Time and Personal Identity in Nietzsche’s Theory of Eternal Recurrence

Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence is an essential part of his mature philosophy, but the theory’s metaphysical commitments and practical implications are both obscure. In this essay I consider only the metaphysical elements of the theory, with the aim of determining whether it is possible that we live our lives infinitely many times, as the theory maintains. I argue that the possibility of eternal recurrence turns on issues in personal identity and the metaphysics of time. As I proceed, I also consider the relation between Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence and theories of recurrence found in the work of Heraclitus, the Pythagoreans, and the Stoics. Friedrich Nietzsche’s infamous doctrine of eternal recurrence receives its clearest expression in The Gay Science. The heaviest weight. – What if some day or night a demon were to steal 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 again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must 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 over 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 have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine.’ If this thought gained power over you, as you are it would transform and possibly crush you; the question in each and every thing, ‘Do you want this again and innumerable times again?’ would lie on your actions as the heaviest weight! Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to long for nothing more fervently than for this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal? (GS 341) 1 According to the theory of eternal recurrence sketched by Nietzsche’s demon, the world consists of a single series of events that is repeated infinitely many times. Because your life is a part of this series, the theory maintains, you will live your life infinitely many times. Most of the questions to be asked concerning this passage can be sorted into three general categories. First, there are straightforwardly exegetical questions. We might wonder why the doctrine of eternal recurrence is introduced by a ‘‘demon,’’ why the passage addresses the reader directly, and why there is talk of moonlight, spiders, sighs, and so on. Second, there are questions concerning the practical significance of eternal recurrence. Nietzsche says that eternal recurrence would be ‘‘the heaviest weight,’’ and he describes just two reactions to the doctrine – either crushing anguish or a longing for recurrence. We find the same pair of reactions in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which Zarathustra is initially overpowered by an ‘‘abysmal thought’’ closely related to eternal recurrence (Z III:13) but later comes to love this vision of eternity (Z III:16). Since these