Eternal recurrence
Concept · Friedrich Nietzsche · Philosophy, stage 1: Learn the vocabulary
Eternal recurrence is the thought experiment Nietzsche poses in The Gay Science and develops in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: imagine that your life, in every detail, will repeat itself infinitely, exactly as it happened. Nietzsche does not present it mainly as a cosmological claim that has to be literally true. He uses it as a test: could you want your life to recur exactly as it is, again and again, without alteration?
Why it matters
It gives a concrete measure of what it would mean to affirm your own life rather than merely endure it.
Part of
Eternal recurrence in the glossary
Sources
- Friedrich Nietzsche Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Nietzsche Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
