Nietzsche on the Eternal Recurrence

If our lives eternally recur, as dramatized in Nietzsche's Zarathustra, the value of our existence is multiplied by infinity.

Neil Sinhababu (Author)

9781009443210, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 January 2025

76 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 0.4 cm, 0.13 kg

The idea of the eternal recurrence is that we will live the exact same lives again an infinite number of times. Nietzsche appreciates that this would multiply the value of a single life by infinity, justifying intense emotional responses. His unpublished notes provide a cosmological argument for the eternal recurrence that anticipates Poincaré's recurrence theorem. Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra describes its hero discovering this idea and struggling to accept the recurrence of all bad things. He eventually comes to love the eternal recurrence because it will bring back all the joys of his life, and teaches this idea to others.

1. The introduction of infinities
2. Gay Science 341, 'The greatest weight', considers infinite value
3. The argument of KSA 11:11:38[12] anticipates Poincaré's theorem
4. 'The Soothsayer' envisions the dark side of eternal recurrence
5. 'On Redemption' tells of the will's struggle with the past
6. 'The Stillest Hour' struggles to speak of infinite negative value
7. 'On The Vision and the Riddle' envisions the cosmology
8. 'The Convalescent' has animals proclaiming recurrence
9. 'The Other Dancing Song' expresses love of life
10. 'Once More' and 'The Drunken Song' sing of infinities
11. 'The Seven Seals' proposes marriage to Eternity
12. Part IV pits Zarathustra against the soothsayer
13. 'The Ass Festival' celebrates worldly value
Notes on Texts, Translations, and Abbreviations
Works Cited.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy, from c 1900 - [HPCF]