Description
Eternal return is a concept shrouded in mystery, and with it Nietzsche has confounded many philosophers: to imagine that everything will one day be repeated as we once lived it, and that this very repetition will be repeated endlessly! What does this insane myth mean?
The myth of eternal return affirms, negatively, that a life that disappears permanently, that which never returns, is like a shadow, weightless, and already dead. However terrible, beautiful, or wonderful this life may be, this horror, this beauty, and this magnificence mean nothing. They are as insignificant as a war that took place in the fourteenth century between two African kingdoms, which changed nothing in the face of history, even though three hundred thousand Negroes perished in it in indescribable suffering. Would anything have changed if this war between the two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century had been repeated countless times in the race of eternal return?
Let us say that the idea of eternal return defines a horizon in which things do not appear as we know them: they appear to us without the mitigating circumstances of their contingency. These mitigating circumstances, in fact, prevent us from making a specific judgment. Is it possible to condemn what is fleeting? The orange clouds of sunset give everything a nostalgic glow, even the guillotine.
In a world of eternal return, every movement carries the weight of an unbearable responsibility. This is what led Nietzsche to say, “The idea of eternal return is the heaviest burden.”
If eternal return is the heaviest burden, then our lives can appear on this background canvas in all their wonderful lightness.
But is heaviness really so terrible? And is lightness beautiful?
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