The eternal return is a central notion in Nietzsche's thought. In Ecce Homo, he states: Now I wish to relate the story of Zarathustra. The fundamental idea of the work, the Eternal Return, the highest formula of a yes to life that can be reached, was first conceived in August 1881. I noted the idea on a sheet of paper, with the postscript: 'Six thousand feet beyond man and time'. This video is part of a two-part series on Nietzsche's eternal return produced in collaboration with Weltgeist. Make sure to watch Part II, which explores Nietzsche's eternal return as a real state. There is a link in the description box, and subscribe to their channel to enjoy more great content! While Nietzsche was walking through the forest by a lake, he came across a huge rock rising like a pyramid. It was here that the idea struck him. The eternal return suggests living the same life, with the same events and experiences, repeated for eternity. It makes its first appearance in The Gay Science, under the title The greatest weight, where Nietzsche poses the hypothetical question of how you would react if a demon explained it to you. Nietzsche suggests that most people would consider this a curse and would require the most passionate love of life to: not wish for anything more fervently than this ultimate affirmation and eternal seal. The idea is terrifying and paralyzing, as it carries the burden of the heaviest weight.

However, it is also the ultimate affirmation of life, it is the rock that fills the emptiness and weightlessness of nihilism. To understand and embrace it, love of fate is required, the love of destiny, and the acceptance and affirmation of life's events. The idea of the eternal return does not suggest an eternal life after death, but rather an eternal repetition of what constitutes existence in the present world. It is important to realize how dreadful Nietzsche himself found the doctrine and how difficult it was for him to accept it. He wrote in a moment of despair: I do not want to live again. How did I endure it? By creating. What makes me endure seeing it? The vision of the superman who affirms life. I have tried to affirm it myself, poor me! His main reaction is that no idea could be more dreadful. However, he discovers that there are moments in life that make this idea not only bearable but beautiful. Illness and recovery are important themes throughout Nietzsche's writings and reflect his personal struggle with a constant illness. He refers to the critical moment when great health is born from illness as the highest moment, so pain and pleasure are intimately linked. He says: But what if pleasure and pain were so closely connected that whoever wants the greatest possible amount of one must also have the greatest possible amount of the other, that whoever wants to experience 'heavenly joy' must also be willing to be 'sad' unto death?

This quote shows the harmony between opposing forces that Nietzsche has not only discovered or perceived theoretically but has known how to live firsthand as the most intense pain and the most effusive joy, achieving a joy worthy of the gods. The eternal return is the denial of any absolute beginning, any creation, and any god. Therefore, it breaks the 2000 years of Christianity. It is a critique and rejection of the Platonic-Christian tradition and achieves a revaluation of values. The timeless eternity of a supernatural God is replaced by the eternity of the creative and destructive powers of nature and man. Nietzsche focuses on the dispute between the doctrine of becoming (attributed to Heraclitus) and the doctrine of being (attributed to Parmenides), as the most important event in the history of early Greek thought. Nietzsche was greatly influenced by Heraclitus' idea of becoming, stating: Heraclitus will remain eternally correct in his assertion that being is an empty fiction. The death of the Christian God led Nietzsche to rediscover the Ancient World. He revived this classical idea. Nietzsche finds in the philosophy of Heraclitus three elements that become the leitmotif of his teaching: life is eternal warfare, polarity, and tension; life is becoming and flowing, and life is a game, the world of Zeus. These elements form the foundations of Nietzsche's philosophy, the will to power, and the eternal return.

The concept of the will to power is the foundation of Nietzsche's theory of the eternal return and the basis of his metaphysics. Nietzsche is often called a philosopher of life. Heidegger refers to his belief as a metaphysics of Being. He is completely right in stating that Nietzsche is a metaphysician, and the eternal return is a doctrine where being is thought in its deepest sense. Where Nietzsche rejects metaphysics, he is only opposed to the Platonic-Christian tradition in which being is understood as immutable and transcendent. Therefore, Nietzsche only rejects the metaphysics of a fixed and static world. Just like Nietzsche, the immoralist, is actually a seeker of moral values beyond good and evil. The will to power is a dynamic force in constant becoming and struggle, which is manifested in encounters with obstacles. Nietzsche's will to power is different from Darwin's principle of the survival of the fittest. Nietzsche's survival is not merely a struggle for existence and self-preservation, but primarily a struggle for the increase of power, where the fittest is the superior individual, the free spirit is the one who affirms struggle as a creative force and aims for the intensification of power. The two basic concepts of the will to power and the eternal return seem to contradict each other at first: the will to power symbolizes an eternal development, while the eternal return symbolizes eternal equality.

Nietzsche himself sees no contradiction. He calls becoming a way of Being, so they are compatible. This is best expressed in the famous quote from Heraclitus that symbolizes becoming and constant flow: No man steps into the same river twice. The river is not just a symbol of becoming, but the equality and repetition of movement are a way of Being. In fact, Nietzsche states: the eternal return... this teaching of Zarathustra, could have already been taught by Heraclitus. And finally, life is a game. Nietzsche calls the cosmos the innocence of becoming. The world is an eternal play of dynamic forces, its tension and release, its demise and its appearance. It is the eternal return of a will to create and destroy, to struggle and to expand. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the eternal return is the abyssal thought and the central teaching of Zarathustra. It is both creation and destruction, joy and suffering, good and evil. However, if everything repeats eternally, this includes the most despicable Last Man, who is diametrically opposed to the Superman. Zarathustra is filled with anguish by placing his hopes for humanity in a dramatic historical moment, the bridge from man to superman: Alas, man repeats eternally! The little man repeats eternally! I have seen both naked, the greatest man and the smallest man: all too similar

Too human! The greatest too small! - That was my disgust with man! And the eternal return even for the smallest! That was my disgust for all existence! Zarathustra is so sickened by this thought that he remained lying down for seven days and for a long time did not want to eat or drink. However, his animals kept him company. Still recovering, his animals speak to him: Everything goes, everything comes back, the wheel of existence rolls forever. Everything dies, everything blooms again; the year of existence is eternal. Everything breaks, everything comes back together; the same house of existence is built forever. Everything departs, everything reunites; the ring of existence is faithful to itself forever. Existence begins at every moment, the ball 'There' rolls around every 'Here'. The middle is everywhere. The path of eternity is twisted.

They elaborate further saying: For your animals know well, oh Zarathustra, who you are and must become: you are the master of the eternal return, that is now your destiny! That you have to be the first to teach this doctrine, how could this great destiny not also be your greatest danger and illness? Look, we know what you teach: that all things repeat themselves eternally and we along with them, and that we have already existed an infinite number of times before and all things with us. You teach that there is a great year of becoming, a colossal year.

This year must, like an hourglass, turn over and over again, so that it runs out again [...] And if you were to die now, oh Zaratustra: look, we also know what you would say to yourself then, but your animals ask you not to die yet! You would say, without trembling, but rather clinging to happiness: For a great burden and oppression would have been lifted from you, the most patient of men! Now I die and decompose, you would say, and in an instant I will be nothing. Souls are as mortal as bodies. But the complex of causes in which I am entangled will repeat itself, creating me anew! I myself am part of these causes of eternal return. I will return, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with the serpent - not to a new life or a better life or a similar life: I will eternally return to this same and identical life, in the greatest and in the smallest, to teach once again the eternal return of all things. To speak once again of the teaching of the great noon of the earth and man, to speak to man of the Superman once more.

After Zaratustra's recovery, he struggles with the spirit of gravity, which sees life as a burden to bear and is represented by a dwarf. It is Zaratustra's own reflective doubt that he will be dragged down by the thought of

Aspects. Here two paths converge: no one has ever reached its end. This long road behind us continues for an eternity. And that long road ahead of us is another eternity. They are in opposition [...] and it is here at this gate where they come together. The name of the gate is written above: Moment. But if one were to follow it further and further and further, do you think, dwarf, that these paths would be in eternal opposition? [...] From this Moment gate, a long and eternal path runs backward: an eternity lies behind us. Haven't all things that can happen already passed through this path? Isn't it possible that all things that can happen have already happened, been done, passed? And if everything has been here before: what do you think of this moment, dwarf? Shouldn't this gate have been here before as well? And aren't all things connected in such a way that this moment attracts all future things? 
And, therefore, does it also attract itself? Because all things that can happen must also happen once again forward along this long road [...] haven't we all been here before? And mustn't we return and go through that other path we have ahead, through that long and terrible path? Mustn't we return eternally? [...] 
When reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra, we are experiencing as readers our own eternal return, the cycle of hope and despair, descent and return, sociability and isolation,

The earth and the sky, the serpent and the eagle, which are present throughout the book. In the climax of the book, Zarathustra stands up and accepts the eternal return: he becomes the ultimate affirmer of life and the one who says Yes. He dedicates to the superior man, who aspires to the figure of the overman, his dithyramb to all Eternity. Both the soul of Zarathustra and Dionysus represent the highest type of being. I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus - I, the master of the eternal return. This concludes Part I of the eternal return. Check out Part II where Weltgeist analyzes the eternal return not merely as a thought experiment, but as a reality. There is a link in the description. Make sure to also subscribe to their channel! We hope you have enjoyed this collaboration. Give the video a like and subscribe to the channel for more similar content! Thank you and take care.

NIETZSCHE: The Eternal Recurrence

In Pursuit of Meaning.

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