Wizard22 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2024 3:25 amEternal Recurrence cannot be 'known' or 'experienced' as such, without differentiation and memories. You cannot 'know' that you're repeating the same existence,
Well, to know and to experience are two different things. It's why I referred to knowledge as justified true belief. You may believe in eternal recurrence without being justified in your belief, while at the same time it may still be true. So then you do experience it without knowing it. In fact, your experience would be the same if it was
not true (and even if it was justified true belief).
" 'Postulation.' The word invokes those most famous postulations of modern philosophy, Kant's moral postulates of God, freedom and immortality, those famous antinomies of nature that somehow, somewhere, inexplicably but necessarily, we hope, transcend nature and guarantee our unnatural morals. The postulation of the complementary man does not differ in being a postulate—'no one
knows that,' says Life when Zarathustra whispers in her ear his passionate affirmation of her, the affirmation of eternal return (
Z 3 15, 'The Other Dancing Song')." (Lampert,
Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, page 108.)
whether it's morally good or morally evil. You would not be able to account for suffering or happiness, contentedness or not, without a comparison (to what is not repeated). Thus there is a limit to each Iteration of The Same. There is a hypothetical, Objective Standard. Nietzsche took ER directly from Hindu Reincarnation and Karmic moral existence of soul/spirit.
[…]
The greater philosophical point, though, is how these Iterations of The Same either form and coalesce, or are broken apart. Whether you wish to fall into one, or escape from one. In the Hindu perspective, 'Enlightenment' is a matter of transcending these Iterations. Hence, breaking the repetitions. How does this occur? By "Learning". By overcoming the past. By creating something "New". This is no easy task, though. Which is why the OP and the Nietzschean cult struggles onward, without Learning their mistakes.
Nietzsche did not take ER from Hinduism. Hinduism has no true eternal recurrence, only historical recurrence. In the Nietzschean ER, it's not possible to break the repetitions. In Hinduism, it's possible precisely because they aren't really repetitions, but "rhymings", to use a distinction usually attributed to Mark Twain.
"While Nietzsche's turn from the autonomous herd to the new philosophers is in perfect agreement with his doctrine of the will to power, it seems to be irreconcilable with his doctrine of eternal return: how indeed can the demand for something absolutely new, this intransigent farewell to the whole past, to all 'history' be reconciled with the unbounded Yes to everything that was and is? […] Hitherto suffering and inequality have been taken for granted, as 'given,' as imposed on man. Henceforth, they must be willed." (Strauss, "Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's
Beyond Good and Evil.)
What distinguishes the new philosophers is that they don't take suffering and inequality as "given", but will their recurrence.
This thread takes the position of hoping to attain Eternal Recurrence as a moral, spiritual Ideal. But this is from the perspective of the outside-looking-in, rather than the in-looking-outside. So can you imagine being 'stuck' in such a loop? For most, its reality would be horrifying, for the reason I already stated in response.
Are you sure you've understood my OP? It makes no difference whether one is stuck in a loop or in a universe whose beginning is a Big Bang and whose ending is a Big Chill (the beginning that never began and the ending that never ends, as I've called them). And yes, I "know" what that's like...
The ER is simply, as George A. Morgan quotes him, Nietzsche's "completion of fatalism":
"[F]ate is not something external that compels us against our wills; it partly acts through our willing, and therefore gives no reason for resignation or passivity. What we do is part of the process". (Morgan,
What Nietzsche Means, page 305.)
Your soul/spirit will be gone
forever with your physical death, before the end of this century surely. And until then, this will be your lot:
" 'Are not all "values" lures that draw out the comedy without bringing it closer to a solution?' Duration 'in vain,' without end or aim, is the most paralyzing idea, particularly when one understands that one is being fooled and yet lacks the power not to be fooled." (Nietzsche,
The Will to Power, section 55.)
All your "values", all that you desire and all that makes you angry, is just fool's gold and fool's lead!