Only one who no longer believes in an otherworldly immortality and eternal life beyond this world, and who cannot bear even the thought of transience or the final mortality as assumed by science, might find solace in the only remaining — this-worldly — form of immortality: the Eternal Reccurrence.
“Would you be able to desire this once more — and again — for all eternity?”
(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — INTRODUCTION, aph. 11, final) Finally, and at the close of this Introduction, we may speculate that Eternal Recurrence resembles Ananke (Ἀνάγκη), the Greek principle of necessity that compels the world to return — by necessity, and not merely as one… Read more
(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — INTRODUCTION, aph. 10) Finally, just as cultures in the past differed according to the type of religion and God in which they believed, so too future cultures — or civilizations — may differ according to the variant of Eternal Recurrence… Read more
(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — INTRODUCTION, aph. 9) And although at first glance it seems that the doctrine or teaching of Eternal Recurrence draws its “blood” from other religions—above all from Hinduism and Buddhism—and that it borrows from them its basic outline, perhaps the opposite… Read more
(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — INTRODUCTION, aph. 7) There is yet another reason why the Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence does not come into conflict with other religions. It generously leaves to them the answer to the question of what (it is that) returns… Who are… Read more
(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — INTRODUCTION, aph. 6) Yet before it can be grasped in its epistemological depth and attain the status of a “justified true belief,” the doctrine of the Eternal Return of the Same must first be believed. And although it enters the… Read more
(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — INTRODUCTION, aph. 5) Those who choose to believe in the Eternal Return are those for whom neither religion nor science is sufficient. Only for those to whom ancient religious texts appear unconvincing and mean nothing — but who, on the… Read more
(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — INTRODUCTION, aph. 4) The most ambitious intention of this book is not to point to new moments or aspects that would render the thought of Eternal Return rationally more comprehensible. This can scarcely be achieved under conditions in which science… Read more
(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — INTRODUCTION, aph. 3) Yet since this book is addressed, first and foremost, to those free spirits who still carry within themselves that never-sufficiently-mourned spirit of Enlightenment—the spirit that seeks to dispel the “post-structuralist darkness” that has come to dominate the… Read more
(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — INTRODUCTION, aph. 2) Beyond its rational incomprehensibility, disbelief in the Eternal Return rests upon yet another unease — the existential unbearability of one’s own life, consciously imprisoned within a hopeless circle: a life that meaninglessly “repeats itself” ad infinitum, without… Read more
(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — INTRODUCTION, aph. 1) According to its most general formulation, the Doctrine of Eternal Return holds that everything that has ever “existed” or will “exist,” everything that has unfolded or will unfold as a “process,” in the most diverse modes of… Read more
The Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence 