#eternal recurrence
A few thoughts on eternal recurrence
The idea of eternal recurrence, as read in Nietzsche, has fascinated me for a long while. The first time I came in contact with the idea was in fact in reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being, where the author writes
“If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross… In the world of eternal return the weight of…
“Whoever has endeavored, as I have, to think pessimism through to its depths and liberate it from Schopenhauer’s philosophy, has thus opened his eyes to the opposite ideal: that of the high-spirited, world-affirming human being who has not only come to terms and learned to get along with whatever was and is, but who wants to have what was and is repeated into all eternity.”
—F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §56 (edited excerpt).
