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…

The Birth of Eternal Recurrence

At last, something strange began to happen in Nietzsche’s life in August 1881. That year, he stayed for the first time in Sils-Maria, an enchanting village in the Swiss Alps near the Italian border—and he was captivated by it. The transformation of his soul was already complete. The dawn glow of his new thoughts, expressed in the book of the same name, had spilled over into his own life and taken possession of his personal horizon.

In a letter to Peter Gast dated August 14, 1881, Nietzsche wrote excitedly:

“Now, my dear and good friend! The August sun shines over our heads, the year is fugitive, it grows quieter and more peaceful on the mountains and in the woods. Thoughts have been looming on my horizon the like of which I have never seen — I don’t want to say a word about them, I want to preserve an unruffled calm in myself. It seems I shall have to live several years longer. (Letter to Heinrich Köselitz [Peter Gast], August 14, 1881)

Could it be that during those very August days the most powerful thought ever to enter Nietzsche’s mind—the thought of Eternal Recurrence—first occurred to him?

We have little doubt that it happened during one of his walks around the enchanting Lake Silvaplana, surrounded by equally enchanting mountain peaks. Nietzsche’s biographers generally agree that this is indeed what happened, and they even identify the precise location: a particular rock near Surlej on the shore of the lake. Such an almost fairy-tale scenario is suggested by Nietzsche himself in his somewhat self-aggrandizing autobiographical work Ecce Homo, written during the last year of his conscious life (1888).

At the beginning of the chapter devoted to the genesis of Thus Spoke Zarathustra—that “book for all and none”—he writes:

“I now wish to relate the history of Zarathustra. The fundamental idea of the work, the Eternal Recurrence, the highest formula of a Yea-saying to life that can ever be attained, was first conceived in the month of August 1881. I made a note of the idea on a sheet of paper, with the postscript: “Six thousand feet beyond man and time.” That day I happened to be wandering through the woods alongside of the Lake of Silvaplana, and I halted not far from Surlei, beside a huge rock that towered aloft like a pyramid. It was then that[Pg 97] the thought struck me.” (Ecce Homo, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” §1, 1911. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52190/52190-h/52190-h.htm)

The page in question is dated August 6, 1881—only eight days before the letter itself. [1] Rüdiger Safranski, perhaps Nietzsche’s most distinguished biographer, writes that until that day in August 1881 Nietzsche had only vaguely sensed what his task was, whereas now he had finally found it.

In the same letter Nietzsche continues:

“Oh, my friend sometimes the realization runs through my head that I am actually living a supremely dangerous life: for I belong among those machines that can explode! The intensities of my feeling make me shudder and laugh aloud — already on several occasions I was unable to leave my room for the ridiculous reason that my eyes were inflamed — from what? On each occasion I had been weeping excessively during my hikes the day before; no, not sentimental tears, but tears of exultation; during which I sang and muttered nonsense, filled to the brim with my new vision, which I am the first of all human beings to have.” (Letter to Heinrich Köselitz [Peter Gast], August 14, 1881., Available at: https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/452786.html)

Regardless of whether Nietzsche’s “highest thought” first occurred to him beside a mighty rock under such sublime circumstances, we wish to emphasize the following: the thought of Eternal Recurrence does not choose the circumstances under which it enters a person’s mind and, in the very same instant, takes possession of his entire being. It is equally important to recognize that this unnecessary mythologization of Eternal Recurrence does no harm to the teaching itself. It remains untouched by what Nietzsche called the “human, all too human,” just as it remains unaffected by the more prosaic circumstances of its appearance, for example, in the life of the author of these lines. [2]

Herein lies the greatest strength of Eternal Recurrence: one may experience it at any moment of one’s life, regardless of circumstance. Nothing is too insignificant for Eternal Recurrence. Even the most banal thought and the most trivial situation are subject to the same primordial eternal law and thereby become sublime and primordial in their own right. In touching the ring of Eternal Recurrence, we ourselves become like it—pale, glittering, mute, tremendous… as Nietzsche himself suggests in that evocative aphorism from Daybreak that we mentioned earlier.

(To be continued…..)

[1] For the postmodern reader, it is difficult to dispel entirely the suspicion that Nietzsche subsequently mythologized the circumstances under which the thought of Eternal Recurrence first came to him. Yet we possess no evidence whatsoever for such a supposition.

[2] More specifically, in my own case, my own awakening to this thought occurred in the bathroom of my apartment. It happened in the evening, after a shower, while I was drying myself with a towel after stepping out of the bathtub. Before me there was no “mighty pyramidal rock,” but rather a cabinet filled with ordinary toiletries, greenish bathroom tiles, and two towels hanging on the wall. Yet I remember distinctly that my gaze was fixed upon two brown central-heating pipes when I experienced that peculiar expansion of the mind, prompted by the question: “And what after that?” During those days I often found myself asking this question, following in thought the chain of cosmic events all the way to its ultimate limit. If all possibilities must eventually be exhausted, I thought, then endless novelty cannot endure forever. Following this logic of ultimate consequences, I arrived at the conclusion that everything in this world must return, that nothing can remain eternally new. The only difference between my own insight and Nietzsche’s was that, for us in the twenty-first century, mythological embellishments are no longer required to lend greater persuasiveness or sublimity to the fundamental insights we attain about the world and about life.