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[The following is summary. The original translation is placed at the end.]
Eternal Affirmation
Some people believe in God early in their lives. Later they develop critical thinking abilities. Then they find too many inconsistencies for their beliefs to hold together. In this way, some lose faith in a moral order guaranteed by God.
But often such people do more than just lose belief. They feel betrayed. There was once a source of meaning. Now there is nothing. They become nihilists.
Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but by extreme positions of the opposite kind. Thus the belief in the absolute immorality of nature, in aim- and meaninglessness, is the psychologically necessary affect once the belief in God and an essentially moral order becomes untenable. (Nietzsche, Will to Power, Kaufman transl. 35a)
They come to realize that to see the world as morally ordered by God is to hold an interpretation. But because it was the ultimate interpretation, now all existence seems to have no meaning or purpose.
One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain. (Nietzsche, Will to Power, Kaufman transl. 35a)
Une interprétation entre autres a fait naufrage, mais comme elle passait pour être la seule interprétation possible, il semble que l'existence n'ait plus de sens, que tout soit vain. (VP III 8, Bianquis transl. 12c)
One interpretation among others was shipwrecked, but as it passed for the only possible interpretation it seems that existence no longer has meaning, that everything is in vain (Hugh Tomlinson transl. in Deleuze, Nietzsche & Philosophy. 23bc)
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Nietzsche will still need to demonstrate that our current culture of nihilism results from this feeling of life being all in vain.
These nihilists were betrayed by their old values. They realized that they were the products of arbitrary interpretations. Since all values will result from arbitrary interpretations, none seem legitimate. So they mistrust all values. They see that they are helpless but also see no solution. There seems to be no way to value existence.
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This life we live seems meaningless. Would it not be terrible to double it, and live it a second time? What about infinite times? Would that mean eternal meaninglessness? Nietzsche has us consider this "most terrible" idea.
existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: "the eternal recurrence." This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the "meaningless"), eternally!
Nietzsche elsewhere has shown that Western science leads to this "Buddhistic" notion of eternal "reincarnation" and the seeming valuelessness of existence.
We conclude a cosmological eternal recurrence if we follow mechanistic (and thermodynamic) principles, and take up these three assumptions:
a) Time extends infinitely to the past and to the future. [We cannot scientifically explain a beginning without defying the principle of sufficient reason: any positing of an absolute beginning calls for some cause, which itself requires a cause, and so on. Hence there must be either an infinite regress of causally determined events or of chance-decided events. If there is no first determining cause, then there is no first determined cause, and thus no second determined cause. Hence all the way through the series leading up to now, nothing is determined. Thus,...]
b) All events are decided [at least in part] by chance. [This is the only way to conceive time in the scientific way as lacking beginning or end as we saw above. For otherwise, there would be infinitely regressive determinism, which is absurd. There is no chain of determination if it was never initiated. Hence nothing is determined. The only way it could be initiated is if there is an uncaused cause, which is unscientific.]
c) Events involve struggles between forces. Only by positing a God-like entity could there be some way for more force to be added to the net total of energy in the cosmos. From the standpoint of modern western scientific thinking, there could be no such deity constantly feeding the cosmos with more force. So that leaves two other options. Either the net amount of forces stays the same for all eternity, or it diminishes. Lord Kelvin recognized that the principle of entropy would say that the all the cosmos' energy will eventually dissipate. This is why he posits the God-like principle that continues to replenish the cosmos with more energy. But this is not a scientific explanation, we noted. But then it cannot be that the cosmos loses energy. For if there has been infinite time before now, it would have lost all its power already, no matter how slow the dissipation, and no matter how great the total cosmic energy. Thus there is always the same net amount of force. Then how do we explain all the change around us? Nietzsche says that the distributions of force throughout the world are uneven and ever-changing. At any one moment, there will be so much competing forces in one place, and more or less in other places.
The third important assumption is that the number of possible distributions of forces is finite. Nietzsche holds that forces come in different discrete values or "quanta."
Now, if we adopt these scientific and mechanistic principles, we will still conclude that there is an eternal recurrence of the same event. There are only so many possible different distributions of forces. Eventually all the possibilities will become exhausted, and the chance presents itself for the world to begin a new cycle. In the next world, things will probably be different. But this world will end. A new one will follow it. Eventually by chance, the same world-sequence happening now will repeat again in precisely the same way. So we will live again as ourselves and live exactly the same life, some time in the distant future.
So we see why the eternal recurrence is "the most scientific of all possible hypotheses." Nietzsche is probably not espousing the recurrence as a scientific theory. Rather, he is showing that the modernist assumptions that drive scientific progress will result in this conclusion. Hence our current nihilism. Recall that infinite time preceding us implies that the world never reached a stasis point where all the changing ended. And if it never happen already despite an infinite number of chances to do so, it never will happen in the future. So there is no end to the world. Thus there is no end or purpose to existence.
*
Now, if we believed that the world itself is endowed with a divine principle, in a pantheistic sense, then we would believe there is always some guiding purpose. So because the idea of the eternal return denies an end, it would seem to be antithetical to pantheism. If a god guided the world, that would thereby establish some principle end, and our acting in accordance with it would be considered moral. But maybe there could be a pantheistic god who is beyond good and evil, that is to say, who does not uphold every moment to some status beyond it, as though certain moments are closer or further away from the way things should be, or will someday finally be. Each moment in this world would be equal to the rest. Spinoza held such a non-moralistic pantheism. Every moment has the same logical necessity, and there is no beginning or end. The whole world is god, but the world is always affirmative. For, it is never deficient in any way at all. It eternally expresses its infinity, so each moment is as infinite as the rest.
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Now if all moments are equally necessary and affirmational, that means every moment of our lives is necessary and affirmative. If we realized this idea, we would always feel the pleasure of triumph at every moment, seeing that everything no matter what is infinitely good and valuable.
*
Those who realize their inferiority fall into despair. People no matter how powerless might still feel power over nature. But they will never stop feeling powerless to other men. Hence "it is the experience of being powerless against men, not against nature, that generates the most desperate embitterment against existence." But their diminished status does not mean that their will to power ceases to express itself. They just express it differently. So to protect themselves from this despair, they use morality to check their oppressor's power.
Morality consequently taught men to hate and despise most profoundly what is the basic character trait of those who rule: their will to power.
So the weaker feel morally superior to the stronger. But they attained that feeling by expressing their will to power resentfully through moral law. So really they do not stand on higher moral ground. If they realized this, they would return to their state of despair, seeing that despite their expressions of will to power, they are still limited by those more powerful than them.
*
In fact, they would learn that they are morally inferior. For, if life is will to power, then the only thing that has value in life is the "degree of power". We are morally obligated, in a sense, to obtain power.
Those with less power sheltered themselves from feeling enslaved by positing that everyone has a soul. This gives them an infinite and eternal, moral and metaphysical value that places them "in an order that did not agree with the worldly order of rank and power: it taught resignation, meekness, etc."
*
If the weak did not have this metaphysical comfort, they would die from self-destruction. We see this self-destructive tendency expressed in many ways, for example: “self-vivisection, poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, above all the instinctive need for actions that turn the powerful into mortal enemies." This self-destructive instinct is based on a much deeper will for nothingness.
*
So those who lose morality are driven to self-destruction. But again, this is an expression of will to power. Hence they act out against the powerful so that their superiors will punish them. By this means, they compel the powerful to be their "hangman." This is comparable to Buddhism in a sense. While a Buddhist says 'No' to doing, the European version does 'No,' that is, he acts contrary to his superiors.
*
We see then that nihilism is at least a step up from God, morality, and resignation. For, 1) shedding moral values indicates that one is not so desperate as to depend on them, and 2) knowing the reality of the situation gives one more power.
The feeling that morality has been overcome presupposes a fair degree of spiritual culture, and this in turn that one is relatively well off.
People are even better off if they go further than shed morality and also become skeptical of all philosophy, on account of the "spiritual weariness" resulting from "the long fight of philosophical opinions." Buddha taught an eternal return-like reincarnation. At the same time in the West, there emerged scholarly presuppositions that lead as well to the principle of eternal recurrence. Consider for example the concept of causality. As we saw above, this implies an infinite regress and progress, and hence also an eternal return of the same.
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Normally we consider how people are politically underprivileged. Nietzsche wonders how they might be psychologically underprivileged. Those who are unhealthy react badly to the idea of the eternal recurrence.
they will experience the belief in the eternal recurrence as a curse, struck by which one no longer shrinks from any action; not to be extinguished passively but to extinguish everything that is so aim- and meaningless, although this is a mere convulsion, a blind rage at the insight that everything has been for eternities — even this moment of nihilism and lust for destruction.
So some want to see the meaninglessness of the world be destroyed, to purify it by eliminating it. To do so requires destruction. And destruction means pitting forces against each other. Such unhealthy people hierarchize men according to strength. Those with similar levels of strength and opposite minds are assigned 'common tasks,' so that they 'perish of each other.' Then, at all levels of society, the stronger become recognized as commanders, and the weaker as the servants.
*
Those who would survive in such an order are the ones who accept and affirm themselves and as well the chance necessities of life:
those who do not require any extreme articles of faith; those who not only concede but love a fair amount of accidents and nonsense; those who can think of man with a considerable reduction of his value without becoming small and weak on that account: those richest in health who are equal to most misfortunes and therefore not so afraid of misfortunes — human beings who are sure of their power and represent the attained strength of humanity with conscious pride. (emphasis mine)
*
Nietzsche ends by wondering how such an affirmative person would consider the eternal recurrence. It seems to me that the very idea would amplify their joy and power.
Original text, obtained gratefully from the Athenaeum Reading Room:
55 (
Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but by extreme positions of the opposite kind. Thus the belief in the absolute immorality of nature, in aim- and meaninglessness, is the psychologically necessary affect once the belief in God and an essentially moral order becomes untenable. Nihilism appears at that point, not that the displeasure at existence has become greater than before but because one has come to mistrust any "meaning" in suffering, indeed in existence. One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain.
That this "in vain" constitutes the character of present-day nihilism remains to be shown. The mistrust of our previous valuations grows until it becomes the question: "Are not all 'values' lures that draw out the comedy without bringing it closer to a solution?" Duration "in vain," without end or aim, is the most paralyzing idea, particularly when one understands that one is being fooled and yet lacks the power not to be fooled.
Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: "the eternal recurrence." This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the "meaningless"), eternally!
The European form of Buddhism: the energy of knowledge and strength compels this belief. It is the most scientific of all possible hypotheses. We deny end goals: if existence had one it would have to have been reached.
So one understands that an antithesis to pantheism is attempted here: for "everything perfect, divine, eternal" also compels a faith in the "eternal recurrence." Question: does morality make impossible *is pantheistic affirmation of all things, too? At bottom, it is only the moral god that has been overcome. Does it make sense to conceive a god "beyond good and evil"? Would a pantheism in this sense be possible? Can we remove the idea of a goal from the process and then affirm the process in spite of this?-This would be the case if something were attained at every moment within this process--and always the same. Spinoza reached such an affirmative position in so far as every moment has a logical necessity, and with his basic instinct, which was logical, he felt a sense of triumph that the world should be constituted that way.
But his case is only a single case. Every basic character trait that is encountered at the bottom of every event, that finds expression in every event, would have to lead every individual who experienced it as his own basic character trait to welcome every moment of universal existence with a sense of triumph. The crucial point would be that one experienced this basic character trait in oneself as good, valuable--with pleasure.
It was morality that protected life against despair and the leap into nothing, among men and classes who were violated and oppressed by men: for it is the experience of being powerless against men, not against nature, that generates the most desperate embitterment against existence. Morality treated the violent despots, the doers of violence, the "masters" in general as the enemies against whom the common man must be protected, which means first of all encouraged and strengthened. Morality consequently taught men to hate and despise most profoundly what is the basic character trait of those who rule: their will to power. To abolish, deny, and dissolve this morality--that would mean looking at the best-hated drive with an opposite feeling and valuation. If the suffering and oppressed lost the faith that they have the right to despise the will to power, they would enter the phase of hopeless despair. This would be the case if this trait were essential to life and it could be shown that even in this will to morality this very "will to power" were hidden, and even this hatred and contempt were still a will to power. The oppressed would come to see that they were on the same plain with the oppressors, without prerogative, without higher rank.
Rather the opposite! There is nothing to life that has value, except the degree of power-assuming that life itself is the will to power. Morality guarded the underprivileged against nihilism by assigning to each an infinite value, a metaphysical value, and by placing each in an order that did not agree with the worldly order of rank and power: it taught resignation, meekness, etc. Supposipg that the faith in this morality would perish, then the underprivileged would no longer have their comfort--and they would perish.
This perishing takes the form of self-destruction--the instinctive selection of that which must destroy. Symptoms of this selfdestruction of the underprivileged: self-vivisection, poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, above all the instinctive need for actions that turn the powerful into mortal enemies (as it were, one breeds one's own hangmen); the will to destruction as the will of a still deeper instinct, the instinct of self-destruction, the will for nothingness.
Nihilism as a symptom that the underprivileged have no comfort left; that they destroy in order to be destroyed; that without morality they no longer have any reason to "resign themselves" --that they place themselves on the plain of the opposite principle and also want power by compelling the powerful to become their hangmen. This is the European form of Buddhism--saying No after all existence has lost its "meaning."
It is not that "distress" has grown: on the contrary. "God, morality, resignation," were remedies on terribly low rungs of misery: active nihilism appears in relatively much more favorable conditions. The feeling that morality has been overcome presupposes a fair degree of spiritual culture, and this in turn that one is relatively well off. A certain spiritual weariness that, owing to the long fight of philosophical opinions, has reached the most hopeless skepticism regarding all philosophy, is another sign of the by no means low position of these nihilists. Consider the situation in which the Buddha appeared. The doctrine of the eternal recurrence would have scholarly presuppositions (as did the Buddha's doctrine; e. g., the concept of causality, etc.).
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What does "underprivileged" mean? Above all, physiologically--no longer politically. The unhealthiest kind of man in Europe (in all classes) furnishes the soil for this nihilism: they will experience the belief in the eternal recurrence as a curse, struck by which one no longer shrinks from any action; not to be extinguished passively but to extinguish everything that is so aim- and meaningless, although this is a mere convulsion, a blind rage at the insight that everything has been for eternities--even this moment of nihilism and lust for destruction.--It is the value of such a crisis that it purlfies, that it pushes together related elements to perish of each other, that it assigns common tasks to men who have opposite ways of thinking--and it also brings to light the weaker and less secure among them and thus promotes an order of rank according to strength, from the point of view of health: those who command are recognized as those who command, those who obey as those who obey. Of course, outside every existing social order.
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Who will prove to be the strongest in the course of this? The most moderate; those who do not require any extreme articles of faith; those who not only concede but love a fair amount of accidents and nonsense; those who can think of man with a considerable reduction of his value without becoming small and weak on that account: those richest in health who are equal to most misfortunes and therefore not so afraid of misfortunes--human beings who are sure of their power and represent the attained strength of humanity with conscious pride.
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How would such a human being even think of the eternal recurrence?
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. Transl Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1967.
Text reproduction obtained gratefully from:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/nietzsche_wtp01.htm
Many other hard-to-find online texts also available at the Athenaeum Reading Room.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. La Volonté de puissance, II. Transl. G. Bianquis. Paris: Gallimard, 1938
Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche & Philosophy. Transl. Hugh Tomlinson.
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