/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18905441]

Should the eternal return be taken literally?

[Anonymous No.18905467]

As literally as "God is dead"

[Anonymous No.18905718]

what’s incredibly frustrating about eternal return is that it’s essentially how this world works, Nietzsche offers no worthwhile insight on the matter that isn’t self evident, and everybody who’s read Nietzsche acts like it’s some incredible revelatory moral insight AND that it’s in question whether the world really works this way

[Anonymous No.18905878]

>>18905718
What do you think about this:
>“Even if there were exceedingly few things in a finite space in an infinite time, they would not have to repeat in the same configurations. Suppose there were three wheels of equal size, rotating on the same axis, one point marked on the circumference of each wheel, and these three points lined up in one straight line. If the second wheel rotated twice as fast as the first, and if the speed of the third wheel was 1/π of the speed of the first, the initial line-up would never recur.”

[Anonymous No.18905892]

>>18905878
Neetch is saying that anything that has a greater than zero probability of happening will happen, that's the mathematical/ scientific basis of the eternal recurrence
this meanwhile starts off with zero chance of it ever occurring again, and the only way this would apply to infinite return would be for some metaphysical entity or principle to deem it so

[Anonymous No.18905932]

>>18905892
>Neetch is saying that anything that has a greater than zero probability of happening will happen,
So because the world has already existed it will exist again (given that it is finite in quantity and infinite in time)?

[Anonymous No.18905964]

>>18905932
depends what he saw as necessitating this world, whether eternal recurrence was a cause-and-effect relationship where each world necessitates the next, or whether independently by some other agency the world will come to be exactly as it once was, given that it is finite in quantity in time, unless it has been specifically conditioned not to recur again by some metaphysical principle, slightly related to the example from George Simmel you just gave

[Anonymous No.18905989]

>>18905441
It should be taken phantasmatically

[Anonymous No.18906044]

>>18905964
>depends what he saw as necessitating this world,
I think he saw the world as necessitating the world. He definitely didn’t believe in an external metaphysical principle. What I don’t understand is why it has to recur identically to this one and not differently. There is probability for it and infinite sets can be arrived at from finite ones.

[Anonymous No.18906080]

>>18906044
>He definitely didn’t believe in an external metaphysical principle
wasn't the will to power a metaphysical principle?

[Anonymous No.18906104]

>>18906080
>wasn't the will to power a metaphysical principle?
Kind of, but not in our traditional sense of metaphysics. It certainly isn’t just a rebranding of Schopenhauer’s metaphysical foundationalism.

[Anonymous No.18907166]

>>18905441
Yes. For I love thee o Eternity

[Anonymous No.18907176]

>>18905441
It was a realistic idea based on the cutting edge physics of the time, which Nietzsche apparently payed attention to. It's not clear if he really believed in it but I think the "it's just a thought experiment" is overcorrecting in the other direction. It really was a possible future and it may have bothered him enough to write about it.

[Anonymous No.18907199]

>>18905441
No. It's monistic and would invalidate any epistemic knowledge of itself within it's own recursion as illusory and viciously circular/tautological.
You wouldn't be able to transcend the cycle you are in (reality) even if you know you are in the cycle. Thus Nietzsche's apotheosis becomes an impossibility within his own metaphysical framework since the "Superman" would be effectively trapped in eternal recurrence and thus be a slave to his ontology within the impersonal, eternal, and uncaring force which he is a subset of.

Long story short, without anything transcendent outside of the metaphysical system (i.e. theosis), you are stuck ultimately in some form of sophisticated nihilism; at best you'll be the biggest ant in the prison of reality.

[Anonymous No.18907205]

He who transcends cycles is thus like God.

[Anonymous No.18907257]

>>18905441
I used to think it was just a device meant to help you live well but the more I've read and reread Nietzsche the more convinced I am that it should be taken literally but while also helping you live well. Also you might want to check out Klossowski's Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle.

[Anonymous No.18907341]

>>18907205
So, non-existent?

[Anonymous No.18907359]

>>18907341
hyperreal (not-in the deracinated Baudrillard sense but in the actual "more real than reality" sense).

[Anonymous No.18907685]

>>18905441
I don't think he meant for it to be taken literally.

[Anonymous No.18907695]

Nietzsche never had a consistent philosophical system and just spout nonsense that he felt like. Some of his ideas are worth examining, but not the eternal return. Sounds like total schizo shit. Don't forget, he was one.

[Anonymous No.18907771]

>>18907199
>Long story short, without anything transcendent outside of the metaphysical system (i.e. theosis), you are stuck ultimately in some form of sophisticated nihilism
Sounds based.

[Anonymous No.18907977]

Too many unknowables concerning process, time, identity, conscious awareness, and ego. Is some form of multi-world/big-world/quantum immortality possible? Maaaaybe, afa our crude understanding of physical laws permits, but the brain, oh man, the brain. It really throws a wrench into our predictive powers.

It would be easy if "you" really were an algorithm on a machine, but you're not; You're a shitload of algorithms on a big sophisticated network of machines that is reflexively interacting at all times with the environment. This is presuming a purely physicalist model.

So, maybe. But like I said, "you" is really hard to pin down.