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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