What if you had to live every moment of your life – every pain and every joy – over and over for eternity? Would you smile? Or would you despair that you had wasted the time life granted you? This is the idea of eternal recurrence that Nietzsche held to be of utmost importance. If our lives were to recur eternally in the exact manner we have lived them, how would we react? This was the question which Nietzsche hoped would enable individuals to exact change within their lives and if necessary completely change the trajectory of our existence.
Eternal recurrence is propositioned by Nietzsche as a hypothetical reality. The idea of one’s life recurring in a cycle ad infinitum was held by Heidegger to be the ‘most burdensome thought’. This was what Nietzsche wished to impose on his readers – a complete re-evaluation of one’s life as they were currently living it. Would we be happy living the life we have lived and will live if we had to do so for eternity, or must we change our path so that if this were the case we would not be crushed by such a heavy weight? It is a burdensome thought, but for Nietzsche the result of failing to properly contemplate this thought would be even more troubling.
Although he did not hold eternal recurrence to be an actuality, it is the concept of such a thing being real that should spur us into moving our lives in the direction we genuinely desire. It is a call for change, a call for us to be honest with ourselves about the choices we make and the life we lead. This was the aim of the idea of eternal recurrence- to encourage individuals to overcome themselves and to become better. Humanity was not seen by Nietzsche as some great end of evolution, but another step in the process of evolution, be it a step backwards or a step forwards.
This is where the idea of the Ubermensch came into play: Nietzsche believed that humanity should not be deemed the end of the evolutionary line. There are beings that could exist greater than humans – superhumans – beings that have overcome their humanity and grown above the state humans are in now. If eternal recurrence were a reality, it would be the Ubermensch that would genuinely want to live their life again and again. The Ubermensch is that person that has accepted their past and moves forward content with the fact that if they had to repeat their choices over and over forever they would.
These ideas were combatants to nihilism. Nietzsche foresaw the nihilistic existence that would take over the modern world in the absence of religion. The famous declaration of the death of God was not a celebratory exclamation, but a foreboding concern of the individual who perhaps saw a certain utility in the existence of religion. Given that religion and God would slowly fade into the background of the modern zeitgeist, something would have to inevitably fill this massive gap. Nihilism was one of these things which could take over the culture, eternal recurrence is a response to this potential nihilism, and its primary aim is to be a response which is concerned with this world, rather than a world after this or an ideal world.
Nietzsche was obsessed with creating a philosophy that encapsulated existence as something that is related to this world only and was not focused on or looking to another world. Eternal recurrence is by its very definition concerned solely with existence on earth as we know it. It is not about an eternal life in a different realm or in a completely different state of being, but an eternal life as we are living it currently, as we have lived, and as we will live before we die. This is why the Ubermensch is not an individual concerned with religion or nihilism – the religious reject this life (or at least do not affirm this life as something complete) by looking towards another life, and the nihilistic reject the idea of the possibility of this life meaning anything or having any intrinsic value. Eternal recurrence encourages a wholehearted focus on this world, and Nietzsche hoped to plant the seed for the development of those he called the Ubermensch – those who would commit to this life fully and act in such a way that would make this world worth existing.
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