The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (94 page)

On this account of eternal return, then, Nietzsche cannot reasonably be said to intend the idea as part of an actual cosmology. But he can reasonably be said to intend it as a thought experiment. There is a compelling interpretation whereby he is exhorting us to act out our lives
as if
there were such a cycle, the idea being that one test of whether we properly affirm the world is whether we make such sense of things as to be able, with due acknowledgement of the world’s suffering, to bear the infinite repetition of all things;
indeed to
will
their infinite repetition.
⁹²

This interpretation certainly chimes well with Nietzsche’s frequent insistence that what is important about eternal return is whether we can will it (
Gay Science
, §§285 and 341;
Zarathustra
, III.ii.2, III.xvi, and IV.xix;
Ecce Homo
, II.10, final paragraph; and
Will
, §§1053–1060). The interpretation is not without its problems, however. There are passages in
Zarathustra
in which it is hard to see what Nietzsche is doing if not precisely distancing his idea from the idea of a recurring cycle: I have in mind Zarathustra’s admonishments, first of the dwarf (III.ii.2) and later of the animals (III.xiii.2), when they severally proclaim the idea of just such a cycle.
⁹³
Also, it is not clear, on this interpretation, why the idea of eternal return should be the idea of
eternal
return. A thought experiment involving just one repetition of the cycle would do the job as effectively as a thought experiment involving infinitely many. As Bernard Williams puts it, ‘If you could overcome the “nausea” … of the prospect that [the past] … will come round again
even once
, and say “yes” to it, you would have taken the essential step: could willing all those further recurrences cost you very much more?’ (Williams (
2006g
), p. 319, emphasis in original).
⁹⁴

A diametrically opposed account of eternal return has been given by Deleuze. According to this account eternal return is not the eternal return
of
anything that is the same: it is itself the same, but it applies only to what is different (e.g. Deleuze (
2006a
), p. 45, and Deleuze (
1994
), p. 126). It is the inexhaustible renewal of the ever-differing moment of becoming, ensuring that the world is a world, not only of ceaseless change, but of ceaseless novelty. Furthermore, Deleuze takes Nietzsche to be claiming that this is a feature of the world as it is, not merely as we might suppose it to be in some heuristically useful thought experiment.

Unfortunately, it is far beyond the scope of this chapter to engage with Deleuze’s exegesis – though the ideas themselves will come to the fore again in
Chapter 21
(see esp. §2(a) of that chapter). I simply hereby record that, although the account I favour is very close to Deleuze’s, and although I am indebted to Deleuze for it, there are certain core elements of his account with which I am uncomfortable. In particular, I am uncomfortable with the idea that eternal return is not the return of anything that is the same.
⁹⁵

What then is the account that I favour?
⁹⁶
Like Deleuze, I believe that Nietzsche holds eternal return to be a feature of the world as it is and not merely as we might suppose it to be when trying to frame some sort of guide to living. I take as my starting point two ideas to which Nietzsche seems to me to be clearly committed: first, that everything is knotted together in such a way that each thing implicates every other thing and the affirmation of each is the affirmation of all (
Human
, I.208;
⁹⁷
Zarathustra
, III.ii.2 and IV.xix.10; and
Will
, §§293, 331, 584, and 1032); second, that change is ceaseless (
Will
, §688).
⁹⁸
The idea of eternal return, I suggest, amalgamates these two ideas.
What the knotting together of things means is that the ceaseless change is a ceaseless change in
everything
, including everything that has been and everything that will be. The whole of the past and the whole of the future come together in each moment of change. And this is what I understand by eternal return. It is the eternal return of all things, but ever different.

Here is Nietzsche, in the words of Zarathustra:

Behold this gateway … : … it has two aspects. Two paths come together here: no one has ever reached their end.

This long lane behind us: it goes on for an eternity. And that long lane ahead of us – that is another eternity.

They are in opposition to one another, these paths; they abut on one another: and it is here at this gateway that they come together. The name of the gateway is written above it: ‘Moment’.

… From this gateway Moment a long, eternal lane runs
back
: an eternity lies behind us.

Must not all things that
can
run have already run along this lane? Must not all things that
can
happen have already happened, been done, run past?

And if all things have been here before: what do you think of this moment …? Must not this gateway, too, have been here before?

And are not all things bound fast together in such a way that this moment draws after it all future things?
Therefore
– draws itself too?

For all things that
can
run
must
also run once again forward along this long lane.

… [Must] we not return and run down that other lane out before us, down that long, terrible lane – must we not return eternally? (
Zarathustra
, III.ii.2, emphasis in original; cf.
Gay Science
, §109)

What I am suggesting is that for all things that can happen to have already happened, and to happen again,
is
for everything to be, as Nietzsche later puts it, ‘chained and entwined together’ (
Zarathustra
, IV.xix.10). What happens at any moment, on this account, happens at every moment – albeit at some moments as future, at some moments as present, and at some moments as past. Each moment affords its own different perspective on the whole, its own different point of view from which to interpret the whole. Each moment enables the will to power to make associated sense of things. The world has, in Nietzsche’s words, ‘a differing aspect from every point; its being is essentially different from every point’ (
Will
, §568).
⁹⁹

On this interpretation, as on the interpretation considered above whereby the idea of eternal return is merely a thought experiment, eternal return is crucial to the overcoming of nihilism.
¹⁰⁰
How so? Does it not in fact exacerbate nihilism? For, as Nietzsche himself insists, it presents the nihilistic spectre of meaninglessness in its most extreme and terrifying form, a form in which the meaninglessness recurs and recurs and recurs,
ad infinitum
(
Will
, §55; cf.
Zarathustra
, III.xiii.2).
¹⁰¹
– True; but eternal return is also the very condition of that sense-making, that ultimate act of the will to power which is manifest in our various individual efforts to create value and meaning, whereby each of us is able to affirm the world and thus contribute to the overcoming of nihilism. In its continual generation of new perspectives eternal return allows for the continual generation of new evaluations and new interpretations. Through these, things in the world, including things that are past, can be continually transformed, so that, although they keep returning, they keep returning differently. They can be continually developed, continually cultivated, continually lived afresh. That is to say, new sense can be continually made of them. And the horror of their objective meaninglessness
¹⁰²
can be prevented from destroying us. But the eternity of the eternal return is vital. Nihilism can never be overcome once and for all. If ever the process were to cease, it would meet with an unanswerable ‘So what?’, and nihilism would have a standing invitation, which it would accept, to reassert itself. (See
Gay Science
, App., ‘Towards New Seas’;
Beyond Good and Evil
, §56;
Twilight
, XI.5;
Ecce Homo
, III.i.3; and
Will
, §§575, 616, and 1067).
¹⁰³

Eternal return is a crucial feature of Nietzsche’s metaphysics. But its importance to us lies as much in its relation to his meta-metaphysics. I remarked in §6 how the contribution of metaphysicians to overcoming nihilism is in Nietzsche’s view the creation of value.
¹⁰⁴
The comments above apply as much to this contribution as to any other. It too needs to be, as eternal return allows it to be, a continual contribution. Without an ever-renewed supply of value, adapted to an ever-changing world, sense-making at a lower level of generality would eventually give out (
Untimely Meditations
, III.3–4, and
Will
, §409).

Does this mean that Nietzsche’s vision anticipates its own supersession? I think perhaps it does.
¹⁰⁵
It certainly means – to echo my earlier parenthetical references to the questions that I raised in §6 of the Introduction – that Nietzsche has an answer to the Novelty Question which is every bit as clear as his answers to the Creativity Question and the Transcendence Question. There is plainly scope, on Nietzsche’s view, for metaphysicians to make radically new sense of things.
¹⁰⁶
In fact, there is not only scope for them to do so. There is call for them to do so.

1
He was trained as a philologist and appointed to a professorship in classical philology in his early twenties.

2
See esp. Deleuze (
2006a
),
Ch. 2
. (I shall have more to say about this in
Ch. 21
, §§2(a) and 3.) I have deliberately expressed this in such a way as to maintain a certain distance. While I have learned much from Deleuze’s book and am far from endorsing Michael Tanner’s verdict that it is, though ‘interesting about Deleuze,’ ‘quite wild about Nietzsche’ (Tanner (
1994
), p. 83), I nonetheless see Deleuze more as a creative appropriator of Nietzsche’s ideas (for which I applaud him) than as a faithful rehearser of them. One thing that seems to me significant, as far as this distinction between active and reactive forces is concerned, is that there is, to the best of my knowledge, only one explicit drawing of any such contrast in Nietzsche’s entire corpus, and even then only in unpublished notes that did not make it into any of the early editions of his notes: see
The Will to Power
, p. 471, n. 7.

Note: throughout this chapter I use the following abbreviations for Nietzsche’s works:
Anti-Christ
for Nietzsche (
1990b
);
Beyond Good and Evil
for Nietzsche (
1973
);
Daybreak
for Nietzsche (
1982a
);
Ecce Homo
for Nietzsche (
1967b
);
Fragmente
for Nietzsche (
1978
);
Gay Science
for Nietzsche (
1974
);
Genealogy
for Nietzsche (
1967a
);
Human
for Nietzsche (
1986
); ‘Postcard to Overbeck’ for Nietzsche (
1982b
);
Tragedy
for Nietzsche (
1967d
); ‘Truth and Lies’ for Nietzsche (
1979
);
Twilight
for Nietzsche (
1990a
);
Untimely Meditations
for Nietzsche (
1983
);
Werke
for Nietzsche (
1967
– );
Will
[
to Power
] for Nietzsche (
1967c
); and
Zarathustra
for Nietzsche (
1969
). In giving references to
Ecce Homo
I adopt the convention whereby ‘II.vii.1’ names the second part (‘Why I Write Such Good Books’), the seventh section (‘
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
’), §1, and so forth. In giving references to the
Fragmente
I adopt the convention whereby ‘III.19.35’ names Vol. III, Section 19, §35, and so forth. In giving references to the
Genealogy
I adopt the convention whereby ‘III.28’ names The Third Essay, §28 and so forth. In giving references to
Human
I adopt the convention whereby ‘II.ii.67’ names Vol. II, Pt Two, §67, and so forth. In giving references to
Twilight
I adopt the convention whereby ‘II.12’ names the second part (‘Maxims and Arrows’), §12, and so forth. In giving non-page references to
Untimely Meditations
I adopt the convention whereby ‘III.3’ names Pt 3, §3, and so forth. In giving references to the
Werke
I adopt the convention whereby ‘VII.3.30.10’ names Section VII, Vol. 3, Notebook 30, §10, and so forth. In giving non-page references to
Zarathustra
I adopt the convention whereby ‘III.ii.1’ names Pt III, the second part (‘Of the Vision and the Riddle’), §1, and so forth. For discussion of the shortcomings of the (now standard) translation of ‘
Fröhliche Wissenschaft
’ as ‘
Gay Science
’, see Williams (
2006g
), pp. 313–314. And finally, a caveat concerning
Will
, on which I shall be drawing extensively in this chapter. To quote Bernard Williams, this is ‘not a book by Nietzsche at all, but a selection from [his unpublished] notes tendentiously put together by his sister’ (Williams (
2006g
), p. 319). On the tendentiousness, and for an account of the various editions of Nietzsche’s notes, see Kaufmann (
1967a
) and (
1967b
). See also Schacht (
1995b
).