Brandon Robshaw
This is not unlike the argument that revolves around free will. If you have free will then you can pat yourself on the back for all of your great accomplishments. But if you don't have free will then you cannot really be blamed at all for your great failures. Live a rewarding life and it's all about you bringing it about. Live a disappointing life and it couldn't be helped.The point of the thought experiment is a sort of test of one’s relationship with one’s life. Do you celebrate being alive; do you savour every moment, even the most painful or challenging ones? If so the demon’s words will be wonderful news: you will be able to savour it all over, again and again, forever and ever and ever. If, on the other hand, your response is to feel absolutely horrified, that strongly suggests that you are not making the most of your time here.
But then the posthumous "I". Assuming free will [of course], if the ever-recurring life is a collection of your greatest hits you took the Übermensch route on this side of the grave. If, however, it's an ever-recurring collection of toilet flushes...?
Besides, to the best of our knowledge, it really is just a "thought experiment", isn't it?
Of course, most religions offer two alternatives as well: Heaven or Hell. But what stays the same is that either one or the other depends entirely on the behaviors you choose on this side of grave. So, one way or another, narratives are found to connect the dots between the here and the there, between the now and the then.Nietzsche offers only these two alternatives: horror or delight. It is clear that he recommends the delighted reaction. This ties in with his idea of amor fati, love of one’s fate.
And, chances are, you have one yourself.
And it's not for nothing that some choose suicide precisely in order that the result is oblivion. To obliterate once and for all consciousness itself. Back to the blank eternity before you were ever born.In Section 276 of The Joyous Science he puts it thus: “I want to come to regard everything necessary as beautiful – so that I will become one of those who makes everything beautiful. Amor fati: from now on, let that be my love!” But there are other possible responses. A third response which Nietzsche did not consider would be to feel neither elated nor horrified at the idea, but indifferent. After all, however many times one lives this life, each time always feels like the first and only time. No memories are carried over from one incarnation to the next, so what difference would it make, anyway?
That then becomes the only source of comfort for some.