Eternal Recurrence

>>8602952
>Play it again, sam.
>Ok, but FYI you should have enjoyed it as much as possible the first time, you slut.

Time and space are both infinite, given enough time, anything that can happen will happen, and any change, whether progress or degeneration is only a temporary flux. Even your own death is only a temporary change. Wait long enough and somebody indistinguishable from you will be born, and experience the same things.

Because of this you should man up and stop complaining. All the things you hate will happen an infinite amount of times, If you can't live with them, then that's a weakness on your part. Hoping that they change is an improper response because in the grand scheme of things, nothing changes.

Or something like that. If I'm wrong I'd appreciate a better explanation.

>>8602965
Where did it came from?

Act as if one would have to repeat every action for eternity.

>>8602968
It's in Plato IIRC, can't remember which dialogue.

Nietzsche is basically a synthesis of Greek philosophy and German romanticism.

>>8602965
No, that's not it at all.

The idea is simple: live your life as if you would have to relive it exactly the same way forevermore.

>>8602968
Greco-Roman Pagan conception of time was circular, like the Hindu conception. Time as linear was introduced with Christianity.

>>8602971
The Hindus also had a similar worldview.

Really it only seems strange to people who were brought up on abrahamic religions.

Call be a Fedora or an Edgelord, but the idea of the universe having a fixed creation and a fixed ending where all souls are permanently stored in heaven/hell is asinine at best. What's the point of creating a single finite universe between two infinities? What could an individual soul do in a finite lifetime to deserve an infinity of punishment or reward. Cyclical cosmologies make more sense scientifically, theologically, and philosophically.

>>8602977
How is that any different from what I said?

>>8602965
There are an infinite number of numbers between 1 and 2, and none of them are 3. Infinitude does not imply plenitude. I hate the meme that says otherwise. Your first claim is false.

The rest is worse. Nietzsche's project is not only anti-pessimistic and anti-nihilistic, but fundamentally and radically affirmative. If you can affirm the eternal recurrence of not just your own life but all existence, you will have affirmed your life and existence in the most total way possible. The difficulty of being able to do this what makes the prospect unbearably heavy/grave.

>>8602981
>How is that any different from what I said?
You turned it into some cosmic theory, as opposed to a simple thought experiment to test whether or not you are leading a life-affirming existence.

>>8602979
Greco-Roman pagans both had canonical creation stories, and both held generally to an eternalist conception after creation.The philosophers who rejected creation tended to be eternalists in both directions. Where did you get the idea that they had a circular conception of time? That shows up somewhat in Empedocles and explicitly in the Stoics, but those are hardly archetypes of their culture.

>>8602991
Greeks, unlike Christians, saw their gods as within the universe, not exterior to it. There is no creation account in that sense, unless you being the ordering of chaos which the gods don't do, but exist by.

Greek personification of Aeon ("eternity," as opposed to Cronus who is just "time" in general), is circular.

>>8602988
And it can't be both? Why are so many Nietzsche scholars so adverse to a literal reading of the Eternal Return? Especially considering that in a practical sense, if you are living a life affirming existence, it won't matter if it's real or not.

>>8602982
I understand the difference between infinitely divisible and infinitely vast, but I'm pretty sure I was explicitly talking about the second kind.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return#Modern_cosmology

>Cosmologists such as professor Alexander Vilenkin from Tufts University[19] and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Max Tegmark suggest that if space is sufficiently large and uniform, or infinite as some theories suggest, and if quantum theory is true such that there is only a finite number of configurations within a finite volume possible, due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, then identical instances of the history of Earth's entire Hubble volume occur every so often, simply by chance. Tegmark calculates that our nearest so-called doppelgänger, is 10^10^115 meters away from us (a double exponential function larger than a googolplex).[20][21][22] In principle, it would be impossible to scientifically verify an identical Hubble volume. However, it does follow as a fairly straightforward consequence from otherwise unrelated scientific observations and theories.

>>8603006
>Why are so many Nietzsche scholars so adverse to a literal reading of the Eternal Return?
Because Nietzsche doesn't give any argument from which to assert that. If you make a claim that bold, you better be able to back it up, or else you're preaching religion, not philosophy.

The point is "what if" not "what is".

>>8603011
I suppose that's fair enough if you want to argue that Nietzsche never intended it to preach an actual cosmology. But as far as religions go, it's still more consistent than the linear view of time exposed by the abrahamic faiths.

>>8603015
Uh, why?

>People still having heated debates over this concept when it is entirely metaphorical

If you imagine your life as something that you are damned to, eternally and without choice, and you really fully realise the extent of that concept, it's supposed to be fucking terrifying. It's a kind of inescapable hell. Unless, that is, you are living one of those rare moments that makes you feel like you would actually say "woo please make this last forever!"

Those moments are rare and usually accidental in our society. But a truly life-affirming mind, a healthy mind, would reflexively experience all of life that way, because life for that kind of person would be a work, and an embrace of their own fate. Life wouldn't be a burden, something that might be "tolerable in small doses" (the small dose being a lifetime or so) but that you wouldn't want to be bound to.

The normal way of looking at life, supposedly the sickly way, is to view it as a thing we endure, usually while hoping for something better at the end or on the other side. This causes tricks of perception that make you squander your live and refuse to live it. A truly life-affirming person would be fully alive and wouldn't need an afterlife, or for life to end. Even despite all life's pains and hardships.

Think of it like an animal. If you made an animal immortal, it would basically just do its thing forever. It wouldn't hit 437 years old and go "I'm tired of hunting and eating and sleeping. This is old." It would affirm its existence every day forever. Humans might have some edifferent activities, like value-creation and art and culture and shit, but those are just our hunting and eating and sleeping. Wouldn't a spiritually healthy human affirm a good life lived eternally?

Probably still no, if you want to stretch the metaphor too far and take it too literally. But it's a neat idea. Why aren't you living this year like a year worthy of being lived forever? Do you really want to live "2016: Year of depression, failed goals, self-loathing, and jerking off" until the end of time?

>>8603051

>If you imagine your life as something that you are damned to, eternally and without choice, and you really fully realise the extent of that concept, it's supposed to be fucking terrifying. It's a kind of inescapable hell. Unless, that is, you are living one of those rare moments that makes you feel like you would actually say "woo please make this last forever!"
>damned

The fact that you're wording it like this, proves you didn't understand the concept.

The idea is that, a demon for example, tells you that you will your life exactly as it is, was and will be, over and over - do you praise the demon for revealing this 'fact' to you, or damn him?

Evidently you think the latter, but the idea of living your live repeatedly is not necessarily something to which one is 'condemned'.

>>8602952
time is a flat circle

>>8603057
I think the word "damned" just caused a misunderstanding.

My point was that you are "damned" in the sense of "sentenced" or "allotted," or "cast into" being alive, that is in the existentialist sense of not choosing to have to live a life or make choices, but being compelled by factors outside your control. In this case, you're compelled to eternal life, eternal awareness, which is a pretty big thing to foist on a self-aware creature that by definition couldn't have asked for it.

It only takes on a negative connotation of actual damnation from the "sick" viewpoint that life is something to be endured, or even that it's a form of privation from God.

>>8602952
it's basically the YOLO for edgy pseuds who will never actually do anything but fuck it feels good to write paragraph after paragraph about how one should YOLO.

>>8602952
>Can someone explain to me what he meant by Eternal Recurrence?
Why would you ask this on /lit/?

Google it you fucking idiot. How stupid can someone be?

>>8603079
earth is a flat circle

>>8602981
Completely agree desu.

>>8602952
nehamas has an interesting account on it. its up on youtube. link: https://youtu.be/If7AOwJLlR0

>>8602952
It is:

1. A thought experiment to tell you whether you are living your life correctly or not.

2. A cosmic model that the Overman desires. Its truth is irrelevant - what is important is the desiring.

3. A cosmic model that the Overman ends up creating as reality, through the manipulation and arrangement of world elements via philosophizing.

>>8604744
So in other words all the people who argue that it's not meant to be taken literally are untermenschen?

>>8602952

Time is a flan Slurpee

>>8604757
The ubermensch is an unattainable metaphysical ideal. We're all untermenschen.

I live my life moment to moment and always will regardless of eternal reccurance. Even if it were to be true or if I were to live my life as if it were true what would it fucking matter?

It's a Sam Harris-tier thought experiment

>>8602965
this is beautiful. thank you.

>>8604757
Yes.

>>8603572
you're mom is a fat surcle

>>8603003
>Kronos is time

Goddamn it, for the last time, they just sound similar, there is no etymological connection. CHRONOS, with a cheta, not with a kappa, is time/the god of time.

Read the first few pages of The Unbearable Lightness of Being

>>8604873
good observation neechee was definitely the sam harris of his time except hopefully he won't be worshipped by morons in the future too.

>>8602952
He doesn't believe your life endlessly repeats but if you aren't comfortable reliving your life endlessly than you aren't conducting yourself and your life situation correctly.

I've always interpreted it as a thought experiment that nietzsche proposed to hopefully end nihilism. What if your life would continue to repeat infinitely and never change? I guess that's an interesting thought that'll get at least a few people off their asses and start taking control of their life. But I don't think Nietzsche actually believed something like that happens because he was too intelligent to believe in something so factually and logically inconsistent, and because I think that he would have seen the resemblance between him and any christian if he believed in something like the eternal recurrence.

its a meme
and its true
all there is to life is memes
do acid op