Nietzsche and the Idea of Eternal Recurrence

Abstract

This chapter will outline the significance of the idea of eternal recurrence in relation to the problem of nihilism that has consumed human beings, following the catastrophic event of the ‘death of God’. Nietzsche advanced the doctrine of eternal recurrence as a potential antidote to our passive nihilism which has left us indifferent to all forms of creative, artistic and intellectual development, as these ‘last humans’. The eternal recurrence acts as a new centre of gravity, giving our lives new purpose and meaning, against the meaninglessness of existence, allowing us to create values of our own which we can live by. This chapter will also analyse three key interpretations of the idea of eternal recurrence found in Nietzsche’s corpus – as an imaginative thought experiment which tests our affirmation of our lives; as a cosmological hypothesis of time which opposes the Christian linear conception of time and which is associated with ancient Greek models of time; and as a poetic metaphor witnessed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which encourages us to live ‘in the moment’ and experience the moment of eternal recurrence, rather than merely conceptualise the idea of eternal recurrence.