For all those Nietzsche fans out there, what do you think of the Eternal Return?
If it is a thought experiment or some kind of litmus test for yea saying to this life, then why is the life in the thought experiment unlike this life? How can you say you’re affirming this life, finite as it is, if in the thought experiment you are affirming an eternally recurring life?
That is to say, an eternally recurring same life is qualitatively finite but quantitatively infinite.
You’re not affirming an eternally recurring life----you’re just affirming your finite life, to recur again, infinitely. The exact same, every detail. The life in the thought experiment is not different than this (your) life.
I actually agree with Nooqie here.
The point is about whether ER ought to be understood as a thought experiment or a metaphysical view. Each position is problematic. The problem with the latter is obvious. The problem with the former is actually inchoate in Heidegger’s critique of Nietzsche, I.e., of not moving beyond a spirit of revenge, and having an aversion to transience. Its picked up and developed by some others, most notably Magnus and Clark. Basically, if ER is a thought experiment, then we are conceiving life as it is not, or rather as we believe life to not be. We think life to be X and in engaging with the thought experiment we suppose it to be Y, different for a second. The way in which it is different is that in the thought experiment it is not quantitatively final. You dont just die and thats the end of it; thats a much more harrowing and heavier thought than ER. If life actually doesn’t recur, or if it is not believed to come back again, even though it is the same, then engaging with ER and affirming the life as it concieves it is a kind of comforting thought in the face and hatred of transience, or bad faith. ER does not embrace the quantitative finality of life. We hate the total finality of it, so we imagine its not really final. However, if it is construed as a metaphysical view, and life is believed to recur, then in affirming ER, you’re affirming life as it is, and the above problems go away. That’s the argument anyway. It’s put forth by Loeb in an article in the upcoming Oxford Nietzsche.
ER is a metaphysical invention, which is a robust version of a thought experiment. It’s a story designed to affect every detail of how you live your life, effecting transformation - in this case transformation towards “reality” rather than further into the labyrinths of the imagination. It’s a great example of putting the creative imagination to wholesome use.
About the latter: Technically, ER is a cosmological thesis, and not a metaphysical view----since it is just a view about the physical universe, (nothing beyond it, i.e., not meta-physical). And no, ER is not obviously false. ER requires some pretty major assumptions without which it couldn’t work. For example, ER requires (a) hard determinism, (b) a fixed quantity of matter in the universe, (c) an expanding and collapsing view of the universe, (d) infinite time. None of the assumptions are a given, but none are obviously false either----and you can find actual scientists and cosmologists putting forth any of those things.
I think the “aversion to transcience” claim has something to it. You might say that you want to cling to things from your past, and to see them again. But surely the life that you are actually living is filled with so much transcience and change—even just for yourself (i.e., the changes in your goals, values, friendships, etc)—that to will all of that to happen again isn’t really an aversion to transcience per say. And frankly, the thought-experiment is just that you re-live all of the things you already have, which includes all of the feelings of loss and change, etc. It’s not like the next instantiation of your life you’ll say, “ahhh, yea, I get to see that person again, that’s so nice”—because that’s not a feeling you actually had, that’d be a new one.
You might say, “You dont just die and thats the end of it; thats a much more harrowing and heavier thought than ER”, but actually I think it’s a far heavier and more harrowing thought to be bound to repeat infinitely many more times a life that you did not enjoy (or don’t want), if you did not enjoy it. That’d be ceaseless torture, rather than a sensationless respite at the end of it.
I think I see what you’re saying. ER is a kind of after-life, so to speak. But I don’t think that’s quite right. When you affirm ER, you are affirming every detail about how you grow old and die and lose everything you’ve gained during your life—and all of the experiences associated with that. That’s quite a lot of willing change, and loss, and degeneration, and death, etc. And, importantly, you are NOT affirming the experience of getting any of those things back again, since the experience of getting anything back again is something that you will not have in the next instantiation of this life.
Okay, this is where I start disagreeing with Mo. “Metaphysical” does not mean “pertaining to what’s beyond the physical”, but “pertaining to the whole of the natural”. If the cosmos is the whole of the natural, then, “cosmological” is tantamount to “metaphysical”. To be sure, however, Nietzsche usually used the word “metaphysics” and its derivates in the popular sense, in which Mo uses it here.
This is correct if one hasn’t yet run into the infinity/nothingness problem. The whole of existence is either infinite or enclosed by nothingness; if you think it through, you will see that there is no alternative. But we can conceive of neither infinity nor nothingness—and indeed, “enclosed by nothingness” means “enclosed by nothing”, i.e., “not enclosed by anything”… We cannot conceive of existence as a whole, and therefore anything is metaphysically/cosmologically possible, including eternal recurrence.
Indeed. There is no cumulative consciousness across cycles, because there’s only one cycle…
There will be no memory of having done it before, though. So the thought of it should neither be more nor less harrowing and heavy. However, it does deny the possibility of an eternal afterlife of the soul.
Exactly.
You haven’t really disagreed with me, you’ve just re-defined a word away from its classical usage, and made a separate point. That’s fine. But by your usage, all kinds of basic scientific theories (empirical in principle) are metaphysical, and that strikes me as odd. But yes, if you define it as you do, then ER is also metaphysical.
The first sentence just isn’t meaningful. It’d be meaningful to say that the universe is either infinite or finite, which is probably what you mean. Yea, we haven’t scaled every inch of the universe, so we can’t say that some things are physically impossible. I’m not sure why that’s that controversial. The fact is that not everything is logically possible. And not everything is nomologically possible either, given the laws as they actually are.
In this life you can imagine what it would be like to re-live parts of your life----and that can be harrowing.
But what conception of your life do you have if you affirm eternal recurrence? In the notes about ER, taken before he wrote TSZ, in the fall of '81, he says ER must be believed in order to have any influence, so I want to strengthen what “affirmation of ER” means to believing ER. The idea is that the belief in ER spreads through and influences one’s matrix of beliefs and alters one’s entire world view. Each action performed thereafter is done within a new context, a new lifeworld, in that each action takes on a new significance. Each action is performed with the thought that one will have to perform it for all eternity. One’s own view of life is such that it is not therefore finite. Yes, if one did not enjoy life, then the thought of ER is definitely worse than qualitative finality, death, because if you didn’t enjoy life, death is a release. However, ER is for the strong, life- affirming types. For these types death is not a release. It’s not a comforting though.
ER is though.
There’s nothing harrowing or heavy about accepting ER if one has lived a great life. It’s in fact pretty nice to believe underneath it all that…there’ll be more, even if it’s more of the same.
I really don’t see any textual support for ER as a thought experiment. Most people who talk about it as such rely solely or primarily on 341 from GS, but that’s one tiny little paragraph, which should be read in the context of 340 where Nietzsche contrasts Socrates’ life denying evaluation at the end of his life and 342 where Nietzsche brings up the antithesis of Socrates, and thereafter the tragedy begins, so to speak. We have the whole of TSZ and his notes on ER to believe he intended it as a “metaphysics of this life.” Moreover, he says, as mentioned above, that ER must be believed. A thought experiment is not believed. It’s supposed to be true for small period of time in order to draw some consequences here and there, and ER is not something which one supposes to be true in order to periodically check whether one would be willing to do it all over again. He says ER is affective only if it is believed, deeply and thoroughly, because then it will influence other beliefs, serve as a “ballast,” and fundamentally alter one’s perspective, which amounts to no less than a fundamental change of one’s soul, understood as a subjective multiplicity, or structure of drives and impulses.
At the same time though, I’m hesitant to consider it a metaphysical view, or even simply a cosmological view, because Nietzsche does not accept correspondence theory of truth, certainly not when he wrote TSZ and not when he wrote GS, if ever, really. ER is not intended to be true outside of a perspective, yet it is intended to be believed. I don’t think you can say a view is cosmological or metaphysical if it is not held to be trans-perspectivally true. Anyway, Nietzsche abandoned the true/false paradigm, said we shouldn’t abandon an idea just because it is false, saw himself as a cultural physical, and I think prescribed ER as something which, if believed and ‘digested,’ especially within and with the context in which Nietzsche presented it, would convalesce [higher creative types].
What of the notion that ER as not differentiable from life, comparatively to the imposition of nothingness within the concept of eternity? Nietzche’s or Heidegger’s nothingness, is no such imposition of a prior conceptual unity, because the imposition is based on the alienation of the idea of eternal recurrence, from the idea of it as a superfluous idea, a
non differentiable, eternal universal concept, posited as Nothingness?
The difference between ideas, referentiability, and affirmability is an exploration of probable worlds, as in reality testing, where the tension between the probable and possible presents a tension where essential qualities between Being and nothingness emerge. These qualities are not even qualities, they are reductions, yes, but not into an absurd level,(((as post modernist's seem to lead us into this blind alley))) their ground is forever reality tested between two congruent notions: which are probably embedded. There is no other way to go either as seeing at as a probable appearance of infinity, or as a possibile existence of nothingness.(Of events)
So does the nothingness contain the infinity, or the infinity contain the nothingness? Containment presribes a qualitative difference. If either could contain
the other, then there can not be a qualitative difference. Existence is not reducible to Being, but if it is tested, emergent qualities emerge to postsrcibe the process as either/or. (Why?- to sustain a reality, albeit a virtual, perspective one)
This analysis is by most part non textaual and doesen’t beg a metaphysical/cosmological distinction.
As with any “guide to life”, it needs to be believed to have any influence. To affirm ER is just to will (desire/want/intend) that you will live your life over again, exactly the same in every detail. So, how would you act and spend your time if you knew you had to do it over again, and again, and again. It doesn’t really matter what your “conception of life” is—whatever that means, in the first place.
As you noticed, ER is supposed to be a guide to life—a guide while you are actually living it—not reflecting backwards on your death bed. If we’re talking about comforts, I’d think that actually believing in heaven would be more of a comfort, no matter how good your life was—just by definition. (And hell more of a curse, for that matter).
The Will to Power 1066, (I’m not sure when that is in the Bitner edition of the nachlass), is about as close to a syllogistic argument as Nietzsche has ever presented for any of his ideas in anything he wrote, published or not. You can re-write it in premises and conclusion. And it is an argument for eternal recurrence as an actual cosmology. Obviously, it’s not published. But it’s not obviously contradicted in anything that was published.
But if you want textual support for anything, just go get his online texts, and do a word search for “eternal recurrence” or “eternal return”. It’s easy, and you’ll find lots. (I mean, not lots about ER, but more generally).
ER is not a thought-experiment. It is either intended as an actual cosmology, or else as a guide to life—or both. It is not a thought-experiment. A thought-experiment is when you imagine a scenario that doesn’t exist, but you imagine that it does to clarify your intuitions about something. ER is not that.
That certainly doesn’t matter. He can believe the truth of ER as a pragmatist, or a coherentist—or any theory of truth at all.
That sounds like Clark. Ironically, Clark completely misunderstands Nietzsche because she applies coherence theory of truth to him and not correspondence theory of truth.
What Clark fails to appreciate is that the doctrine of perspectivism implies that it is not itself merely a perspectival truth. If the world is the will to power, then the view that the world is will to power is itself a product of the will to power—i.e., an imposition on the world. Does this mean that the world cannot be the will to power? No, but it does mean that one cannot then view it as will to power simply, as such a view would then not be an imposition on the world. To describe the world as will to power is then to give it the prescription “Be will to power!” But this then means “Be what you are!” As change is of the essence of the world as will to power, however, this must then include “Take the course that you take!” If one cannot give nature or its course the prescription “Be what you are!” without implying “Be different from what you are!”, however, something must be added to it: “Be eternally what you are!”, “Take the course that you take, but take it again and again!” This is the only way the view that the world is will to power can be true: it must still be a violation, i.e., an act of the will to power.
That’s factually wrong. Maudemarie Clark thinks that Nietzsche has a correspondence theory of truth, and you can check that by reading page 31 (the beginning of Chapter 2) of her book, “Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy”. Clark is obviously wrong on that score, but that’s what she thinks.
That is just wrong, about Nietzsche. Dead wrong. All of Nietzsche’s truths are perspectival truths. He says so, explicitly, in Beyond Good and Evil section 21. (Nietzsche, “Granted that this also is only interpretation–and you will be eager enough to make this objection?–well, so much the better” --That’s the last line). The fact is that Nietzsche never addresses the “problem of perspectivism”. He just leaves it be.
Oh, so if I view the world as will to money-and-hoes, then the view that the world is money-and-hoes is itself a product of the will to money-and-hoes. And therefore money-and-hoes characterize the ultimate nature of reality. That’s not absolutely preposterous and ridiculous at all… cough cough.
She’s not wrong on that score, but anyway, that’s not what I said. I did not say she ascribed coherence theory of truth to Nietzsche and not correspondence theory of truth. Her supposedly true reading of Nietzsche is at best true in the sense of coherence theory of truth, and not of correspondence theory of truth.
That’s just how you interpret that line. I, with Lampert and Strauss, interpret it to mean that it’s better because that supposed objection actually reinforces the aforesaid. By the way, it’s section 22, not 21.
Yes, absolutely preposterous and(?) ridiculous reading on your part. The correct money-and-hoes version of my statement would be this:
“If the world is money-and-hoes, then the view that the world is money-and-hoes is itself a product of money-and-hoes.”
Well, the thought is he didn’t publish any of those notes, or any proof for ER because he realized he couldn’t prove it.
I’ve read his notes on ER, at least the one’s translated in English. In the spirit of charity, or so they seem to think, most Nietzsche scholars don’t pay much attention to the notes on ER, because they suggest a metaphysical view and, as we all know, Nietzsche despised metaphysics. His published works however don’t make much of an attempt at providing reasons for ER, and 341 in GS, read in isolation, seems to suggest that ER is something you suppose to be true in order to test whether you affirm your life, your past. This stance on ER is primarily or often solely supported by 341. They forget about the other two previous mentions of ER in GS and all of TSZ though, and for good reason, because, as I said, interpreting ER as something other than a cosmological or metaphysical view is an uncharitable interpretation according to them. It makes Nietzsche inconsistent. Really, it’s just lazy and poor scholarship.
It’s not completely implausible that ER is a thought experiment. Most Nietzsche scholars seem to believe it. I mean, you can say that you imagine life and everything else to recur, i.e., a scenario that doesn’t exist, and then ask yourself whether you’d be okay with reliving it all as it was. If you say yes, you display an attitude of amor fati; if not, then you can alter your life so that the next time you ask yourself the question of whether you’d do it all over again you can say yes. Understood as such it’s conceived as an existentialist tool.
Well, he was a perspectivist, and that doesn’t bode well with metaphysics. Nietzsche presents ER as a view of the whole within a perspective that is aware that the rules of it’s game don’t have jurisdiction over other games, so to speak. To say it’s metaphysical or cosmological, and they’re the same thing, is to miss an important part of what metaphysics is. To say Nietzsche was a pragmatist or a coherentist, which is not the same thing as saying he could have been, is to miss that he was a perspectivist.
He can’t prove it, noone can, but it’s clear that he tried. Anyways, I just don’t know why someone would pretend to be in the mind of Nietzsche like that----because that’s what such a claim implies. ER is represented in both the published and unpublished, and as far as I can tell, nothing unpublished conflicts with anything published. If there’s ever a conflict, you can give the published stuff precedence. But ultimately, this thread is not about Nietzsche secondary scholarship—I thought—it’s about the idea of ER.
ER is not a metaphysical view, nor is that suggested by anything unpublished about ER. It’s a view about the physical universe, and therefore it’s just a a cosmological one.
It really doesn’t. Or at least I don’t see why you keep saying that.
Agreed.
And who said that? Btw, according to the classical usage of ‘meta-physical’—(the usage Nietzsche uses)—there is a pretty significant difference between cosmology and metaphysics. It’s really apples and oranges.
No it’s not. Nietzsche is both a perspectivist and a pragmatist. They’re not at all in conflict.
You’re making it more difficult then it is. If your life how you live it would return eternally, it would make that life all the more important, motivating you to get to the core of what matters and doing away with the distraction that get in the way. That’s the opposite of what religions generally do.
It’s the sentiment behind the idea that matters. Getting into the fact that he is technicaly positing a world unlike the ‘real’ one is missing that point.
Either way, the following argumentation that life that doesn’t recur would be a heavier idea than the ER doesn’t seem all that strong. The ER is final in that you don’t get to change anything. Your really have to love life to affirm it like that… whereas it seems very possible that someone hating life would be glad that his life will end once and for all.