Nietzsche, immortality, singularity and eternal recurrence

Bert Olivier

doi:10.4314/sajpem.v26i1.31463

Abstract

Joan Copjec has shown that modernity is privy to a notion of immortality all its own - one that differs fundamentally from any counterpart entertained in Greek antiquity or the Christian Middle Ages. She points to Blumenberg and Lefort as thinkers who have construed this concept in its modern guise in different ways, and ultimately opts for Lefort’s paradoxical understanding of immortality as the ‘transcending of time, within time’ before elaborating on a corresponding notion in Lacan’s work. It can be shown that Nietzsche, too, provides one with a distinctly modern conception of ‘immortality’, articulated in relation to his notions of affirmation, singularity and eternal recurrence. In brief, this amounts to his claim that, to affirm even one single part or event in one’s life entails affirming it in its entirety, and, in so doing - given the interconnectedness of events - affirming all that has ever existed. Moreover, once anything has existed, it is in a certain sense, for Nietzsche, necessary, despite its temporal singularity. Therefore, to be able to rise to the task of affirming certain actions or experiences in one’s own life, bestows on it not merely this kind of necessary singularity, but what he thought of as ‘eternal recurrence’ - the (ethical) affirmation of the desire to embrace one’s own, and together with it, all of existence ‘eternally’, over and over. This, it is argued, may be understood as Nietzsche’s distinctive contribution to a specifically modern notion of immortality: the ability of an individual to live in such a way that his or her singular ‘place’ in society is ensured, necessarily there, even after his or her death.

Highlights

Imagine there's no woman (2002: 19-25), Joan Copjec compares the thought of Lefort and Blumenberg on the topic of immortality in the modern epoch
While officially we moderns are committed to the notion of our own mortality, we harbor the secret, inarticulable conviction that we are not mortal. This is a surprising observation, to say the least. She goes on to point to Hans Blumenberg and Claude Lefort, both of whom elaborate on this insight, albeit with different conclusions
Copjec formulates what is at stake here in exemplary fashion (2002: 20): The modern notion of immortality benefits from the collapse of our belief in an eternal realm

Summary

Introduction

Imagine there's no woman (2002: 19-25), Joan Copjec compares the thought of Lefort and Blumenberg on the topic of immortality in the modern epoch. It seems to me that a strong case could be made for the claim that Friedrich Nietzsche preceded Blumenberg, Lefort and Lacan2 as far as the articulation of a distinctly modern – I would prefer to call it a proto-poststructuralist – conception of ‘immortality’ is concerned – one which is emphatically not a ‘remnant’ from our religious past, and which, shares the paradoxical logic that Copjec detects in Lefort's formulation insofar as it is an indication that mortals can ‘transcend time within time’, in this way ‘immortalizing’ themselves.

Results

Conclusion