Eternal recurrence () is one of the central concepts of the philosophy of
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). While the idea itself is not original to Nietzsche, his unique response to it gave new life to the theory, and speculation as to the correct interpretation of Nietzsche's doctrine continues to this day.
Precursors The discovery of the
laws of thermodynamics in the 19th century restarted the debate among scientists and philosophers about the ultimate fate of the universe, which brought in its train many questions about the nature of time.
Eduard von Hartmann argued that the universe's final state would be identical to the state in which it had begun;
Eugen Dühring rejected this idea, claiming that it carried with it the necessary consequence that the universe would begin again, and that the same forms would repeat themselves eternally, a doctrine which Dühring viewed as dangerously pessimistic. , on the other hand, argued in favour of a cyclical system, additionally positing the spatial co-existence of an infinite number of identical worlds.
Louis Auguste Blanqui similarly claimed that in an infinite universe, every possible combination of forms must repeat itself eternally across both time and space. In his magnum opus
The World as Will and Representation,
Arthur Schopenhauer imagined a man “who desired, in spite of calm deliberation, that the course of his life as he had hitherto experienced it should be of endless duration or of constant recurrence.” Such a man, if he has “assimilated firmly into his way of thinking” the doctrine of the immortality of man’s
inner most nature, “would have nothing to fear” from death.
Nietzsche's formulation in Switzerland, "beside a huge rock that towered aloft like a pyramid". was familiar with the works of contemporary philosophers such as Dühring and Vogt, and may have encountered references to Blanqui in a book by
Friedrich Albert Lange. He was also an admirer of the author
Heinrich Heine, one of whose books contains a passage discussing the theory of eternal return. In this novel, the titular Zarathustra is initially struck with horror at the thought that all things must recur eternally; ultimately, however, he overcomes his aversion to eternal return and embraces it as his most fervent desire. In the penultimate chapter of the work ("The Drunken Song"), Zarathustra declares: "All things are entangled, ensnared, enamored; if you ever wanted one thing twice, if you ever said, 'You please me, happiness! Abide, moment!' then you wanted
all back ...
For all joy wants—eternity."
Interpretation Martin Heidegger points out that Nietzsche's first mention of eternal recurrence in
The Gay Science presents this concept as a hypothetical question rather than postulating it as a fact. Many readings argue that Nietzsche was not attempting to make a cosmological or theoretical claim i.e. saying that eternal recurrence is a true statement about how the world works. Instead, the emotional reaction to the thought experiment serves to reveal whether one is living life to the best. According to Heidegger, the significant point is the burden imposed by the
question of eternal recurrence, regardless of whether or not such a thing could possibly be true. The idea is similar to Nietzsche's concept of
amor fati, which he describes in
Ecce Homo: "My formula for greatness in a human being is
amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear what is necessary, still less conceal it ... but
love it." On the other hand, Nietzsche's posthumously published notebooks contain an attempt at a logical proof of eternal return, which is often adduced in support of the claim that Nietzsche believed in the theory as a real possibility. However, scholars such as Neil Sinhababu and Kuong Un Teng have suggested that the reason this material remained unpublished was because Nietzsche himself was unconvinced that his argument would hold up to scrutiny. In one of his unpublished notes, Nietzsche writes: "The question which thou wilt have to answer before every deed that thou doest: 'is this such a deed as I am prepared to perform an incalculable number of times?' is the best ballast." Taken in this sense, the doctrine has been compared to the
categorical imperative of
Immanuel Kant. Once again, however, the objection is raised that no such ethical imperative appears in any of Nietzsche's published writings, and this interpretation is therefore rejected by most modern scholars. ==P. D. Ouspensky==