Episode Transcript
Ah, yes, good evening, my little moths. If you’re following us on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Play, and you should be, you’re hopefully getting this in the evening time. Just right after the sun has finished settling and you’re seeing an inky blue sky before the full black settles in. If so, take just a moment to really let your eyes explore the world around you and try to find some beauty in it. This is my favorite time of day. Just before the drenching dark takes over. That would be my second favorite time.
But even if you’re listening to this on your morning walk, before work, or while you’re getting ready for whatever the day may hold, take a deep breath and look around you… Be in this moment and just breathe because maybe, just maybe, you’re going to find yourself in this exact same place, over and over, on infinite repeat, in an eternally recurring universe.
Yes, this time ‘round, I’m here to briefly touch upon Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence. Now, Friedrich Nietzsche presents such a large and looming figure - philosophically, culturally, and personally - that I feel we will be revisiting him and his work again in the months and years to come…
Sooo instead of getting too carried away, right off the bat, I thought it might be best to narrow our focus and touch upon on of his more popular notions: Eternal Recurrence. We can save the Übermensch and Nazis and horse-whipping crazy-house for another day.
But, I would still like to give you a little background on Nietzsche for the uninitiated.
Young Friedrich was born on October 15th in 1844 in the Prussian Province of Saxony and bequeathed the name Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, in honor of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who reigned over Prussia at the time of his birth. Nietzsche would later ditch the “Wilhelm” bit, but I do occasionally wonder if sharing a name with a king perhaps echoed in his psyche all the same. Anyway, another time…
Nietzsche attended university to study philology which, according to Wikipedia, is “the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection between textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics.”
This does become important because it was through his study of languages that Nietzsche discovered a number of interesting ideas in Eastern writings. And one of those ideas that surfaced in his studies is that of Eternal Recurrence.
See, Nietzsche wasn’t the first person to postulate the idea of an eternally recurring universe. The idea that life might be happening on an endless loop is actually way older than Nietzsche, even older than philology or Prussia and who even knows what else.
So, let’s turn to a figure far older than Nietzsche for a moment. That of Shiva, The Great Destroyer, one-third of the Trimurti, and a deva of the Hindu faith.
Shaivites see him as the creator and destroyer of worlds, in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. And not just death and rebirth of the individual, or individual soul, but of the entire universe. There is a moment, a burst of creation, that issues forth all life. We get some time to revel in the sunlight, or moonlight, if you prefer, and then Shiva begins his dance of destruction and unmakes it all again.
And this dance, this oscillation from creation to destruction back to creation, has gone on forever and will continue forever.
But, as this idea moved through time and space, on a smaller scale, different folx put their own spin on it and expounded upon it.
What if, every single time, the universe is created and destroyed and recreated, it is different in someway. Over infinite recreations, there would be infinite possibilities.
I like to think of this as the Sliders Theory of Eternal Recurrence for those of you out there familiar with the 90s televised nerd classic, starring Jerry O’Connell.
Anyway, in the show the zany cast jump between parallel universes, often very similar to our own and sometimes dramatically different. This presumes that we exist in a multiverse of simultaneously occurring realities.
Like, every time an action with multiple outcomes occurs, the universe divides into all possible outcomes and the multiverse expands.
Now the Sliders Theory of Eternal Reccurence is a little different. Rather than dealing with multiple universes representing infinite realities, all occurring at the same time, we stretch these infinite possibilities out in a long line.
Each time Shiva shakes his moneymaker and destroys the universe, creation begins again. Just a little different from the last time, maybe.
Or a lot different.
But, if you toss out the Sliders Theory, what are we left with? I mean, what if it’s the same? What if eternal recurrence means living the exact same life in the exact same way on infinite repeat?
This is where Nietzsche comes in with his proto-existential views of an eternally repeating existence.
In his book, The Gay Science translated by the illustrious Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche first touches upon Eternal Recurrence. Saying, and I quote,
“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?”
The idea Nietzsche presents here really seems more like a thought experiment than an actual belief structure. And, I would like to add, he does not sound at all enchanted with this idea of life recurring on an infinite loop. And I get it. Life can be pretty miserable and the idea of having to relive every injury, every moment of pain and trauma, experienced over and over again?
Wow. I mean, that sounds brutal. But still, even here, we see a spark of hope. The ultimate confirmation, if you will, of a life well lived. And that is to look at your life repeating endlessly with want or joy.
And we’ll see this spark of hope again, as we move through his works to his much later, and very controversial, collection The Will to Power which was not actually a single work intended for publication, but a bunch of notes for future works and pieces from unfinished manuscripts pulled together by his sister, Elisabeth.
Now, just a quick sidenote, when I die, please just burn my notebooks and unfinished manuscripts. No matter what you do, do not let my kid brother romp through and pick out what he thinks is worth reading. I love him. Nice guy, bright guy, and definitely not a nazi… which is more than you can say for Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche… but still, burn those notebooks.
Anyway, from this ramshackle collection of ideas Nietzsche did not personally publish, we find notes on Eternal Recurrence. In it, he says,
“Everything becomes and recurs eternally - escape is impossible! - Supposing we could judge value, what follows? The idea of recurrence as a selective principle, in the service of strength (and barbarism!!)... To endure the idea of the recurrence one needs: freedom from morality; new means against the fact of pain (pain conceived as a tool, as the father of pleasure...); the enjoyment of all kinds of uncertainty, experimentalism, as a counterweight to this extreme fatalism; abolition of the concept of necessity; abolition of the "will"; abolition of "knowledge-in-itself."
So here we can see the beginnings of Nihilism In Nietzsche’s response to the idea of eternal recurrence, but once again we’ll save that for another installment of our show. Still I would like highlight a few key sentiments, however. Like, learning to enjoy uncertainty and experimentalism in response to extreme fatalism. There’s some fun stuff packed into one brief paragraph here.
BUT we’re focusing on eternal reccurence here today so let’s get back to it… and, basically, if the universe is on an endless loop, it’s generally assumed that it’s happening one of two ways. Infinite sameness or endless alternate endings.
I’m okay with both ideas, to be honest, but that might be because I’ve had time to process and adjust my life accordingly. If my life is occuring in an endless loop of sameness, you’re good goddamn right I’m trying to make that home movie as interesting as possible.
But I won’t deny that there have been times in my life I would be less than excited to revisit so I can understand Nietzsche’s apprehensions at the prospect of eternal recurrence.
You, dear listener, should spend some time this month considering how you might feel about hitting that replay button once the credits roll. Does the idea excite or appall you? And why?
But, before we part ways today, I’d like to leave you with this brief tale of a strange and unusual death. Henry Taylor died in November of 1872. Mr. Taylor served as a pall bearer at Kensal Green Cemetery in London and, it was while he was bearing a coffin to its grave, that he stumbled and fell. The remaining pall bearers couldn’t prevent the coffin from falling right after him and Henry Taylor was crushed to death in front of the funeral mourners. Which sent the first dead man’s wife into a fit of hysterics.
Now, imagine that poor bastard caught in a nonstop recycling of his brief life and tragic end. Cruel, right? Almost cruel enough to be funny, but who’s to say. Certainly not Nietzsche, although he outlived Henry Taylor, eventually casting off his mortal coil in the year 1900, some 28 years after Henry Taylor’s fateful coffin tumble. One can imagine Nietzsche probably had his own thing going on elsewhere and didn’t take note of one Londoner’s strange death at the figurative hands of the coffin he was carrying.
But, if Nietzsche did catch word on the continent of Henry Taylor, I would guess that the story gave him pause and maybe even brought to mind Shiva dancing out destruction in the universe.
Thank you, dear listeners, for joining us once again. And special thanks to Integritydry for sponsoring this episode. Please remember to support the businesses that support the arts.
And, last but not least, thank you to our production team over at YabYum Music + Arts, including Mark Anderson and Garrett Bowers. And thanks to Travis James for our theme song.
