Eternal Recurrence

https://www.thoughtco.com/nietzsches-idea-of-the-eternal-recurrence-2670659  Quoting:

Nietzsche's Idea of Eternal Recurrence

The idea of eternal return or eternal recurrence has existed in various forms since antiquity. Put simply, it's the theory that existence recurs in an infinite cycle as energy and matter transform over time. In ancient Greece, the Stoics believed that the universe went through repeating stages of transformation similar to those found in the "wheel of time" of Hinduism and Buddhism.

Such ideas of cyclical time later fell out of fashion, especially in the West, with the rise of Christianity. One notable exception is found in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), a 19th-century German thinker who was known for his unconventional approach to philosophy. One of Nietzsche's most famous ideas is that of eternal recurrence, which appears in the penultimate section of his book The Gay Science.

The Gay Science is one of Nietzsche's most personal works, collecting not only his philosophical reflections but also a number of poems, aphorisms, and songs. The idea of eternal recurrence—which Nietzsche presents as a sort of thought experiment—appears in Aphorism 341, "The Greatest Weight":

   "What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you 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 more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to 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 upside down 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 possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, 'Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?' would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life?"

Nietzsche reported that this thought came to him suddenly one day in August 1881 while he was taking a walk along a lake in Switzerland. After introducing the idea at the end of The Gay Science, he made it one of the fundamental concepts of his next work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra, the prophet-like figure who proclaims Nietzsche’s teachings in this volume, is at first reluctant to articulate the idea, even to himself. Eventually, though, he proclaims that eternal recurrence is a joyful truth, one that should be embraced by anyone who lives life to the fullest.

Oddly enough, eternal recurrence doesn't figure too prominently into any of the works Nietzsche published after Thus Spoke Zarathustra. However, there is a section dedicated to the idea in The Will to Power, a collection of notes published by Nietzsche’s sister Elizabeth in 1901. In the passage, Nietzsche seems to seriously entertain the possibility that the doctrine is literally true. It is significant, however, that the philosopher never insists on the idea's literal truth in any of his other published writings. Rather, he presents eternal recurrence as a sort of thought experiment, a test of one's attitude toward life.

Nietzsche’s Philosophy
Nietzsche's philosophy is concerned with questions about freedom, action, and will. In presenting the idea of eternal recurrence, he asks us not to take the idea as truth but to ask ourselves what we would do if the idea were true. He assumes that our first reaction would be utter despair: the human condition is tragic; life contains much suffering; the thought that one must relive it all an infinite number of times seems terrible.

But then he imagines a different reaction. Suppose we could welcome the news, embrace it as something that we desire? That, says Nietzsche, would be the ultimate expression of a life-affirming attitude: to want this life, with all its pain and boredom and frustration, again and again. This thought connects with the dominant theme of Book IV of The Gay Science, which is the importance of being a “yea-sayer,” a life-affirmer, and of embracing amor fati (love of one’s fate).

This is also how the idea is presented in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra’s being able to embrace eternal recurrence is the ultimate expression of his love for life and his desire to remain “faithful to the earth.” Perhaps this would be the response of the "Übermnesch" or "Overman" who Zarathustra anticipates as a higher kind of human being. The contrast here is with religions like Christianity, which see this world as inferior, this life as mere preparation for a better life in paradise. Eternal recurrence thus offers a notion of immortality counter to the one proposed by Christianity.

The idea of eternal recurrence, an endless cycle of living the same life over and over again, but not remembering anything from ones previous lives seems pointless to me. It is also depressing to think that there is nothing else for us other than a worldly existence.
I suppose that I would be in Nietzsche’s first group and would throw myself down, gnash my teeth and curse the demon who spoke this. I don’t think that means that my life is not worth living.
Amori fati (to love ones fate) sounds noble and though that state of mind may work for some people, I think that it is unnatural to try and repress our human emotions and live in a state of apathy. It seems like it is a kind of defense tool, used to deal with the struggles of everyday life, kind of the opposite of magical thinking.

Good points ^. It does seem kind of meaningless, although if we did remember our previous 'life turn' the current one would not be the same because we would all do some things differently and the whole course of events would change. It's still much more meaningful than living one life then disappearing though. I think a lot of people do adopt a materialistic outlook as an emotional defense.

If there is eternel recurrence, then I think it will be in combination with reincarnation: the individual might live a million different lives, experiencing things from every angle, then repeat all the lives again in exact detail.

That is different perspective from the traditional eastern concept of reincarnation, where the belief of past karma and enlightenment play a very important role.
If there is no end game, enlightenment, it almost seems like this idea of eternal recurrence/reincarnation is a form of materialism because the soul is always part of a corporal body.

Sary wrote:That is different perspective from the traditional eastern concept of reincarnation, where the belief of past karma and enlightenment play a very important role.
If there is no end game, enlightenment, it almost seems like this idea of eternal recurrence/reincarnation is a form of materialism because the soul is always part of a corporal body.

I think the idea that much of what we do must serve some future goal is a very human one, and that we project it onto religious thinking. In Christianity and Islam, people try to behave and think/feel in certain ways to achieve the goal of getting to Heaven for ever; in Hinduism and Buddhism, it's really the same goal but it takes many life-times to achieve the necessary perfection. In both cases - why bother? Why does the creator god not just make souls then put them straight into a paradise? In an eternal worldly existence, life itself is the goal - a never-ending adventure, although the individual would have to be happy more often than not to make it worthwhile.

Materialsm means to me the belief that consciousness is an effect of the physical body and cannot survive without it. But even in a heaven, the soul would need a body of some kind to experience things - unless a soul just exists in Heaven as pure consciousness, feeling perfectly happy - but that sounds a lot like being God. If a person is very happy then it doesn't matter if he or she is in the 'material' world or in a 'spiritual' world - and what exactly is a spiritual world? If you always exist independently of other individuals and can interact with your surroundings then you are always in some 'place' or world.

I’ve been reading more about Nietzsche’s Overman philosophy now understand his thought a little bit  better and kinda agree with what he is saying.
To live life to its fullest and keep a positive attitude, even when life is horrible, is truly a measure of a man. It comes from a source of goodness and strength.
It is so ironic when you see young rich, beautiful people with everything in the world going for them and they just throw it all away, getting sucked into depression and misery. Hurting not only themselves but others as well. Mental illness aside, it is such a waste.

To me, I see life as a test.
The way you live your life in the present, on earth, makes an important difference. The way you treat others and how you deal with the struggles and pain, that all humans endure will determine where your soul will move onto in the next chapter.
Maybe it will mean that after death you will disappear?
That could very well be punishment enough for living an bad life.
I do believe in enlightenment in some form or another.
Becoming one with God is my idea of heaven.
If it takes one lifetime or many is hard to say.
Some times I think that we are living in the End of Days.

I think there are four main things which life can be, including your idea:

1) A test, with consequences for the soul depending on success or failure.
2) A learning experience, leading to wiser souls.
3) An adventure or story, just for the sake of experience itself.
4) A pointless process where there are no immortal souls.

And it could be some combination of 1, 2 and 3.

I used to believe it was 1 and then I moved to 2 for a long while, but recently I've felt that 3 makes more sense philosophically. I reject 4 because materialism doesn't make nearly as much sense as a lot of people think it does. I went off 2 for the reasons I gave in my previous post. The problem with 1 is that it depends on the idea of free will which I also used to believe in but now think is an illusion.

Mmmm
I do not understand what you mean by free will being an illusion.
If we do not have control over our actions then what does?

Free will (FW) says that we could have done things differently in the past - we chose one course of action but were free to have chosen another. Think about the last time you made some little decision you now regret and wish you had done differently. E.g. you might have eaten a pie that was past its 'use by' date and then suffered indigestion. "Why did I eat it and not throw it away?" you ask yourself. Well, you ate it because A) you were hungry, B) liked the taste of it and C) because you knew from experience that slightly dated foods are usually safe to eat. But according to FW, you could have chosen not to eat the pie despite the motivations of A, B and C. So imagine time was 'rewound' like a video tape and you are in the situation where you take the pie out of the fridge and see the date on the packet; everything in the universe is in exactly the same position as it was the first time round, including the thoughts in your mind and those reasons A, B, and C. Logically, for you to choose not to eat the pie this second time, something in your mind or in your surroundings would have to be different. If everything is exactly the same, how could you 'choose' to throw the pie away instead of eating it? To make a different decision, a different thought would have to occur to you; the idea that you could 'will' a different thought explains nothing - it's all a process of cause and effect which has been going on since the universe began and we are all part of that process.

I wrote this some years ago to explain why free will is such a strong illusion:

"Our conscious awareness is completely passive and experiences things from two sources – the outside world and inner neurological activity. As infants, we struggle to make sense of all this input but as we develop we learn to predict both events in the environment and our own behaviour, including our thought patterns. We become so good at predicting our own functioning and responses that it begins to feel as if we are 'creating' our behaviour, emotions and thoughts and this feeling soon becomes the norm. When, as adults, something causes us to behave unusually, such as alcohol, we temporarily loose the ability to predict ourselves and so feel that we are 'not in control' – but we never are in control.

For another way of thinking about this, imagine you are sat in a small vehicle that is programmed to drive around a maze on its own. At first, you do not know which way you are going to turn but gradually you become familiar with the route. If you could do this for long enough you would learn the route completely and form the impression that you were driving the vehicle. Then, if the driving programme suddenly changed, it would feel as if you had suddenly lost control - lost your 'will'."

But not having free will doesn't mean we cannot have non-material souls - that's a separate issue (they are commonly confused).

But time can not be rewound, as far as we we know. . .
Is time even real?
I think that we live in the present and that is all that matters. For me existing here, on the east coast of America, I am living in your past and you in my future.
Perhaps life is predetermined.
Jeremiah 29:11 I know the plans that I have for you.
The older I get, the more I realize that we are helpless to change the future.
I have come to terms that what ever will be, will be.

For reincarnation, it's fair to ask what the point of living various lives is if we forget each one before starting the next. I think life would feel more meaningful if we knew for a common fact that there would always be a next time.

Reincarnation is difficult for me to imagine.
I think that life is more meaningful because it is finite. If we knew that we could do it over and over, it seems like it would get very boring.
It’s also find it hard to wrap my brain around the idea of not having free will.
I don’t think of FW as something mystical,  but simply a function of our frontal cortex.
A natural function like instinct or intuition.