Like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife

To my troubled friend – There is nothing worse than having an existentialist crisis. I’m sorry I can’t spend enough time with you, damn time zones. I know your Catholic sensibilities make you reject Nietzsche outright, but just hear me out. This might actually help. If not, blame it on PMS. Take it easy.

Eternal Recurrence is one of Nietzsche’s strangest ideas. Some philosophers do not really give credence to this because Nietzsche was allegedly insane already when he wrote The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The concept is similar to the Hindus’ Wheel of Life, which basically sees life as a cycle – “Everything goes, everything returns; eternally revolves the Wheel of Being.” (Nietzsche, 1981) There are numerous ways to appreciate this idea, but two of my favourite interpretations come from Maudemarie Clark and Bernd Magnus.

Both Clark and Magnus consider Eternal Recurrence as an “existential imperative” – a tool to evaluate one’s life. If one believes in eternal recurrence, the litmus test in making decisions is – “Which consequence am I willing to endure in eternity?” Decisions we make for our selves are often coupled with casualties and unintended consequences, but we get consolation knowing that our choices are worth it – our lives have not been wasted.

Following Schopenhauer, Nietzsche too equates life with suffering. But this ‘reality’ comes with an antidote. The core of eternal recurrence is “affirmation of life” or “joyous affirmation”. This is reflected with Nietzsche’s constant reference to Dionysius. For him, the lesson this Athenian god imparts is taking life lightly. We suffer because we take our existence too seriously. Gianni Vattimo, a neo-Nietzschean argues that instead of finding coherence in our lives, we should concede that it is messy and instead, enjoy its amazing disarray.

It’s a bit strange that while Nietzsche encourages us to be ubermensch, he also wants us to concede that we are ‘human, all too human’. The bottom line really is appreciating the irony of life. People grow old looking for meaning, direction and consistency and end up disappointed and jaded when these ‘essentials’ cannot be found. On the other hand, finally conceding the absence of truth and higher purpose allows us to start living and creating our own purpose and direction. Remembering what someone dear to me said – “this is your only shot to be happy.”

I guess how we perceive Eternal Recurrence is reflective of how we appreciate the way we lived our lives. Perhaps the question that can help us assess our position is raised in Gay Science:

“What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession …’ would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?”

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Nietzsche, F. (1882) “The Gay Science” in The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, translated by Walter Kauffman (Vintage Books, 1974)

_____. (1891) “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None; translated by Walter Kauffman (New York, Modern Library, 1995)

Solomon, R. and K. Higgins (2000) What Nietzsche Really Said. New York: Shocken Books