View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Texas A&M Repository ETERNAL RECURRENCE AND NATURE A Thesis by KYLE EVAN MASK Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2008 Major Subject: Philosophy ETERNAL RECURRENCE AND NATURE A Thesis by KYLE EVAN MASK Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Approved by: Chair of Committee, Daniel Conway Committee Members, Theodore George Christopher Swift Head of Department, Daniel Conway August 2008 Major Subject: Philosophy iii ABSTRACT Eternal Recurrence and Nature. (August 2008) Kyle Evan Mask, B.A., Union University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Daniel Conway Nietzsche has often been interpreted as the champion of heroic, self-sufficient individuals, who manage to fashion some order out of the raw material of Nature through the exercise of free will. On the face of things, Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence creates a problem for such an interpretation. If history must eternally repeat itself, then it can take only one possible route. Individuals’ future actions would then be constrained by the sole possible path of history, and free will would seem to be undermined. In order to avoid the conclusion that eternal recurrence obviates free will, scholars have attempted to show that: (1) Nietzsche does not wish to establish a link between eternal recurrence and cosmology—that is, eternal recurrence should not be read as the cyclical repetition of history; (2) eternal recurrence can be construed so that it aggrandizes the importance of free choice. Contrary to these two trends in scholarship about eternal recurrence, I believe that Nietzsche intends to draw a connection between eternal recurrence and cosmology, and this connection undermines free will. In order to establish this, I examine the textual evidence on eternal recurrence from The Gay iv Science and Zarathustra to show that Nietzsche employs eternal recurrence as a metaphor for determinism in those works. As a metaphor for a deterministic cosmos, eternal recurrence undercuts free will. Turning to Nietzsche’s late works, I show that Nietzsche broadens the scope of eternal recurrence. Eternal recurrence comes to serve as a metaphor for the Dionysian character of Nature. Only by relinquishing one’s desire for free will and submitting to necessity and to the trans-individual potency of Nature can the individual see herself as powerful. Hence, it is argued that Nietzsche does not believe individuals manifest strength by asserting their free wills against Nature, as commentators often maintain. Instead, Nietzsche enjoins individuals to cede their desires for free will and to participate in the trans-individual vitality of Nature. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Daniel Conway for his insightful comments on an earlier draft of this thesis. Without his help, this project would have been difficult for me to conceive; and without his encouragement, it would have been difficult for me to complete. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Theodore George and Christopher Swift for serving on my committee. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................... v TABLE OF CONTENTS....................................................................................... vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION............................................................................. 1 II LIFE-JUSTIFICATION IN THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY.................... 16 Idealism and the Death of Tragedy..................................................... 19 Apollo and Dionysus ......................................................................... 24 The Tragic Effect............................................................................... 34 III ETERNAL RECURRENCE: ELIDING AUTONOMY ..................... 45 Like Sands Through the Hourglass, Such is Your Life....................... 49 On Unredemption .............................................................................. 60 Zarathustra the Grave ........................................................................ 65 IV ETERNAL RECURRENCE AS A METAPHOR FOR NATURE ..... 75 Dual Perspectives: Individual Partiality and Nature’s Indifference..... 77 Da Capo Dionysus............................................................................. 80 Eternal Recurrence and Dionysus ...................................................... 84 Experiencing Nature’s Inexhaustible Vitality..................................... 91 V CONCLUSION ................................................................................. 104 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................................................................................. 109 VITA..................................................................................................................... 111 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In On The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche concedes that Christianity has served at least one historically valuable and vital function. It saved humanity from suicidal nihilism by interpreting suffering as God’s righteous punishment for sin.1 After raising humanity’s guilt to a previously unparalleled pitch, Christianity provided a goal, an outlet for humanity’s instinct to cruelty—namely, self-torment. As Nietzsche states, “Guilt before God: this thought becomes an instrument of torture to [humanity].”2 But Christianity’s honesty, Nietzsche believes, will inevitably force it to confess God’s nonexistence. After Christianity’s subsequent self-annihilation, suffering will be left unexplained. Nietzsche worries that the inexplicability of suffering might prove dangerous. For “What really arouses indignation against suffering is not suffering as such but the senselessness of suffering.”3 At a loss to comprehend suffering in the wake of God’s death, humanity might be headed for the suicidal nihilism from which Christianity rescued it nearly two millennia earlier. Nietzsche’s own educator, Schopenhauer, formulated a pessimistic architectonic aimed at providing an answer to This thesis follows the style and format of the Chicago Manual of Style. 1 Suicidal nihilism can be distinguished from nihilism for Nietzsche. Christianity is certainly a form of nihilism, inasmuch as it deprecates becoming. However, it is not a form of suicidal nihilism, because it sustains humanity’s will by providing it with the goal of self-torture. 2 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, Random House: 1967), 92. 3 Ibid., 67. 2 the problem of suffering. He maintained that the preponderance of meaningless suffering in the world proves life to be a mistake. The only prescription for existence, he argued, is self-annihilation. While the young Nietzsche was seduced by his mentor’s doctrine of life-denial, the older Nietzsche sees it as an expression of decadence. His mature philosophical endeavor is to illumine the path to life-affirmation. He wishes to show how the individual can avoid the morass of Schopenhauerian self-resignation, instead embracing life in a world that is not inherently amenable to humanity’s desires for comprehensibility and comfort. How can the individual affirm life in the world of becoming? This is the question for which Nietzsche believed Europe would need an answer after the inexorable failure of the Christian, ascetic interpretation of life. Nietzsche’s mature thinking about life-affirmation centers on his doctrine of eternal recurrence. He believes that affirming eternal recurrence signifies the “highest formula of affirmation that is at all attainable.”4 Commentators have traditionally attempted to show three things about eternal recurrence. The first is that it does not represent Nietzsche’s cosmology. That is, Nietzsche does not believe that history cyclically recurs in precisely the same pattern. If proven that Nietzsche does not propound a recurrence cosmology, this would arrest what Maudemarie Clark notes as “the most common objection to eternal recurrence,” namely, “that we have no reason to accept its truth.”5 In an effort to save Nietzsche from this criticism, Clark attempts to 4 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, Random House: 1967), 295. 5 Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), 245. 3 demonstrate that none of the passages in which Nietzsche discusses eternal recurrence commits him to a recurrence cosmology. Similarly, in order to provide an account of eternal recurrence that “is totally independent of physics,” Alexander Nehamas interprets it as the following conditional: “If anything in the world recurred, including an individual life or even a single moment within it, then everything in the world would recur in exactly the same fashion.”6 Nehamas thereby avoids attributing to Nietzsche actual belief in the recurrence of history. The second concern of commentators has been to show that Nietzsche has good reason for linking eternal recurrence to life-affirmation. Once the connection between eternal recurrence and physics has been severed, one might suspect