Nietzsche and Heraclitus

Eternal Recurrence, Time, and Salvation

Many Nietzsche scholars today (such as Volker Gerhardt) stress the ethical relevance of Nietzsche's concept of the eternal recurrence. However, the fact that he clearly compares his concept to Heraclitus's metaphysical one in his published writings shows that it was meant as a metaphysical one. This reading of the eternal recurrence gets further support from his plans to study physics in Paris for 10 years in order to prove his concept scientifically, as his friend Lou Andreas-Salome pointed out, and from passages in his notebooks that he did not publish himself in which he puts together arguments with which he tries to prove the eternal recurrence philosophically. All of these arguments fail or are insufficient. At the least they do not establish what they are meant to establish. from the premises he mentions, he cannot infer the eternal recurrence by necessity. This, however, does not mean that his arguments cannot be improved so that the premises actually imply the eternal recurrence of everything. In addition, current scholars who stress the ethical relevance of the eternal recurrence are surely correct in doing so. The eternal recurrence is of immense ethical importance, as it is Nietzsche's theory of salvation, and it can give meaning to people who do not believe in a Christian afterlife but rather in a this-worldly concept of existence.

Eternal recurrence implies that whatever you have done and will do will recur identically. You lived the very same life before you were born, and you will lead it again in the very same manner. This implies that your life will not be over when you die but that you will return again and again, and you will meet the very same people you know now, and you will have to go through all the pains and pleasures you have experienced and will experience. You will not remember that you have lived the very same life before, but if you hold this concept, then you can feel comfort in realizing that you will experience all the wonderful events you have experienced again and again. These events are not over and done with. On the other hand, a life might have been so terrible that the concept of eternal recurrence can be unbearable.

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