In this article I argue that we should understand Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence as the ideal of life affirmation opposed to philosophical pessimism, the view that life is not worth living. I first articulate Nietzsche’s psychological account of pessimism as a vengeful focus on the past and an aversion to time understood as transience. I then consider the question of why a person with the opposite psychological orientation – a creative relation to the future and an endorsement of time (...) – would will the eternal recurrence of all things. My answer appeals to Nietzsche’s notions of will to power and the redemption of the past from its senselessness. The interpretation of eternal recurrence that emerges from this approach takes Nietzsche’s vision of a great, world-redeeming individual to be integral to his doctrine of eternal recurrence. This is just one way in which it differs from common interpretations of eternal recurrence as a cosmological theory or thought experiment. (shrink)

The doctrine of eternal recurrence in Nietzsche is an essentially ecstatic doctrine. It is also strangely incommunicable. Here the ecstasy that reveals singularizes. The essential revelation closes the one to whom it is given in his own singularity ; only a singularity opens to the abysses and the Dionysian truth. Heidegger could then see in it an ontological doctrine. And an authentifying-singularizing-doctrine. Not, though, the same as his own. For Heidegger could suggest that the time horizon in which this doctrine (...) conceives Being in its Becoming-the "deep eternity"-is in fact not a deep structure of time, but the linear time of an eternity of instants. Eternity is not deep. In addition the subject of the Nietzschean ecstasy-which longs for eternity- cannot appropriate itself, cannot become a whole, cannot really achieve singular existence. Are these Heideggerian thoughts criticisms of the Nietzschean experience? Is the deep ontological truth to be then sought elsewhere? Is the wholeness of one's own life- the essence of this existence- to be then sought in another experience of the time-horizon of Being? Or else do these Heideggerian observations not rather point to another structure of the thought involved-something like a surface thought? And to another structure of the one smitten by this thought-a singularity that exists only in a circle of continuous metamorphoses? Some deconstructive work by Derrida encourages us to look in this direction. (shrink)

Nietzsche is not a nihilist as Heidegger interprets Nietzsche to be.

We all know by now why a kid starts whistling in the middle of a territory unknown. Refrain builds up a milieu, deterritorialising all the forces of the unknown with the ear of an other. However, have we as yet considered how the ear gets into resonance with the transformation of the unknown into the known? In other words, are we capable of knowing the unknown as such? Are we capable of translating the rhythms of the unknown into the known? (...) And if yes, what are those issues that we put at risk in such a move? Without doubt, Heidegger and Agamben would be of great help for us to discover the aletheia of rhythm, as if it is possible to know what rhythm is. However, our intention here is to talk about ears, rhythms, deterritorialisation of the ears without falling into the trap of phenomenological circle. Dear rhuthmos, is all our knowledge of rhythm circumscribed by a division that cannot be maintained by an ear? (shrink)

This text has already been published in La Deleuziana – Online Journal of Philosophy – ISSN 2421-3098 N. 10 / 2019 – RHYTHM, CHAOS AND NONPULSED MAN.: We all know by now why a kid starts whistling in the middle of a territory unknown. Refrain builds up a milieu, deterritorialising all the forces of the unknown with the ear of an other. However, have we as yet considered how the ear gets into resonance with the transformation of the unknown into (...) the known? In other words, - Philosophie – Nouvel article. (shrink)