‘The cream of the Eternal Return is where you’ll find us,
And we hope that one day you’ll be right there beside us,
Everything recurs including that which denies us,
As we drift through the archetypes that define us.’
Original post revised.
N. comes before black holes,nuclear physics,anti-matter. Once again,not a physicist,but the concept of nothingness needs to be reevaluated in the light of modern physics.N himself advises against dwelling on the abyss. The concept of absolute nothingness seems problematic to me. How can any matter abut it without dissolution?
I remember, when I was studying N. that he elaborated on the eternal return in his letters that he wrote which were published after he died. (Not ones that were revealed to be fakes by his Nazi relatives)…
He seemed to suggest (and I’m sorry I can’t point you to any text) - that given the following: time is eternal, and that matter (stuff) will exist for eternity, and there is a finite “combinations” of said stuff, then it follows that there necessarily has to be a reconfiguration of what has passed. Ergo - “eternal recurrence”.
You know, as a side, when I hear quantum physicists going on about quantum mechanics, I sometimes think they’ve completely lost the plot.
D&P
Of couse I understand N.'s doctrine of the eternal recurrence. My point is that perhaps matter is infinite too. It (matter) is certainly eternal,giving it status,only rivaled by apparent “nothingness”.I do not remeber the statistic.but we can only see a very small quanitity of actual existence(matter).I think it is equally plausible,if not probable that we are like sand in an hour glass,only sand, that never repeats,just changes/shifts eternally. Surely N, must have at least suspected this possibility.N. treasured his life,and rightly so.I think his love for his/this life led him to what Freud would call wish fulfillment. E=mc squared states that all matter is converted totally into energy.What might N.have thought of a nuclear explosion?Maybe/probably we (and all existence) are like one vast ocean,foever shifiting,yet NEVER repeating. Heraclitus said you never step in the same river twice,and N, was very exhalting of him. N. could never let go of the concept of the overcoming of the destruction of our selves. It is for you I lust Oh eternity. Maybe we will and have recurred ,with the knowlege of our current selves,and selves that are better and worsely equipped to apprehend our place ,in the eternal becoming?
Matter, which is a form of force (energy), cannot be infinite:
“[T]he world, as force, may not be thought of as unlimited, for it cannot be so thought of; we forbid ourselves the concept of an infinite force as incompatible with the concept “force.””
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 1062.]
But the eternity of force is the eternity of time; time does not exist apart from space. So perhaps time is finite, too. A circle is a curved line of finite length. Indeed, “finite length” is a pleonasm, as “long” is a relative term.