One of the most important idea in Nietzschean philosophy is the

idea of eternal recurrence. Indeed, Neitzche considered it to be the

central idea of "Thus Spake Zarathustra", and considered himself to be

"the teacher of Eternal Recurrence". The idea is a radical one, and its

logical underpinnings are not immediately apparent.

But the idea is actaully quite logically solvent, as I intend to show.

Nietzche also goes on to make the claim that, as all events are to

eternally recur, we must be especially careful that we treasure every

moment, and make it worthy of reptition. It is this claim which it is

the main thrust of this paper to dispute.

        In order to do so, it is necessary to first examine and

establish the idea itself. Through this process, it will be necessary to

deal with some issues of basic cosmology. I will try to keep these

cosmological discussions brief, as they are not the main point of this

work and I do not wish this work to become too ponderous to be easily

absorbed and comprehended.

        In the simplest of terms, the idea of eternal recurrence is that

everything which has ever happened will happen again and again, forever,

and has happened an unlimited number of times before this. This

conclusion is reached by a logical argument following this basic formula

: Any event to which one wishes to draw one's attention has come to pass

through a series of events which can be assigned a probability. Some

events are more probable than others. But given the infinity of time, no

matter how improbable any event is, it will occur, and indeed has

occurred and will occur over and over again. To illustrate this point, I

will draw on the explanation given by Nietzsche, a shorter on by

Hans Reichenbach, and provide one of my own.

        Firstly, Nietzsche's argument, as stated in "Will to Power" :



                If the world may be thought of as a certain definite

                quantity of force and as a certain definite number of

                centres of force - and every other it follows that in

                the great dice game of existance, it must pass through a

                calculable number combinations. In infinite time, every

                combination would at some time or another be realized;

                more : it would be realized an infinite number of times.

                And since between every combination and its recurrence

                all other possible combinations would have to take

                place, and each of these combinations conditions the

                entire sequence combinations in the same series, a

                circular movement of absolutely identical series is thus

                demonstrated : the world as a circular movement that has

                already repeated itself infinitely often and it plays

                its game ad infinitum.



        Secondly, to Reichenbach, for a somewhat clearer explaination

from his book "The Direction of Time" :



                When we shuffle a deck of cards just after putting all

                the red cards on top of the black ones, we shall

                transform this ordered state into a mixture; but if we

                shuffle long enough, we must by pure chance come back to

                the original state, because the probability of arriving

                at such an arrangement is larger than zero.



        Finally, my own explanation, which I have formulated from the

two above. Suppose you were to take a handful of 20 standard 6-sided

dice and begin tossing them. Suppose as well that you were going to toss

these dice until ten of the twenty came up sixes. It is not difficult to

imagine that, given enough throws, this would eventually occur. Now

suppose we increased the number of sixes to twenty, that is, to all the

dice coming up sixes. Again, it is not very difficult to imagine that

given enough tosses, we would eventually get our desired result. In

fact, we can easily see that even if we made a hundred dice, or a

thousand, or any number one cared to posit, and wanted them to come up

all sixes, the number of tosses needed to reach our goal would get

larger, but given enough tosses we would eventually reach our goal. We

can also see that if you were to toss these dice forever, whatever

combination you desired would come up an infinite number of times.

        Now extend this simple events to cover all events. As I have

stated, all events can be assigned a probabilty, even though we may not

know exactly what that probability is. That is, for any given event

there is a certain chance that it will happen. As with the dice, we can

see that, given an infinite number of chances for this event to occur,

the event will occur. We can also see that this event, like the

combination on the dice, will occur an infinite number of times, and

indeed that from any fixed point in time, the event will have occurred

an infinite number of times before that point, and will occur

an infinite number of times after that point.

        As we examine this line of argument, one basic assumption

immedaitely comes to mind : the infinite nature of time, in other words,

time's eternality. This line of argument only holds together if we posit

a view of time which has no beginning, and, more importantly from the

point of view of this paper's aim, no ending. This conforms with our

common-sense view of time, but let us examine the idea further,

specifically through a brief overview of some of the ideas of time which

are not eternal. These ideas can be broken down into two main categories

: creationist ideas and scientific ideas.

        The creationist view of time is that, at one point, the universe

was created and time was put in motion by an entity or group of entities.

Putting aside any religious objections to this idea, we are still left

with a very puzzling state of affairs. For if there was no universe and

no time before this event, then how is it that we know it occurred? Our

entire notion of the way things happen in the universe is just that :

that they occur IN the universe. In fact, the very defintion of universe

is that which includes everything. If we then posit another universe

(another place where things can occur) from which the creationistic

force came from, then we have also created time in which these things

can happen. But perhaps in this other universe, there is no time, unlike

our own universe. In this case, it can be said that the impetus which

created this universe is always occurring or never occurring, and both

would be equaly true. We will disregard the notion that it never

happened, because here we are. But if the creationistic impulse is

always occurring, then it follows that we either have an infinite number

of universes, or one infinitely renewing universe.

        But what of the creationist idea of an end, in which the universe is

destroyed by an entity or entities? To be fair, most organized religions

do not have an actual end to time in their cosmologies, merely a

cessation of wordly activity (the 'end of life as we know it'). Even the

Norse, with their idea of Ragnarok, include in it the rebirth of

everything and the beginning of the cycle again.

        But what of the scientific view? In this view, the most accepted

view of the origins of the universe is that of the Big Bang, in which

the universe began as an explosion from an almost infinitely small point

of proto-matter. There has been much written about this theory, and many

complex and mathmatical proofs for its validity, which are far out of the

scope of this paper and ergo wil not be discussed herein. But if we

accept this theory, this still does not lead to this event being the

beginning of time, merely the beginning of the universe in its present

configuration. To illustrate what I am getting at : there are two basic

posibilities explain where this origin point came from. It either

existed for an infinite amount of time before the event, which a) brings

us to eternal time and b) begs the question as to what caused the event,

or it was the end result of some other process, which also results in

eternal time being proved.

        Speaking of the processes which could result in this

proto-matter point, we have the scientific theories of the end of the

universe, also sometimes stated as showing the end of time and also,

upon reflection, resulting in not the end of time but merely an end of

the universe as we know it. There are two main views : that the

explosion which resulted in the universe will continue, with things

getting further and further apart until they are so far apart that

nothing has any effect on anything else any more. This is most certainly

the end of all things as we know it, but it does not entail the end of

time at all. The other main view is that the explosion which caused the

universe will eventually reverse, with things collapsing back into the

tiny point from whence they came. This would also be the end of things

as we know it, and also does not imply the end of time. Also, this view

leaves things open for the origin event to recur.

        So after a brief overview of the main types of temporal

cosmology, we can safely conclude that there is no serious disproof of

the eternality of time. In fact, it seems like it is impossible to

conceive of time beginning or ending without hosts of impossibilities

rearing their ugly heads.

        Having placed the eternality of time on reasonably safe ground,

the rest of the argument chain for eternal recurrence becomes logically

inescapable. Given enough time, the circumstances causing a certain

event to occur will recur.

        Now we can begin to deal with the implications of eternal

recurrence, first examining Nietzsche's main conclusion then going on to

show where he was mistaken, and to try to cast light on the true

implications of eternal recurrence, if any.

        Nietzsche's main conclusion concerning eternal recurrence is

that, because every action, every experience one has will be repeated

throughout eternity, one should make very certain that every moment is

as full as it possibly can be. In other words, if you're going to do

everything over and over, make it worth repeating.

        First of all, this implies free will. It assumes that we have

control over our lives and can influence how worthy of repetition our

lives will be. In and of itself, this is not a problem, for it is an

ethical conclusion and ethics, being the philosophy of human action,

cannot be deterministic. For if all things are predetermined, what is the

point of ethics? From the point of view of a of a student of Nietzsche,

it is somewhat problematic, because in other works he is quite firmly

mechanistic and deterministic. And this leads into the biggest problem,

in that in his version of eternal recurrence, there cannot be free will,

because you are destined to do what you have done before. Indeed, his

idea of eternal recurrence (as evidenced by the conclusion in question)

implies that there is only one possible version of events, one 'story',

so to speak, which happens again and again. And this brings us to the

first serious flaw in Nietzsche's thinking, for as I will now show,

there is actually a plethora of 'stories'.

        Let us return to our handful of twenty dice. Suppose we are once

again trying to get twenty sixes. It is also evident that not only will

we eventually get our desired twenty sixes, we will also get nineteen

sixes, that is, a situation identical to the one we are looking for

except for the difference of one single die.

        Now we once again extend this to all events. Now we can see

that, for any event we wish to consider, not only is it certain that

this event will recur, there will also be a situation identical in every

aspect to the event in question save for one detail, one act of chance

that went a different way. In effect, for every event which occurs, we

can imagine a situation identical in every way except for the fact that

the event in question didn't happen.

        What does this imply for Nietszche's moral consequence of

eternal recurrence? Nietsche's conclusion hinges on the fact that we

will repeat the exact same actions and expereinces over and over again,

which is true. But what it does not consider that for every decision we

make, for every action we take, for every experience we have, there will

be a recurring version of ourselves which will not make that decision,

will not take that action, will not have that experience. Therefore what

difference should it make to me whether each experience is as full as it

could be (from the eternal recurrence perspective) as there will be

another version of me which won't do it anyway. So regardless of how

worthy-of-repetition I make my life, there will be a version of myself

who did little or none of the things I did. In fact, because presumably

the number of acts which make one's life worthy of repetition is quite

high, the number of versions of yourself that did not have so

worthy-of-repition a life will vastly outnumber the ones that had the

identical , very worthy life. Thus, the idea of eternal recurrence is

rendered morally insignifigant.

        This hints at the second major area of difficultly with

Nietzsche's position, and indeed analysis of the moral signifigance of

eternal recurrence in general, and that is the are of identity. To put

it simply, do we really care what happens to other versions of

ourselves? Do we consider them to be us? Should their lives have any kind

of moral implications for our lives? I do not pretend that it is within

the scope of this paper or this author to solve these problems in any

kind of a final sense. But I will embark upon an examination of the

problem, and we will see what we come up with.

        Firstly, are these other 'versions' really me? Perhaps the ones

who are identical in every way can be said definately be me. Their only

difference would be their position in absolute time. If we accept this

view, then it would in the strictest sense validate Neitzsche's view,

for the only 'versions' we would be considering to be us would be the

ones who were identical to us. But it seems to go against our common-sense

idea that not absultely everything about us is essential to our identity.

If asked, "Would you still be the same person if you'd had a small mole on

the back of your thigh?" (assuming that we don't) we would invariably say

"Yes". So there seems to be some ambiguity concerning what details of one's

person are essential to one's identity, and which are not.

        Secondly, there is the consideration of whether or not one

should be concerned about other versions of oneself. Certainly, from a

humanitarian point of view, even if you do not consider these other

versions to be you at all, you do have (in a sense) a profound effect on

their lives, so you should be good to yourself and good to them. In a

sense, you could say you owe it to yourself. On the other hand, if you

do consider them to be 'you' in every sense of the world (or only some

of them), then you might conclude that you can take care of yourself and

that you shouldn't worry about you. All in all, a question filled with

paradoxes from which there is little hope of escape.

        But the most difficult problem associated with this analysis,

and one which I have touched on previously in this paper, is the problem

of the implications of both Nietzsche's version of eternal recurrence

and my own on the question of free will. As already demonstrated,

Nietzsche's version is incompatible with free will. But what of my own

version? Can there be free will in a situation where every possibility

was and will be chosen?

        In order to answer this question, we have to first decide

whether or not free will is a personal matter or not, in other words, is

free will tied to identity? This question may seem unrelated at first,

but allow me to illustrate : would the argument for eliminating free

will under my version of eternal recurrence have as its foundation a

connection between my current self and all the other 'versions'? In

order to say that we are not free because we will always choose all

things, do all things, etc., are we not assuming that there is come link

between myself and my 'versions' which limits my actions? The answer is

a resounding yes, that is the assumption, and thus we can conclude that

it is quite possible that each individual identity has free will,

totally unimpinged by the possibilities that have been fulfilled and

will be fulfilled by the other 'versions'. For by what mechanism does

the fact that these 'versions' exist influence my freedom?

        To conclude this paper and this topic, I will reiterate the main

points established in this work. Firstly, that eternal recurrence is

logically verifiable due to the irrefutability of the eternality of

time. Secondly, that Nietzsche's conclusion of how to live one's life in

light of eternal recurrence missed a vital aspect of eternal recurrence,

namely that not only will the exact same situations recur, but ones

which only have a small degree of difference and which can thus be

considered the same situation but with one thing changed. And lastly, we

have concluded that the concept of eternal recurrence with this vital

aspect added does not in any way eliminate the possibility of free will,

although it does not establish it firmly either.



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