Introductory Reflections

This altogether extraordinary, almost ectoplasmic event in Nietzsche’s life, connected first with premonition and formation, then with illumination and complete obsession, and finally with the fading and near-total abandonment of the thought of Eternal Return, can be discerned above all from the records of Nietzsche’s literary estate, as is often the case with the legacies of other great thinkers, and to a far lesser extent from what Nietzsche himself published during his lifetime. Only in three places in his books — The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Beyond Good and Evil — and there in a rather enigmatic-mystical tone, does Nietzsche explicitly refer to the idea of Eternal Return, which, let us recall, came to his mind in the summer of 1881. Admittedly, in the late work Ecce Homo, he nevertheless somewhat clarifies how this thought “came” to him — or, more precisely, occurred to him.

Here, however, we must point out that, contrary to the prevailing interpretations, we hold that Nietzsche intended to expound the doctrine of Eternal Return in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but ultimately abandoned that idea during the very process of writing the book. That unusual, still today for many incomprehensible and enigmatic work seems somehow to have remained unfinished in spirit. It truly appears as though something great was begun within it, only to be left incomplete. In our view, the book contains numerous allusions to the thought of Eternal Return, yet they are expressed through such a dense network of metaphors and symbols that they cannot be interpreted unambiguously. At the same time, it cannot escape our notice that in certain places Zarathustra is explicitly proclaimed — or at least treated — as the Teacher of Eternal Return, which lends further support to our interpretation of this book.

On the other hand, many interpreters of Nietzsche have recounted the genealogy of this, for us the most important of Nietzsche’s thoughts, in their own distinctive ways within their writings; and they too will assist us in achieving the aim of this chapter, already indicated in its title. In this respect, the most exhaustive and, to us, the most interesting approach appears to be that of Martin Heidegger. The second volume of Heidegger’s four-volume work devoted to Nietzsche’s philosophy is entirely dedicated to the thought of Eternal Return. For this reason, Martin Heidegger deserves credit for being among the first to emphasize the decisive importance of this thought within the philosophy of the German thinker.

Alongside Heidegger, it is also worth mentioning here other authors whom Nietzsche’s thought of Eternal Return inspired to write books of their own, such as Karl Löwith (1935), Pierre Klossowski (1969), Joan Stambaugh (1972), Bernd Magnus (1978), Lawrence Hatab (2005), and finally Bevis E. McNeil (2021), to name those presently known to us. In this context, we must not forget the modest and most likely pseudonymous George Fraser, whose small books on Nietzsche’s philosophy — among which The Eternal Return stands out in particular — offer entirely unique insights. All of these authors found their own reasons for contemplating the idea of Eternal Return, writing books from their own specific perspectives, and their works deserve mention in this book — a kind of relative to their own works. We shall discuss their views on the “idea,” thought, doctrine, or teaching of Eternal Return in greater detail in the sixth chapter. Here, however, we shall focus primarily on those parts of their texts that help illuminate the genealogy of the thought of Eternal Return in Nietzsche’s philosophizing.

But for now, let us return to Heidegger and, through him, begin our journey into the genealogy of the thought of Eternal Return in Nietzsche’s thinking. How, then, could such a thought ever have occurred to him?

From “The Ring Surrounding Man” to the Eschatological Chapter “On First and Last Things”

It is significant that Martin Heidegger, after a meticulous study of Nietzsche’s literary remains — that precious “mine” of his entire philosophy — chose, at the beginning of the second volume of Nietzsche I, devoted entirely to the idea of Eternal Return, to mention an intriguing remark by the young nineteen-year-old Nietzsche as a possible first “nugget” of the thought of Eternal Return within Nietzsche’s “river of thought,” which was already, even at that time, swelling with unusual ideas. The passage in question comes from a youthful diary entry written in 1863 and discovered only in 1936:

“And thus the human being grows beyond everything that once surrounded him. He need not break his chains: unexpectedly, when God calls him, they fall away. And where is the ring that ultimately surrounds him? Is it the world? Is it God?” (Mein Leben. Autobiographische Skizze des jungen Nietzsche. Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg, 1936.)

To be fair in our approach, Heidegger himself understood that the young Nietzsche was still merely searching for a final answer, a final truth about the world, and that the aforementioned “ring” was only a metaphor for that answer. Yet he advocated for Nietzsche’s archive to publish this “autobiographical sketch” in a special edition as an inspiration for young Germans.

Nietzsche himself could hardly have imagined that this metaphorical ring would one day return to him as an almost literal answer to his question — in the form of the thought of the “ring of Eternal Return.” It is therefore unsurprising that Nietzsche’s youthful path afterward no longer had much to do with that “idea.” Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Wagner’s music, and his professorship at the University of Basel came next; they led him toward other “rings of thought.” Still, in this context, we must not overlook his philological training and expertise in ancient Greek culture. Yet even when he writes about the Ancient Greeks, as in his youthful work The Birth of Tragedy, other motifs and archetypes dominate Nietzsche’s writing. They in no way suggest that Nietzsche was still searching for the “answer of all answers” — the “ring that ultimately surrounds man.”

Likewise, it should be noted that in this first phase of his thinking — during the period in which The Birth of Tragedy was written — Nietzsche was not particularly close to the later Greek philosophers – especially the Stoics, who are most often mentioned as the first inheritors of this “idea above all ideas.” Although some researchers into the genealogy of this thought, such as Lawrence Hatab, believe that it originates from the pre-Socratics Nietzsche admired far more — specifically Empedocles or even Pythagoras — Nietzsche himself never explicitly connected it with them.

And if we are to be fair in our approach, in that period Nietzsche was closest to the thinking of perhaps the boldest of all the pre-Socratics — Heraclitus of Ephesus. In the next book he wrote — though one he would never publish during his lifetime — Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Nietzsche praises and elevates Heraclitus above all others, not only in relation to the post-Socratics and Socrates himself, but even in relation to the other pre-Socratics. And one gains the impression that he does so above all in opposition to Parmenides.

Unlike this Eleatic, who regarded the world as motionless and unchanging, with always the same “old sun,” the Ephesian maintained that the world is driven by the eternally new flame of an ancient fire. Thus, the river into which a man steps twice is never the same river, but always another one, just as the sun that rises each morning upon the horizon is never the same sun, but another, or a new one. And what could be further removed from belief in Eternal Return than the assertion that the river into which one steps is eternally new, and that the sun which illuminates him every morning is likewise ever-new…?

We should note, however, that there are interpretations which do not regard Heraclitus’ teaching as diametrically opposed to that of Parmenides, considering such an opposition overly simplified. Heraclitus’ statement “everything flows” (panta rhei) is not one of his literally preserved sayings, but rather a later summarizing formulation of his teaching. As such, it merely points to the fact that the world becomes, that it constitutes an ongoing happening or event. On the other hand, Parmenides’ statement that “Being is” (esti gar einai) may likewise be interpreted in terms of the world’s becoming — or, in Parmenides’ case, the becoming (or coming-to-presence) of Being itself.

But let us return to Nietzsche. Only after his break with Wagner and Schopenhauer, and after that depressive winter in Sorrento (1876–77), spent with Malwida von Meysenbug, during which he began work on Human, All Too Human — and in which, for the first time, an eschatological chapter appears, On First and Last Things, placed at the very beginning of the work — can we say that Nietzsche became seized by a mood that would ultimately lead him toward thoughts resembling those he had recorded in his youthful years. In a certain sense, we might say that he once again began the search for the ancient “ring that ultimately surrounds man…”

Deeply disappointed in humanity, Nietzsche began to look differently upon nature and the world around him. He reflected more and more upon his health and upon the almost miraculous effect of changing climates in accordance with the seasons, something he increasingly practiced in order to regenerate himself. At the same time, his entire thinking seemed to undergo a regeneration as well…

Morgenröte, or At the Dawn of a New Life…

At last, in 1880, Nietzsche writes a work that is, in many respects, a turning point—a book that reflects his new state of mind. The title Morgenröte (Dawn or Daybreak) was not chosen by accident. Nietzsche awakens into a new morning after a long sleep; he emerges to the surface after having spent a long time underground (like a mole digging tunnels, as he himself wrote in the opening aphorism). He stands at the dawn of a new life, and within his mind entirely new thoughts are quite literally beginning to break.

Approximately a year before the thought of Eternal Recurrence occurred to him, while writing Morgenröte, Nietzsche was seized by a strange and universal feeling of primordial solitude. He did not associate it with himself as an individual, but with nature as a whole, with the primordial solitude of everything that is. A testimony to this feeling—which we regard as yet another precursor to the thought of Eternal Recurrence—can be found in an aphorism at the beginning of the fifth and final part of the book. It contains one of the most beautiful poetic images in prose that the philosopher ever wrote, dedicating it to nature, the sea, and the evening twilight, while only dimly sensing the secret they conceal:

In the great silence.  Here is the sea, here we can forget the city. The bells are noisily ringing the angelus it is the time for that sad and foolish yet sweet noise, sounded at the crossroads of day and night but it will last only for a minute! Now all is still! The sea lies there pale and glittering, it cannot speak. The sky plays its everlasting silent evening game with red and yellow and green, it cannot speak. The little cliffs and ribbons of rock that run down into the sea as if to find the place where it is most solitary, none of them can speak. This tremendous muteness which suddenly overcomes us is lovely and dreadful, the heart swells at it. Oh the hypocrisy of this silent beauty! How well it could speak, and how evilly too, if it wished! Its tied tongue and its expression of sorrowing happiness is a deception: it wants to mock at your sympathy!  So be it! I am not ashamed of being mocked by such powers. But I pity you, nature, that you have to be silent, even though it is only your malice which ties your tongue; yes, I pity you on account of your malice!  Ah, it is growing yet more still, my heart swells again: it is startled by a new truth, it too cannot speak, it too mocks when the mouth calls something into this beauty, it too enjoys its sweet silent malice. I begin to hate speech, to hate even thinking; for do I not hear behind every word the laughter of error, of imagination, of the spirit of delusion? Must I not mock at my pity? Mock at my mockery?  O sea, O evening! You are evil instructors! You teach man to cease to be man! Shall he surrender to you? Shall he become as you now are, pale, glittering, mute, tremendous, reposing above himself? Exalted above himself? (Nietzsche, Friedrich. Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, Aphorism 423, trans. J. M. Kennedy. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1911. Reproduced at: http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/daybreak/aphorism-423-quote_f8b93657d.html)

Reflecting upon this image, it should become clearer why we believe that new thoughts do not simply emerge out of nowhere. They truly have a history of their own. The thought of Eternal Recurrence must already have been circling through Nietzsche’s mind, if only in the form of a vague premonition or the faintest of intimations, not only during the writing of Morgenröte, but even earlier, during the period of the youthful diary mentioned by Heidegger. Yet in the case of this aphorism, the feeling, the premonition—or perhaps both together—are stronger than ever before…

(To be continued…)