25: Eternal Return, part 1: The Toughest Challenge

Listen to this episode from The Nietzsche Podcast on Spotify. Welcome to Season Two, my beautiful, free spirits! We ended the last season on a "cliffhanger"... the lead-up to the new mythology forged within the pages of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Today, we discuss the basis of that new myth. The eternal return, also known as the eternal recurrence, is one of the most famous ideas of Nietzsche, but one of the most difficult to comprehend. How could this philosopher who made it his business to attack every provisional truth, point out the perspectival nature of our world-picture, and dare to suggest that we abolish the metaphysical world beyond... make the proclamation that our lives, exactly as we live them, are eternal? There are many interpretations of this doctrine - ranging from the classification of eternal return as a thought experiment, all the way into mystical territory - but one thing is made crystal clear by Nietzsche's own words: he held that it was the hardest challenge one could put before themselves, akin to facing the greatest stress, or fighting the toughest opponent. Embracing eternal return means the ultimate revaluation of life and the natural world as imminently good and worthwhile. Those who are unable to do so will find this doctrine crippling, or so Nietzsche predicts. Thus, he puts this mysterious teaching into his work in the form of fables and in the teachings of his prophet, Zarathustra. Nietzsche founds his answer to the "problem of life" - that is to say, the problem of the value of a human life, within a mortal, human existence finding some kind of transcendental value - upon the basis of this central idea, of the eternal return. Forgive the couple of times my voice cracked, for I have a bit of a cold. Episode art: George Bellows - Stag at Sharkey's (1909)