Towards the end of class on Tuesday, we talked about Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence of the same. The common consensus seemed to be that many people would not be in favor of this happening. I know that for me personally I would not want this. Most people, probably everyone, have things in their lives that they do not wish to go through again. Everyone has regrets that instead of re-living them, would prefer to keep them in the past and hopefully learn from them.
However, I think Nietzsche’s idea is a very interesting one and makes us think about the way we choose to live our lives. Ideally, it’d be nice to think that everything happens for a reason and the heartache we experience is for a purpose that at some point we will discover. But, since we all live in the real world, we have all experienced the frustration and sadness and hurt of a bad occurrence that there doesn’t seem to be a logical explanation for. We’re supposed to live life to the fullest and have no regrets but if we really did live according to these guidelines, then shouldn’t the idea of eternal recurrence of the same not be so daunting?
We touched a little bit on the idea of free will in relation to this theory. In class we decided that free will allows a person to avoid responsibility by saying things could be different. Since we all value our free will and have all thought to ourselves that next time will be better or that it was just one of those situations that was out of our hands how popular can the idea of eternal recurrence of the same be? How relevant is this idea in our lives? Does it force us to re-examine some of the decisions we’ve made? Does it push us to try and better our lives from this point forward so we can be closer to a live that we wouldn’t mind living over? Does it make us realize that as much as we try to hold onto control, some factors really aren’t in our realm of control? Or am I just reading too much into the possible implications of presenting this theory?
I agree that the idea of eternal recurrence of the same is very daunting, but like Dr. Johnson said, we are unaware that this is happening. So for all we know, this could be our second or third time reliving our lives. If this idea of Nietzsche it true though, what is the point of it if we don't actually know what is going on? Is it to inspire us to live a full life full of no regrets? But what about people who live in uncontrollable, bad situations--like the homeless? I don't think they would want to relive this life, but then again they wouldn't know it was reoccurring. I suppose I am a bit confused as to the purpose of this theory and maybe I also am reading too much into the implications...
ReplyDeleteI have several somewhat disjointed thoughts about this, so my comment might be a little off topic.
ReplyDeleteIn some weird way, the eternal recurrence of the same reminds me of Kant's categorical imperative. In deciding whether or not to say "yes" to repeating life, one would basically ask the question "could I will that a human go through everything I have done/experienced?" To me this sounds like the categorical imperative. Since the person will not realize that he is experiencing this eternal recurrence, there aren't really any other factors that can be considered. I suppose that the question can be esentially broken down to say "do the good things of my life make it worth it to put up with the bad things?"
Here's another thing that has bothered me. Oneself in a future life will experience life in exactly the same way as they experience it now, and will have no awareness that they are stuck in an infinite loop. Since all the repeated lives are identical, wouldn't saying "no" to future lives also be saying no to the current life? And if someone is saying "no" to the current life, aren't they basically suicidal?
I really enjoyed our discussion in class about that topic and so, I'm really happy that you posted something about it.
ReplyDeleteYou asked, how relevant the idea of recurrence is for our lives. Personally, I really believe that it is totally irrelevant, because even if we would live our lives for the 4318th time, we would not know about it, because it would still feel like the first time. If it felt not exactly the same, it would not be the same live, so it is part of the logic that we won't know about it. Nevertheless, I appreciate that thought, but it remains an unsolvable question :)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletefirst off I want to say "hahahahahaha" Mills that was really funny. I never thought of it that way, but i guess in a weird way you are right. If I were to say no to re-living my life, and I am living it for the umpteenth time, then I am basically saying that I wish I were not alive right now hahahahaha. very interesting.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, all of you guys said exactly what i was thinking, and I wanted to add something else, which is .... in this theory your answer doesn't even matter all that much, because if it were that our life was to repeat, then whether you answer yes or no does not matter, because it will repeat anyways.
But I do not think that Nietzsche in using this example is really insinuating that life repeats endlessly, I think Esha you are correct in your assumption that he is just asking us that, so as to entice us to live life in a way that we WOULD WANT to live it all over again if we could.