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Thursday, March 11, 2021

Nietzsche's "Eternal Recurrence"

Matthew Wells, Section 8.

Friedrich Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844 in Röcken, Saxony, Prussia.  He was the son of a Lutheran pastor and is most often attributed to the quote "God is dead".  It is very important to note, however, that many of these ideas have been misconstrued to support certain philosophies that he was adamantly against, such as Anti-Semitism and Nazism.  His writings were often written as half poetry and half philosophy, writing them artistically rather than straight forward and logic-driven.  In addition, his forms of writing were not long discussions of philosophical ideas, but rather short ideas just to consider for perspective. This form of expression is very prominent in his idea of eternal recurrence, in which he poses a hypothetical of being stuck in a loop of your events on Earth, where you will live the exact same sequence of events in your life for all of eternity.  He explores this idea in both The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which he considers that upon first hearing of this, our initial reaction would be true despair.  Life at an initial glance to Nietzsche was suffering, and to live that an infinite number of times would be incomprehensibly awful.

However, he also considered what position and kind of life one would have to live to see this as a blessing rather than a curse.  He ultimately came to the conclusion that if one were to live life to the fullest and embrace their fate (amor fati), the idea of living this life over and over again would be fulfilling rather than tormenting.  If you were to dread this eternal recurrence, however, you've already given up on this world and are a nihilist.

Sources:

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Friedrich_Nietzsche

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/#EterRecuSame

https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/birthoftragedy/summary/

https://www.thoughtco.com/nietzsches-idea-of-the-eternal-recurrence-2670659#:~:text=%22What%2C%20if%20some%20day%20or,every%20thought%20and%20sigh%20and

https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/nietzsches-top-15-aphorisms-for-your-next-existential-crisis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsZzEaSC4jU&ab_channel=EternalRecurrence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHWbZmg2hzU&t=132s&ab_channel=TheSchoolofLife

 


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