Nietzsche

Richard White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138741881
• eBook ISBN: 9781351725705
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2002: Nietzsche described himself as a godless anti-metaphysician. These writings encourage the student to question any reading that fails to address Nietzsche's sense of irony with respect to his own philosophical claims. The anthology includes the best recent writings on Nietzsche. It covers all the main themes of Nietzsche's philosophy and pays particular attention to Nietzsche's discussion of value and the need for a re-evaluation of values; his critique of metaphysics and the problem of knowledge; and his account of art and politics.

Part I
Main Themes

[1]
Eternal Recurrence

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
Volume XIII, Number 4, December 1983

ROBIN SMALL

Monash University

The doctrine of eternal recurrence, the claim that everything that occurs does so not only once but infinitely many times, figures in the writings of Nietzsche in several forms, and it can be understood in different ways. Here I shall show that one of these approaches allows us to see the doctrine as a philosophical theory about the nature of reality: that is, as an ontological doctrine. The interpretation is worth exploring because it allows us not only to see what Nietzsche’s arguments really are, but also to bring to light problems and objections that go unnoticed in most accounts of the idea.

To understand the doctrine of eternal recurrence as an ontology is to see it as a statement of a special kind. An ontological principle acts as the presupposition of all other theorizing about the world, whether cosmological or ethical or of any other kind. If this is what Nietzsche’s idea amounts to, it cannot be treated as a theory supported by some course of argument which in turn rests upon more fundamental assumptions about reality. It must be approached in a different way.

The discussion will begin by offering an analysis of the concept of recurrence. Here my concern will be to understand recurrence as the kind of concept that occurs within ontological thought, that is, to see it in the same way that concepts like those of being and becoming are seen in some other philosophies, or for that matter in Nietzsche’s philosophy too. The task is to understand the meaning of recurrence as a category. If we are able to do this, we will be well on the way towards understanding what Nietzsche has to say about it.

I

When a concept is used to make some very general claim about the nature of reality it gives rise to a philosophical doctrine. This happens most of all when the claim is that this and only this category is the right and proper one to use for understanding reality. That is essentially what Nietzsche is saying about the category of eternal recurrence. And to this extent he can be seen as a philosopher who stands beside those those other rather single-minded thinkers, Heraclitus and Parmenides -which is just where he would want to be. His doctrine of eternal recurrence is like the Heraclitean doctrine of becoming and the Parmenidean doctrine of being in that it too uses one concept to describe the world as a whole: the concept of recurrence.

One important way of coming to understand any category is to see what its relations to other categories are. This is useful in the case of recurrence, for it is not an idea that stands alone. If we survey Nietzsche’s treatments of the problems of ontology, we find that his thinking involves a number of basic categories. They are independent concepts in that none is reducible to any one or any combination of the others. On the other hand, they can be related to one another in some instructive ways.

These discussions centre upon four basic categories: the categories of being, becoming, eternal recurrence, and what Nietzsche calls It was’ – not a very handy label, but it is hard to think of a better one offhand. One thing is immediately obvious: they are all categories that stand for modes of temporality. At least, the last three do. The notion of being is rather different; Nietzsche identifies it with the Platonist concept of a reality that stands apart from any passage of time. It represents the unchanging and eternal, and so it might be called a non-temporal rather than temporal category. At any rate it is clear that temporality is the point at issue throughout an ontology which defines its questions in these terms. This list of categories is not an arbitrary one: they are related in a particular scheme. Our first task is to show how this can be arrived at through an examination of what Nietzsche says about the categories.

The best place to start is with the most familiar of the categories I have mentioned: those of being and becoming. In starting here we are, in fact, going back to some of the earliest themes of philosophical thought. Nietzsche was strongly inclined towards the ideas of the early Greek thinkers. In his view, it was these philosophers more than any others who put the right questions – and what is just as important, had the right ways of finding answers. Like many other commentators, Nietzsche concentrates upon the dispute between Heraclitus and Parmenides as the most important event in the history of early Greek thought. He regards it as a conflict between two opposing principles: the doctrines of being and becoming. What makes it a dispute is the claim made by each side that one and only one of these categories is to be applied to reality. It is the relation to the world as a whole that transforms the category into the philosophical doctrine which for Nietzsche is the immediate and pressing question in each case.

The doctrine of becoming, then, is the claim that the world is wholly a world of becoming – that it contains nothing permanent. There is no being, and therefore no stability in this world, but only a continual and endless flow of change. Conversely, the doctrine of being holds that only what has being is real. Accordingly it denies any reality to becoming, and regards all coming to be and passing away as no more than a mere semblance or illusion.

That the dispute is a conflict between ontologies does not always appear from what Nietzsche says about it. He does emphasize the basic difference often enough, but he sometimes gives other reasons for it. In some of his arguments a particular physical theory is assumed as the background for thinking about these concepts. When being and becoming are understood in terms of this theory, the doctrine of becoming can be seen as one of its consequences – as the outcome of a demonstration which shows the impossibility of any stable and permanent state of affairs.¹ Yet alongside passages of this kind we find others which suggest that Nietzsche’s real reason for insisting upon the sharp contrast between doctrines of being and becoming is that they can be seen as rival ontologies. And the choice between such basic principles is different in kind. It seems to be a matter of philosophical intuition, not of any process of reasoning – which must, after all, itself be based upon further premises. Certainly Nietzsche reserves his highest praise for Heraclitus precisely for his reliance upon insight rather than dialectic in the formulation of his doctrine of becoming.

In fact his preference for Heraclitus goes further than this. For he writes: ‘Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction.’² That basic insight is one that Nietzsche endorses here and in many similar passages; he is all on the side of the doctrine of becoming in its dispute with the doctrine of being. Being, he claims, is a concept to which nothing in the real world corresponds. At best it is a metaphor, at worst an outright falsehood.

If this were all we would have little difficulty in characterizing the outlook of Nietzsche as simply a reaffirmation of Heracliteanism. Yet elsewhere he takes the trouble to express the doctrine of eternal recurrence in a way that makes it seem just the opposite of the Heraclitean principle of becoming. He writes: ‘I teach redemption from the eternal flow: the stream flows back into itself again and again, and you enter the same stream again and again, as the same.’³ Clearly this formulation is intended as a counterpart to the statement attributed to Heraclitus that ‘You cannot step into the same stream twice.’⁴ So it seems that recurrence may not be so much a particular kind of becoming as a category different in kind and independent from it.

But to see how it might be arrived at I think that we have to make a detour through yet another category which Nietzsche uses. This is the one that I have called ‘It was,’ copying the expression that is used in Thus Spake Zarathustra. It is striking in looking at the metaphysical side of this work that the ideas of being and becoming seem to take a second place. The most important arguments of Thus Spake Zarathustra are those that involve the categories of ‘It was’ and eternal recurrence. In fact it is the conflict between these two – understood as doctrines -that becomes the central issue. Like being and becoming, they are opposed counterparts. But neither can be identified with or reduced to either being or becoming; for each has features in common with both of these concepts.

So let us see what ‘It was’ means and what its relation to being and becoming is. In Thus Spake Zarathustra It was’ is introduced not justas a category, but as a particular kind of problem. However, most of what is needed for an account of what it means as a category does emerge from the presentation of the problem. It follows on earlier passages which discuss the idea of the will to power and in particular the will to create, and which argue for the importance of this kind of willing as a way of giving meaning to the world and thereby achieving what Nietzsche calls ‘the greatest redemption from suffering.’⁵ In the chapter called On Redemption’, however, we find a different idea.

Willing liberates; but what is it that puts even the liberator himself in fetters? ‘It was’ – that is the name of the will’s gnashing of teeth and most secret melancholy. Powerless against what has been done, he is an angry spectator of all that is past. The will cannot will backwards; and that he cannot break time and time’s covetousness, that is the will’s loneliest melancholy.

This is the apparently insoluble problem of the creative will: in confronting the past, it encounters an obstacle against which it has no power. The passage concludes: ‘ “That which was” is the name of the stone he cannot move.’ The allusion is, I suppose, to the traditional riddle about omnipotence – the question whether an omnipotent being could create a stone that he could not lift. What is suggested in this passage is that the will to create has done something like this in making a past for itself, an ‘It was’ that now constitutes an immovable limit to its power.

What makes ‘It was’ such a difficulty for the will? It seems to be its having two specific characteristics: on the one hand, the unchangingness and solidity of being, and on the other hand the arbitrariness of becoming. It is the combination of these features that makes ‘It was’ what is described in this passage as ‘a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful accident.’

The contingent is rather less dreadful if it is truly transitory. A becoming that passes from nothingness into nothingness gives rise to no ‘It was.’ Rather it is as Schopenhauer describes it: ‘What has been, no longer is; it as little exists as that which has never been.’⁶ That remark states the point of view of simple becoming, the attitude for which the past is nothing. If that is the case, there is no sense in feeling anger or sadness on account of what has been. Indeed, if the past has no reality, there is no need even for memory; for the ‘unhistorical’ beings who live only in the present moment, the problem is no problem simply because the exoression ‘It was’ has no meaning.⁷

From the point of view which does express itself in It was/ however, the past is a reality, and an unchangeable one at that. Yet again it is not this one feature by itself that makes the past something ‘dreadful.’ If there were some changeless reality that could be described as necessary, then there would be no need for the will’s gnashing of teeth. It is the perpetuation of what is accidental that is intolerable to the will. An incomplete and fragmentary reality calls out for its action, and therefore the union of contingency and permanence in It was’ constitutes a predicament for which there seems to be no solution.

One should note that this argument has nothing to do with the content of the past – with whether the events and acts that are past were good or bad, pleasurable or painful. It is their pastness by itself that makes them an obstacle; the problem is built into the category, and does not arise out of its factual content. Nor does the distinction between actions and mere happenings seem relevant here. One’s own past actions, having become past, are as far removed from the power of the will as anything else that has taken place, and are therefore part of the same problem of It was.’

At this stage no solution is offered, and in fact it is never spelled out, although it is clear enough that the later presentation of the doctrine of eternal recurrence is intended to continue the line of thought in the direction of a solution, just before this doctrine is announced, we read:

As creator, guesser of riddles, and redeemer of accidents, I taught them to work on the future an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Main Themes
• Part II Nietzsche’s Discussion of Value and Morality
• Part III Nietzsche on Metaphysics, Epistemology and Truth
• Part IV Nietzsche on art and Politics
• Name Index