra, Nietzsche uses the narrative to illustrate different aspects of the Return, including the antagonist to it, in the form of the ‘spirit of gravity’, and two different interpretations of what the nature of the ‘spirit of gravity’ is were briefly examined. The narrative style of Zarathustra seems to function well as a metaphor for how the thought can affect us, through its story showing that even though it is not an easy thought to bear, when it is borne it helps us overcome nihilism, affirm and take joy in life. 

Bibliography

Books

‘The Portable Nietzsche’, trans. Walter Kaufmann, Penguin Books, 1976, London – contains excerpts from The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Antichrist

Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche trans. Helen Zimmern, Dover Thrift, Great Britain, 1998

‘Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist: fourth edition, Walter Kaufmann, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1974

Websites

Excerpt from N. F. Gier’s ‘Spiritual Titanism: Indian, Chinese and Western Perspectives’ –  this informs my writing on Lampert and Gier in this essay - accessed 09/01/13 - http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/riddle.htm