The shadow of the wager falls hard upon this video, but as with all things we discuss here, it ought to be an invitation to explore further! Thanks for the kind words.
Absolutely ridiculous how I became obsessed with this quote a few days ago, wrote it down and now you are making a video about it! Amazing, much love from Germany!
Deleuze gives a very different interpretation, of which I'm sure you know. I remember his claim that 'return is the being of becoming'; in other words, becoming exists as an eternal return. It is in the nature of beings to eternally become something else. As such, he argues against 'the eternal return of the same', and in favour of 'the eternal return of the different'. Do you think Nietzsche would claim that Deleuze misunderstood him? Do you think Deleuze is unable to bear this existence, so he finds consolation in an imaginary 'ever-changing' and 'eternally novel' world? Thanks for the fascinating video.
I think Deluze made an understandable mistake in his interpretation of the eternal return. Each time you repeat your life would hold all the same value of the first. Just as the physical circumstances repeat, so do the philosophical circumstances. In other words, the novelty that Deluze seeks is present in each repeated lifetime, as if the novelty weren't present then the repeated lifetime would be different than the first, violating the given circumstances of the eternal return. This is paradoxical, but philosophical thought experiments are allowed to be. Deluze was probably thinking about it in a way that was too logical, when really it's a question of values and desire Fair disclaimer, I'm not very familiar with Deluze, so everything I just said could be wrong
I’ve been binge watching your content lately, I’m truly grateful for another dissection of Nietzsche. This concept of eternal return has been playing on my head as of lately especially, such good timing.
It's Nietzsche's "Yes-Sayer" existential challenge: do you affirm life, or nullify it? It's about the courage to accept life, and nature, as it is, thus accepting oneself as they are.
To me it's all about consciousness, the level of awareness and self awareness i was able gain, the one unique outlook on life through my eyes that all the factors of my existence have chiseled out of the initial potential. I would not want to be someone else and be it over and over again. And there has definitely not been much "balance" in my life, i've been to hell and back just to realize that what doesn't kill you does only make you weirder and harder to relate to for other people. So be it, i wouldn't trade for the prize to not be me
Great work man. I’ve been lurking for the past several years, but I think that these shorter form videos might be the most important, because there’s so much Nietzscheslop, Jordan Peterson, etc content out there. Keep it up!
I love your channel!!!! Best ever!!!! I was learning philosophy chronologically, I stopped at Hagel, and then one day I found your channel, I was afraid of Nietzche since everyone said he was a "sadist", however, your video on "Return to Nature" spoke deeply to me. You said, read the books. I bought them, and I truly feel like my life began again.
Great Video interesting perspective I really appreciate how you connected it with Pascal's wager to deepen the understanding. Truly makes you reflect on how you live your own life and how it relates to the relationship to your nature and character and that reveals how we relate to our own existence, and whether we embrace it fully, with all its repetitions, joys, and sorrows.
"To recapitulate" lol yea that Pascal passage was like wading through a dense jungle. Not as nimble as Nietzsche! And I really appreciate your presentation here. Kind of funny how Pascal talked about how reason wouldn't work here and then goes on to talk about things probabilistically. I much prefer Nietzsche's Dare to Pascal's Wager. (And Easy Rider is such a badass film!)
Have you ever heard of Anthony Peakes Cheating the Ferryman hypothesis? He thinks deja vu and precognition are signs of us reliving our lives. Also , Rush are my favourite band. Seen them play their only ever Irish gig.
Good post. Over the past week, I've asked myself the same question: what did Nietzsche expect from "the eternal recurrence"? And indeed, it has far more impact as a thought experiment, as a sort of flipside of Pascal's wager to determine "noble taste", than as "the most scientific hypothesis" which Nietzsche unfortunately also wanted it to be. The problem is that scientific hypotheses and theories are often 'overruled' by more performant insights. And that's exactly what happened with the 19th century assumptions on a finite universe (as well as with Lamarckian evolution theories on which the notion of the Will to Power was based). Just like their political counterparts, scientific revolutions tend to eat their children. Calling upon reason, either in the form of a safe wager or as a logically solid doctrine, can be a hazardous move... it may create the false impression that an old text only needs to be read to give it proper burial rights.
The eternal return is an odd passage to read because it is a passage that I never ponder upon nor do I feel enlightened by Nietzsche’s vision. When I read this passage, as well as Pascal wager’s, I just read it, and nothing really happens. Perhaps those thoughts are the type of thoughts that creeps slowly to you, until you have to choose between Pascal and Nietzsche wager some day or at some dark lonesome night.
Good video, crazy coincidence how I spoke about this in my New Year Variety Show as well; many people are considering eternal recurrence during New Year time hehe
Thank you for the Beautiful read, interpretation and teaching. I just started reading Milan Kundera’s novel “The unbearable Lightness of Being” and its main muse, right on the first page, is this exact argument by Nietzsche! The weight of Eternity, eternal life. I am curious to hear your perspective on this topic in the age of AI, Human Cloning and record/download of one’s memory in his next resurrection?! Cheers!
Great video. It's always interesting to consider the potential metaphysics underlying Nietzsche; ironic since he says he is always against such things, and yet many of his concepts bear the potential fruit of it. Particularly with his concepts of the Will to Power mirroring that of the Dao and Logos. Would also be interesting to see a more Nietzschean perspective on more modern physics, particularly with the quantum world as many men such as Schrodinger made many metaphysical comments concerning it.
Pascal never noticed why Reason is inconclusive about the existence of "God." He didn't notice that even he can't state what a "God" is, without begging the question.
I only just had the thought today that I felt the same way about Nietzsches return as pascal did to Christianity. That the future of humanity and fate is a wager. And whatever wager we pick decides the fate of each individual. Those who wager to live this life over and over, or those who wager an afterlife.
This is a possible argument for eternal return. If this is the only sequence of events, then why has this happened and not another sequence of events? If this is the only state of affairs, then why this state of affairs instead of another one? To me, it seems like that existence makes only sense if every metaphysically possible scenario is realized.
Thanks man, I don't find it difficult to understand this expression from Nietzsche. I may not 'get it' but I don't play the same thought games. By language, it is not.a viable thing. Eternal, a perpetual experience/expression. Return is where problems then arise. Returning in full awareness is a whole new horizon of possibilities about "what" is eternally returning, what remains consistent. This interpretation emphasises the eternal part of the recurrence. Without memory we can only immortalise the eternal and catch glimpses of it that stir something. Being here to repeat the same experience takes on an esoteric sense of time here. If my spirit sees the world I saw 1970 - there must be a different mind connecting the dots in 2225. The loop of 'return' must fit in a greater concentric, or linear procession of a changing world. Yes, good idea, to connect your understanding through Pascal's wager. It is only as you were speaking, it sparked some sense of tackling it this way myself. Good analysis and artistic take on his conundrum.
*Reflection is both key and lock.* Unfortunately, very few can master this unbelievably complex technique. 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ "Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In time, all points converge; hope's strength resteeled. But to earn final peace at the universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again." 🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨ --Diamond Dragons (series)
5:52 Ah, but what is this "real world"? Could it be that for Nietzsche an idea being true means something different than for most people? What if all ideas are just "thought experiments" and there is no "real world"?
Yes, the Eternal Return as an affirmation of this existence, worts and all. But i wonder (climbing out on a limb) if there is still an incorporeal dimension to the Eternal Return, the indefinite article, the infinitive (eternal) verb, what perhaps Deleuze characterized as a paradoxical intermingling of the finite and infinite at the site of the Event, what Jeffery Bell is referring to as making sense of life...
when I studied Pascal & his Wager along w/ Nietzsche & his Eternal Recurrence decades ago, my first take was "these guys seem to be making a lot of implicit assumptions". I accepted that as typical of decent philosophers. my second take was that they both expressed the aspect of dualism that they were critiquing, or resolving. I assessed that as the urge of great philosophers of their times & type for synthesis. my semi-final take was that it made no difference whether god existed or not... that contemplation or resolution of the question did not ultimately impinge upon human nature, behavior or creative thought (as far as I could tell from study of history). my interests then & now included quantum physics & cosmology... the study of which tended to point towards ongoing uncertainty - & that certainty in those fields would also not impinge upon human nature, etc. the upshot pragmatic (working) theory I've derived is "in a nearly infinite universe, almost everything is real & true & happens, eventually, somewhere".
Very well done, Keegan. You are getting closer and closer. The distance is growing with every complacency on your part, though! The “infinite novelty” of Simmel’s “eternally expanding” universe poses certain issues, for example. Think them through. Don’t content yourself with stopping. Keep going! Supposing that the world, as a whole, is expanding, what should it expand into? Nothing? Everything? But if it is expanding into an Everything, is this Everything, itself, expanding? And, if so, into what? Another Everything? Nothing? How could nothing be expanded into when the notion of expansion presupposes a space to expand into and contract out of? Is space, itself, nothing? Is there “emptiness” between “objects?” Or is space force through and through, and each “object” more a transience than a “rigid, enduring thing?” And, similarly, how should a boundless space be conceived, if at all? Wouldn’t such an “Everything-all-throughout” effectively equate to “Nothing?” Wouldn’t every particular thing be in equilibrium with the other, and not in a state of strife, if “Everything” was “endlessly extended?” “Let us beware of thinking that the world is a living being. Where should it expand? On what should it feed? How could it grow and multiply?”
If you are vain, you will not put anymore than a cursory effort into understanding my words here-whereas if you are of a truly inquisitive nature, you will at least take them into consideration (and will benefit exponentially in your journey thereby…)-But do not take my saying that to mean that I aim to get you to “know” or to believe in any “truth!” All knowledge is ignorance and all truth is folly! My aim is only just to get you to think for yourself in the first place! Everything else will follow accordingly! “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
@@aeternaflux You're writing RUclips comments, purposefully trying to sound "intriguing", on a video of layman vulgarisation. Please step into the real world.
@spiritnone2818 I would hardly call Keegan’s videos “layman vulgarization,” although I would attribute that character to your reactive response to it and my own comment. And clearly you are also “writing youtube comments, purposefully trying to sound intriguing,” so if you think you’ve placed yourself above me in any sense here, you’re quite mistaken. Time to read more books! Off you go, now! Into that ‘real world’ of yours!
This makes me think - life itself, “wanting more,”- eternally so - is the sign of “the truth of the claim.” Whether a believer or non-believer, what they share in common is behaving, living and acting in a way that is somehow amenable to their conception of “time” here, no matter the position - and death is repressed in every thought and avenue of “sane” cultures. From the moral perspective, “bad life” apparently wants to live forever too, and is compensated with by “hell,” or punishment. On earth it is corporeal, but in metaphysics, it is disembodied and eternal. The whole thing “sounds” like a fight. Lol In HATH, when Nietzsche writes “man has one single development / continuum,” this is what I think he means.
Key word ‘same’. If we can live out a life with ideal circumstances every other life or so who’s to say you wouldn’t intent-fully desire to incarnate yourself once again?
The Ride Never Ends! 😵💫 Brilliant. I love to think about this, so I'm not sure how this is the first time that Eternal Recurrence as an antithesis to Pascal's Wager has been pointed out to me... Can love and hate, and life and death, not exist in equilibrium? I understand and agree with how injurious it was for the European social order to be so death oriented at the time, but why not a balance?
You're my favorite RUclips channel. I’ve been reading the gay science and following along with your video series. Please keep it up. You’ve turned me on to some awesome bands also. Thank you so much for changing my life and helping me understand Nietzsche. If I had a one use time machine I would choose to meet Nietzsche over Jesus Christ. And hope I could be a good wing man for Nietzsche
Yes a future conglomeration of atoms that looks like me wouldn’t be “me”, but it doesn’t even have to look like me to be me under generic subjective continuity.
@@untimelyreflections So if personal identity can be carried on across time why would what Nietzsche describes with the eternal return require some kind of platonic metaphysical story?
I had a miraculous moment once in Quilmes Argentina after making offerings to Pachamama and meditating on the old citadel there! After that moment and realising my personality type suits service I was able to find purpose and then fulfilment. Only by sacrificing my ego and then committing to service could I find salvation in this life. My point is that with purpose and fulfilment it doesn't matter whether I return or not!
By cursing the devil you are ironically including another spot of anger and suffering on your eternal pattern. You will always meet the devil again, and if you curse him once you will curse him infinite times. Thus adding infinite sorrow. So rejoice when asked.
I do mention it in the full length episode on eternal return, but it seemed irrelevant to mention here. Nietzsche seems to think he modified it in an important way, but that’s up for debate.
huh, I think I get it.... I think I'd wager on the "present", or the "Totality". Kinda like an investment where you reap what you sow (after nature takes her cut (nature, or the "environment"))
Say Salts, your lecture on Eckermann Goethe led me to read that insightful work. In that text there was many references to Lord Byron. So naturally I had to explore Byron. I'm a guitarist like yourself but never gave a damn about my singers were conjuring up. However with Lord Byron I was totally taken in with his consice poetic savvy. Goethe praised him thru that whole book. I am curious to know if our dude Fritz was into Byron's works? I'm going to check out Percy Byshee Shelley also. Rock on Salts 💪🤘🌄
Nietzsche references Byron at least twice I can think of, off the top of my head. In HATH, he quotes one of his poems, and in Daybreak he references him as one of six potential paths to deal with vehement drives. Glad to hear I sparked your interest! I love Byron and the Shelleys. Cheers.
14:40 I don't know that it isn't the safe bet: the eternal return presents a metaphysical "possibility", just like the existence of God -- to fail to wager in favor of amor fati in a deterministic world (Nietzsche was a determinist) would be a critical and eternal failure. It seems a perfect reversal.
The reason why I characterize it that way isn’t because it is less likely to be true, as determining likelihood with reason has gone out the window. It is because many people, possibly even the majority, would find the eternal return to have the opposite effect on their happiness as it has on Nietzsche. The “guarantee” provided by Xtianity has to do with its promise of happiness in the afterlife for all who take the bet, but Nietzsche cannot promise happiness in this life.
@@untimelyreflections Ah, I see. It isn't guaranteed to provide solace -- it is a very protestant kind of observation: are you among the elect who will find solace? Thanks for this.
@@andrebenoit283 Indeed. Nietzsche may also have been influenced by the Lutheran pietism of his family. The pietists believed that life was a gift from God, and to hate life is a sin.
Eternal return as a subjective experience is impossible due to the second law of thermodynamics. As sentient beings die, we return to a higher entropy state that erases all memory. Since the experience of time depends on memory, we become timeless matter. The wheel of Samsara in Buddhism was tacked on by later Hindu priests as a way to avoid the abject nihilism of "impermanence, suffering, and no self." We believe in an afterlife or eternal life because it gives our existence "meaning," but this is will to power. The meaning of human existence is "what is." Our experience is the bridge over which the future must pass on its journey to the past.
I get Eternal return goal is to achieve meaning without a metaphysic.. but it falls flat to me because only the first life has any meaning the rest are just repetitions: ie, all the subsequent lives do not provide free will, but the 1st one does? This does not add up since there is a special case for the 1st life. The other thing that does not taste right is the case of misfortune resulting in death or disability esp at an early age.. e.g. if you were aborted.. that gets repeated ad infinitum? Thx for the episode.
I don’t know. What do I know? No one knows (a song for the Deaf, that is for you). All I know these days is feeding my crows chicken carcasses, avoiding seagull shit falling from the sky, and the weird feeling that the pigeons in my old neighborhood like to hang out in my presence. Birds. I have a new found affinity with birds. They like me, at a comfortable distance, and I like them. Cah cah cah🦉
thank you for perpetuating the rigid stereotypical bore of "western intellectual" whom cannot stop suckling on the microplastics of it's glasses temple tips for all the deep meaningful analytic reasons...👏🏽
I understand that eternal return is needed for radical life affirmation but it seems disingenuous for one to look forward to one's unbearable sufferings in the past to repeat again and again. Why would I want to return to those unbearable moments ? They didn't necessarily lead to moments that I truly admire for which I would want eternal return. There was not necessarily any cause-effect relationship between the two. Would it rather be that eternal return encourages us to live our present and future moments to the fullest, to the best of our abilities, unafraid of any pain and sorrow that we may face in the pursuit of a goal. A goal so worthy that it's fulfillment would automatically justify that it be repeated again and again. This makes sense to me. I have faced many horrible sufferings in the past. I just can't come to terms with the fact that if I have to affirm my future life, I must accept to repeat those horrible moments again and again for all eternity.
Search within yourself. That which is worth knowing of anything cannot be taught. That you hear my words is evidence enough that you are capable. Push forward or perish.
@aeternaflux, I know that there are no "answers" out there for someone to teach me and that one has to make the path for oneself. But it's easier said than done. Nevertheless, I appreciate your answer. Thanks.
His audience was other Christians: or rather, those who professed Christianity but didn't really throw their lives fully into the Christian faith, perhaps because some doubt remained in the back of their minds as to whether it was really "worth it" to do so. Keep in mind that Pascal's sect, the Jansenists, were responding to Jesuit casuistry, and this was in the context of the Reformation, itself a reaction to indulgence-selling and other practices. In short, Pascal wants the nominal Christian to give up on worldly pleasures and ambitions and be a "true Christian". In Europe, in the 1600s, there wasn't much competition between other religious ideas, but it is worth noting that Pascal does address this point in the Pensees. He makes arguments against Islam for example, based on what he perceives as the fulfilled prophecy in Christian scripture an the lack of fulfilled prophecy in the Quran. Whether this is persuasive to us today or not (it is unpersuasive to me), I just thought I'd mention that he does acknowledge other religions and does make arguments as to why Christianity is the only true one. But these are outside of the wager.
Sorry, I was being facetious. Appreciate the thoughtful reply. However I have to point out, how is it outside the wager when the wager assumes the Christian (or Islamic) hell? That's the crux of it, and if you take it away there's no downside to disbelief and no wager.
Oh, why is 'return' impossible? Because 'time' is an illusion; "The Laws of Nature are not rules controlling the metamorphosis of what is, into what will be (ie; Karma). They are descriptions of patterns that exist, all at once... " - Genius; the Life and Science of Richard Feynman All 'eternity' at once; Here! Now!! Reality is not linear, it is Holistic! ;)
Great concept, but I’d hate to be reincarnated in a completely different manner let alone “reincarnating” into this same shit. That’s a curse for sure.
January 1882 Friedrich Nietzsche The Gay Science - Section 276 "For the New Year. I still live, I still think. Today everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favorite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself today, and what thought first crossed my mind this year, a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in things as the beautiful: I shall thus be one of those who beautify things. Amor fati: let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. Looking aside, let that be my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter one in confident affirmation!" His fitting sentiments above remind me of Marcus Aurelius in Meditations:- "To love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony" Though doesn't the idea of this 'eternal return' married to a loving of one's fate; "Amor fati" go back to the Ancient Greeks? Chiefly the Stoic school with it's third Head; Chrysippus, who claimed through Stoic teachings that the world undergoes eternal cycles of conflagration and rebirth and that all events are repeated-down to the individual and their various particulars. It's even thought possible that the idea could go back to Pythagoras, making its origins pre-Platonic/Socratic. I find it odd that Nietzsche should claim the idea of the eternal return first struck him while on a walk six thousand feet above man and time, when it's surely a certainty he must've encountered it when studying antiquity as closely as he did?
He actually does mention in his notes that “the Stoics” may have approximated the idea. While it is possible that he heard it first from them, perhaps the implications first “struck him” with full force that day walking by Silvaplana. That said, it could also be his own mythologizing of the idea and its origins!
The only people that would take eternal recurrence as good news are people in blessed situations who are extremely self-centered and those kinds of people believing in that kind of thought is what will lead them to fall to the sins of the flesh and never escape its grasp. Repent and become better🙏
You feel attacked because what I said is true, im not speaking from ignorance I've dealt with sin coming from the wants of my body long enough to know what I'm talking about if you want to stay in that state you in forever then keep doing what your doing but the only way to get better is to stop fooling yourself into thinking that the bad you give into is ok, repent and become better brother💪
It might work for couple of days if you are 28 year old guy going through self actualisation phase of life, but after that when you grow up a little more, it sounds so Stupid and childish.
Great video. The Pensées by Pascal is a great work, overshadowed by the Wager, that is well worth anyone's time.
The shadow of the wager falls hard upon this video, but as with all things we discuss here, it ought to be an invitation to explore further! Thanks for the kind words.
We're still waiting for the second podcast together xD
"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
― Albert Camus
Absolutely ridiculous how I became obsessed with this quote a few days ago, wrote it down and now you are making a video about it! Amazing, much love from Germany!
Danke.
This is a banger! Best thing happened today, thanks alot.
Thanks! You will enjoy this video for the first time, once more and innumerable times more.
And I wouldn't regret a single content I listened from you, my heart is eternally grateful@@untimelyreflections
Deleuze gives a very different interpretation, of which I'm sure you know. I remember his claim that 'return is the being of becoming'; in other words, becoming exists as an eternal return. It is in the nature of beings to eternally become something else. As such, he argues against 'the eternal return of the same', and in favour of 'the eternal return of the different'. Do you think Nietzsche would claim that Deleuze misunderstood him? Do you think Deleuze is unable to bear this existence, so he finds consolation in an imaginary 'ever-changing' and 'eternally novel' world? Thanks for the fascinating video.
I think Deluze made an understandable mistake in his interpretation of the eternal return. Each time you repeat your life would hold all the same value of the first. Just as the physical circumstances repeat, so do the philosophical circumstances. In other words, the novelty that Deluze seeks is present in each repeated lifetime, as if the novelty weren't present then the repeated lifetime would be different than the first, violating the given circumstances of the eternal return. This is paradoxical, but philosophical thought experiments are allowed to be. Deluze was probably thinking about it in a way that was too logical, when really it's a question of values and desire
Fair disclaimer, I'm not very familiar with Deluze, so everything I just said could be wrong
was literally thinking about the eternal recurrence earlier, what a video!!
Literally same here, tried to do some research but all the videos are same
I’ve been binge watching your content lately, I’m truly grateful for another dissection of Nietzsche. This concept of eternal return has been playing on my head as of lately especially, such good timing.
It's Nietzsche's "Yes-Sayer" existential challenge: do you affirm life, or nullify it? It's about the courage to accept life, and nature, as it is, thus accepting oneself as they are.
What's the difference between courage and foolishness?
Greetings from Las Vegas. This is my favorite channel on RUclips. VVV
excellent video, Keeg!!... love the juxtaposition of Pascal with Nietzsche... your shorter videos are strong... love the snake ouroboros image.
Keep these nuggets coming. Glad you're back podcasting.
I was just back from a run and this popped up.
I listen to it and I feel like I’ve had a religious experience! And I’m not even religious. Great work!
To me it's all about consciousness, the level of awareness and self awareness i was able gain, the one unique outlook on life through my eyes that all the factors of my existence have chiseled out of the initial potential.
I would not want to be someone else and be it over and over again.
And there has definitely not been much "balance" in my life, i've been to hell and back just to realize that what doesn't kill you does only make you weirder and harder to relate to for other people. So be it, i wouldn't trade for the prize to not be me
Great work man. I’ve been lurking for the past several years, but I think that these shorter form videos might be the most important, because there’s so much Nietzscheslop, Jordan Peterson, etc content out there. Keep it up!
I love your channel!!!! Best ever!!!!
I was learning philosophy chronologically, I stopped at Hagel, and then one day I found your channel, I was afraid of Nietzche since everyone said he was a "sadist", however, your video on "Return to Nature" spoke deeply to me. You said, read the books. I bought them, and I truly feel like my life began again.
Great Video interesting perspective I really appreciate how you connected it with Pascal's wager to deepen the understanding. Truly makes you reflect on how you live your own life and how it relates to the relationship to your nature and character and that reveals how we relate to our own existence, and whether we embrace it fully, with all its repetitions, joys, and sorrows.
"To recapitulate" lol yea that Pascal passage was like wading through a dense jungle. Not as nimble as Nietzsche! And I really appreciate your presentation here. Kind of funny how Pascal talked about how reason wouldn't work here and then goes on to talk about things probabilistically. I much prefer Nietzsche's Dare to Pascal's Wager. (And Easy Rider is such a badass film!)
Have you ever heard of Anthony Peakes Cheating the Ferryman hypothesis? He thinks deja vu and precognition are signs of us reliving our lives.
Also , Rush are my favourite band. Seen them play their only ever Irish gig.
14:44 what is the name of the painting that appears here?
Good post. Over the past week, I've asked myself the same question: what did Nietzsche expect from "the eternal recurrence"? And indeed, it has far more impact as a thought experiment, as a sort of flipside of Pascal's wager to determine "noble taste", than as "the most scientific hypothesis" which Nietzsche unfortunately also wanted it to be. The problem is that scientific hypotheses and theories are often 'overruled' by more performant insights. And that's exactly what happened with the 19th century assumptions on a finite universe (as well as with Lamarckian evolution theories on which the notion of the Will to Power was based). Just like their political counterparts, scientific revolutions tend to eat their children. Calling upon reason, either in the form of a safe wager or as a logically solid doctrine, can be a hazardous move... it may create the false impression that an old text only needs to be read to give it proper burial rights.
Rush quotes are always a nice touch.
The eternal return is an odd passage to read because it is a passage that I never ponder upon nor do I feel enlightened by Nietzsche’s vision. When I read this passage, as well as Pascal wager’s, I just read it, and nothing really happens. Perhaps those thoughts are the type of thoughts that creeps slowly to you, until you have to choose between Pascal and Nietzsche wager some day or at some dark lonesome night.
Good video, crazy coincidence how I spoke about this in my New Year Variety Show as well; many people are considering eternal recurrence during New Year time hehe
" Through death is the only way to get the answers of our existence,
If I fear death do I fear truth....I suppose I do "
Thank you for the Beautiful read, interpretation and teaching. I just started reading Milan Kundera’s novel “The unbearable Lightness of Being” and its main muse, right on the first page, is this exact argument by Nietzsche! The weight of Eternity, eternal life.
I am curious to hear your perspective on this topic in the age of AI, Human Cloning and record/download of one’s memory in his next resurrection?!
Cheers!
Great video. It's always interesting to consider the potential metaphysics underlying Nietzsche; ironic since he says he is always against such things, and yet many of his concepts bear the potential fruit of it. Particularly with his concepts of the Will to Power mirroring that of the Dao and Logos. Would also be interesting to see a more Nietzschean perspective on more modern physics, particularly with the quantum world as many men such as Schrodinger made many metaphysical comments concerning it.
Pascal never noticed why Reason is inconclusive about the existence of "God." He didn't notice that even he can't state what a "God" is, without begging the question.
I only just had the thought today that I felt the same way about Nietzsches return as pascal did to Christianity. That the future of humanity and fate is a wager. And whatever wager we pick decides the fate of each individual. Those who wager to live this life over and over, or those who wager an afterlife.
This is a possible argument for eternal return.
If this is the only sequence of events, then why has this happened and not another sequence of events?
If this is the only state of affairs, then why this state of affairs instead of another one?
To me, it seems like that existence makes only sense if every metaphysically possible scenario is realized.
Thanks man, I don't find it difficult to understand this expression from Nietzsche. I may not 'get it' but I don't play the same thought games.
By language, it is not.a viable thing. Eternal, a perpetual experience/expression. Return is where problems then arise. Returning in full awareness is a whole new horizon of possibilities about "what" is eternally returning, what remains consistent. This interpretation emphasises the eternal part of the recurrence. Without memory we can only immortalise the eternal and catch glimpses of it that stir something. Being here to repeat the same experience takes on an esoteric sense of time here. If my spirit sees the world I saw 1970 - there must be a different mind connecting the dots in 2225. The loop of 'return' must fit in a greater concentric, or linear procession of a changing world.
Yes, good idea, to connect your understanding through Pascal's wager. It is only as you were speaking, it sparked some sense of tackling it this way myself. Good analysis and artistic take on his conundrum.
*Reflection is both key and lock.* Unfortunately, very few can master this unbelievably complex technique.
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
"Before I start, I must see my end. Destination known, my mind's journey now begins. Upon my chariot, heart and soul's fate revealed. In time, all points converge; hope's strength resteeled. But to earn final peace at the universe's endless refrain, we must see all in nothingness... before we start again."
🐲✨🐲✨🐲✨
--Diamond Dragons (series)
I see some similarities between Kierkegaard, Pascal and Nietzsche. Great video Keegan!!!
Kierkegaard episode INCOMING
Very well presented
5:52 Ah, but what is this "real world"? Could it be that for Nietzsche an idea being true means something different than for most people? What if all ideas are just "thought experiments" and there is no "real world"?
Yes, the Eternal Return as an affirmation of this existence, worts and all. But i wonder (climbing out on a limb) if there is still an incorporeal dimension to the Eternal Return, the indefinite article, the infinitive (eternal) verb, what perhaps Deleuze characterized as a paradoxical intermingling of the finite and infinite at the site of the Event, what Jeffery Bell is referring to as making sense of life...
when I studied Pascal & his Wager along w/ Nietzsche & his Eternal Recurrence decades ago, my first take was "these guys seem to be making a lot of implicit assumptions". I accepted that as typical of decent philosophers. my second take was that they both expressed the aspect of dualism that they were critiquing, or resolving. I assessed that as the urge of great philosophers of their times & type for synthesis. my semi-final take was that it made no difference whether god existed or not... that contemplation or resolution of the question did not ultimately impinge upon human nature, behavior or creative thought (as far as I could tell from study of history). my interests then & now included quantum physics & cosmology... the study of which tended to point towards ongoing uncertainty - & that certainty in those fields would also not impinge upon human nature, etc. the upshot pragmatic (working) theory I've derived is "in a nearly infinite universe, almost everything is real & true & happens, eventually, somewhere".
Very well done, Keegan. You are getting closer and closer. The distance is growing with every complacency on your part, though! The “infinite novelty” of Simmel’s “eternally expanding” universe poses certain issues, for example. Think them through. Don’t content yourself with stopping. Keep going!
Supposing that the world, as a whole, is expanding, what should it expand into? Nothing? Everything? But if it is expanding into an Everything, is this Everything, itself, expanding? And, if so, into what? Another Everything? Nothing? How could nothing be expanded into when the notion of expansion presupposes a space to expand into and contract out of? Is space, itself, nothing? Is there “emptiness” between “objects?” Or is space force through and through, and each “object” more a transience than a “rigid, enduring thing?” And, similarly, how should a boundless space be conceived, if at all? Wouldn’t such an “Everything-all-throughout” effectively equate to “Nothing?” Wouldn’t every particular thing be in equilibrium with the other, and not in a state of strife, if “Everything” was “endlessly extended?”
“Let us beware of thinking that the world is a living being. Where should it expand? On what should it feed? How could it grow and multiply?”
If you are vain, you will not put anymore than a cursory effort into understanding my words here-whereas if you are of a truly inquisitive nature, you will at least take them into consideration (and will benefit exponentially in your journey thereby…)-But do not take my saying that to mean that I aim to get you to “know” or to believe in any “truth!” All knowledge is ignorance and all truth is folly! My aim is only just to get you to think for yourself in the first place! Everything else will follow accordingly!
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
@@aeternaflux You're writing RUclips comments, purposefully trying to sound "intriguing", on a video of layman vulgarisation. Please step into the real world.
@spiritnone2818 I would hardly call Keegan’s videos “layman vulgarization,” although I would attribute that character to your reactive response to it and my own comment. And clearly you are also “writing youtube comments, purposefully trying to sound intriguing,” so if you think you’ve placed yourself above me in any sense here, you’re quite mistaken. Time to read more books! Off you go, now! Into that ‘real world’ of yours!
This makes me think - life itself, “wanting more,”- eternally so - is the sign of “the truth of the claim.” Whether a believer or non-believer, what they share in common is behaving, living and acting in a way that is somehow amenable to their conception of “time” here, no matter the position - and death is repressed in every thought and avenue of “sane” cultures. From the moral perspective, “bad life” apparently wants to live forever too, and is compensated with by “hell,” or punishment. On earth it is corporeal, but in metaphysics, it is disembodied and eternal. The whole thing “sounds” like a fight. Lol
In HATH, when Nietzsche writes “man has one single development / continuum,” this is what I think he means.
If one life won't convince you to live, an infinite number of the same one's won't either.
Key word ‘same’. If we can live out a life with ideal circumstances every other life or so who’s to say you wouldn’t intent-fully desire to incarnate yourself once again?
The Ride Never Ends! 😵💫
Brilliant. I love to think about this, so I'm not sure how this is the first time that Eternal Recurrence as an antithesis to Pascal's Wager has been pointed out to me... Can love and hate, and life and death, not exist in equilibrium? I understand and agree with how injurious it was for the European social order to be so death oriented at the time, but why not a balance?
Thank you
4:22 Poincaré recurrence theorem, maybe?
You're my favorite RUclips channel. I’ve been reading the gay science and following along with your video series. Please keep it up. You’ve turned me on to some awesome bands also. Thank you so much for changing my life and helping me understand Nietzsche. If I had a one use time machine I would choose to meet Nietzsche over Jesus Christ. And hope I could be a good wing man for Nietzsche
Yes a future conglomeration of atoms that looks like me wouldn’t be “me”, but it doesn’t even have to look like me to be me under generic subjective continuity.
is a metaphysical claim required to say that your consciousness continues from one moment to the next even throughout a single day?
Nah.
@@untimelyreflections So if personal identity can be carried on across time why would what Nietzsche describes with the eternal return require some kind of platonic metaphysical story?
I had a miraculous moment once in Quilmes Argentina after making offerings to Pachamama and meditating on the old citadel there! After that moment and realising my personality type suits service I was able to find purpose and then fulfilment. Only by sacrificing my ego and then committing to service could I find salvation in this life. My point is that with purpose and fulfilment it doesn't matter whether I return or not!
Saludos desde la plata. Te felicito por encontrar el sentido!
By cursing the devil you are ironically including another spot of anger and suffering on your eternal pattern. You will always meet the devil again, and if you curse him once you will curse him infinite times. Thus adding infinite sorrow. So rejoice when asked.
Eternal return was originally a Stoic idea. Why does no one ever mention this?
I do mention it in the full length episode on eternal return, but it seemed irrelevant to mention here. Nietzsche seems to think he modified it in an important way, but that’s up for debate.
huh, I think I get it....
I think I'd wager on the "present", or the "Totality". Kinda like an investment where you reap what you sow (after nature takes her cut (nature, or the "environment"))
this is opposed to escapism. this is embracing of life
its like ok arjuna do you want to sit here and contemplate or go do what you like.. really either way is fine
Why did Arjuna fall?
If the universe has no temporal beginning nor end, then everything that could happen has happened over and over ad infinitum.
Makes me sad because ive lived a life most would call good. But ive been depressed over half of it and bored the other half. Id hate to exist forever,
Say Salts, your lecture on Eckermann Goethe led me to read that insightful work. In that text there was many references to Lord Byron. So naturally I had to explore Byron. I'm a guitarist like yourself but never gave a damn about my singers were conjuring up. However with Lord Byron I was totally taken in with his consice poetic savvy. Goethe praised him thru that whole book. I am curious to know if our dude Fritz was into Byron's works? I'm going to check out Percy Byshee Shelley also. Rock on Salts 💪🤘🌄
Nietzsche references Byron at least twice I can think of, off the top of my head. In HATH, he quotes one of his poems, and in Daybreak he references him as one of six potential paths to deal with vehement drives. Glad to hear I sparked your interest! I love Byron and the Shelleys. Cheers.
@untimelyreflections is Daybreak and the Dawn of Day the same book?
@@phillipjordan1010 Yes
14:40 I don't know that it isn't the safe bet: the eternal return presents a metaphysical "possibility", just like the existence of God -- to fail to wager in favor of amor fati in a deterministic world (Nietzsche was a determinist) would be a critical and eternal failure. It seems a perfect reversal.
The reason why I characterize it that way isn’t because it is less likely to be true, as determining likelihood with reason has gone out the window. It is because many people, possibly even the majority, would find the eternal return to have the opposite effect on their happiness as it has on Nietzsche. The “guarantee” provided by Xtianity has to do with its promise of happiness in the afterlife for all who take the bet, but Nietzsche cannot promise happiness in this life.
@@untimelyreflections Ah, I see. It isn't guaranteed to provide solace -- it is a very protestant kind of observation: are you among the elect who will find solace? Thanks for this.
@@andrebenoit283 Indeed. Nietzsche may also have been influenced by the Lutheran pietism of his family. The pietists believed that life was a gift from God, and to hate life is a sin.
Eternal return as a subjective experience is impossible due to the second law of thermodynamics. As sentient beings die, we return to a higher entropy state that erases all memory. Since the experience of time depends on memory, we become timeless matter. The wheel of Samsara in Buddhism was tacked on by later Hindu priests as a way to avoid the abject nihilism of "impermanence, suffering, and no self." We believe in an afterlife or eternal life because it gives our existence "meaning," but this is will to power. The meaning of human existence is "what is." Our experience is the bridge over which the future must pass on its journey to the past.
I get Eternal return goal is to achieve meaning without a metaphysic.. but it falls flat to me because only the first life has any meaning the rest are just repetitions: ie, all the subsequent lives do not provide free will, but the 1st one does? This does not add up since there is a special case for the 1st life. The other thing that does not taste right is the case of misfortune resulting in death or disability esp at an early age.. e.g. if you were aborted.. that gets repeated ad infinitum? Thx for the episode.
No, there is no 1st life actually. Thats the point of eternal recurrence
Thank god there is someone like you to deliver us the gay gospel of nietzsche.
May your soul rest in peace(or war) in the eternal return.
have we really lived the same life eternally if we only ever experience one life.
It depends on your perspective. For Nietzsche it was important that we don’t have the “out” of just waiting for nothingness after death.
I don’t know. What do I know? No one knows (a song for the Deaf, that is for you). All I know these days is feeding my crows chicken carcasses, avoiding seagull shit falling from the sky, and the weird feeling that the pigeons in my old neighborhood like to hang out in my presence. Birds. I have a new found affinity with birds. They like me, at a comfortable distance, and I like them. Cah cah cah🦉
Bf gifted me The Gay Science this christmas. This one seems to be my favorite thus far!
Find the best mechanism for living a good life. That is what this all boils down to. However you rationalize it, find it. Good luck.
I Dio Tickk!
thank you for perpetuating the rigid stereotypical bore of "western intellectual" whom cannot stop suckling on the microplastics of it's glasses temple tips for all the deep meaningful analytic reasons...👏🏽
I understand that eternal return is needed for radical life affirmation but it seems disingenuous for one to look forward to one's unbearable sufferings in the past to repeat again and again. Why would I want to return to those unbearable moments ? They didn't necessarily lead to moments that I truly admire for which I would want eternal return. There was not necessarily any cause-effect relationship between the two. Would it rather be that eternal return encourages us to live our present and future moments to the fullest, to the best of our abilities, unafraid of any pain and sorrow that we may face in the pursuit of a goal. A goal so worthy that it's fulfillment would automatically justify that it be repeated again and again. This makes sense to me. I have faced many horrible sufferings in the past. I just can't come to terms with the fact that if I have to affirm my future life, I must accept to repeat those horrible moments again and again for all eternity.
Then you will die hating yourself.
@aeternaflux, care to elaborate? I find your reply very poignant and there maybe a kernel of truth to it.
Search within yourself. That which is worth knowing of anything cannot be taught. That you hear my words is evidence enough that you are capable. Push forward or perish.
@aeternaflux, I know that there are no "answers" out there for someone to teach me and that one has to make the path for oneself. But it's easier said than done. Nevertheless, I appreciate your answer. Thanks.
Exhibit A: Me juicing vegetables
Here in Utah God is a license plate… Utah is not burdened with thinking.
from the grave nietzsche sent me a link with a post script that read lol: ruclips.net/video/VLuUvYJySIM/видео.html
The fatal flaw in Pascal's thinking there was to make God synonymous with Christianity solely. Not sure how he missed that one.
His audience was other Christians: or rather, those who professed Christianity but didn't really throw their lives fully into the Christian faith, perhaps because some doubt remained in the back of their minds as to whether it was really "worth it" to do so. Keep in mind that Pascal's sect, the Jansenists, were responding to Jesuit casuistry, and this was in the context of the Reformation, itself a reaction to indulgence-selling and other practices. In short, Pascal wants the nominal Christian to give up on worldly pleasures and ambitions and be a "true Christian". In Europe, in the 1600s, there wasn't much competition between other religious ideas, but it is worth noting that Pascal does address this point in the Pensees. He makes arguments against Islam for example, based on what he perceives as the fulfilled prophecy in Christian scripture an the lack of fulfilled prophecy in the Quran. Whether this is persuasive to us today or not (it is unpersuasive to me), I just thought I'd mention that he does acknowledge other religions and does make arguments as to why Christianity is the only true one. But these are outside of the wager.
Sorry, I was being facetious. Appreciate the thoughtful reply. However I have to point out, how is it outside the wager when the wager assumes the Christian (or Islamic) hell? That's the crux of it, and if you take it away there's no downside to disbelief and no wager.
Oh, why is 'return' impossible? Because 'time' is an illusion;
"The Laws of Nature are not rules controlling the metamorphosis of what is, into what will be (ie; Karma). They are descriptions of patterns that exist, all at once... " - Genius; the Life and Science of Richard Feynman
All 'eternity' at once; Here! Now!!
Reality is not linear, it is Holistic! ;)
Pascals wager is silly. What if there is a god that doesn't care if you believe but cares about other things. Or if it hated all religions we know of.
No idea what this was about. All I know is that saying: Nietzsches get stitches.
Great concept, but I’d hate to be reincarnated in a completely different manner let alone “reincarnating” into this same shit. That’s a curse for sure.
January 1882
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Gay Science - Section 276
"For the New Year. I still live, I still think. Today everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favorite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself today, and what thought first crossed my mind this year, a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in things as the beautiful:
I shall thus be one of those who beautify things. Amor fati: let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. Looking aside, let that be my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter one in confident affirmation!"
His fitting sentiments above remind me of Marcus Aurelius in Meditations:-
"To love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony"
Though doesn't the idea of this 'eternal return' married to a loving of one's fate; "Amor fati" go back to the Ancient Greeks? Chiefly the Stoic school with it's third Head; Chrysippus, who claimed through Stoic teachings that the world undergoes eternal cycles of conflagration and rebirth and that all events are repeated-down to the individual and their various particulars. It's even thought possible that the idea could go back to Pythagoras, making its origins pre-Platonic/Socratic. I find it odd that Nietzsche should claim the idea of the eternal return first struck him while on a walk six thousand feet above man and time, when it's surely a certainty he must've encountered it when studying antiquity as closely as he did?
He actually does mention in his notes that “the Stoics” may have approximated the idea. While it is possible that he heard it first from them, perhaps the implications first “struck him” with full force that day walking by Silvaplana. That said, it could also be his own mythologizing of the idea and its origins!
The only people that would take eternal recurrence as good news are people in blessed situations who are extremely self-centered and those kinds of people believing in that kind of thought is what will lead them to fall to the sins of the flesh and never escape its grasp. Repent and become better🙏
How about you repent and stop poisoning people’s minds with garbage about “sins of the flesh”. Brother, you ARE flesh.
You feel attacked because what I said is true, im not speaking from ignorance I've dealt with sin coming from the wants of my body long enough to know what I'm talking about if you want to stay in that state you in forever then keep doing what your doing but the only way to get better is to stop fooling yourself into thinking that the bad you give into is ok, repent and become better brother💪
To not receive the eternal return as good news is the indictment that you are resentful and your instincts have decayed.
It might work for couple of days if you are 28 year old guy going through self actualisation phase of life, but after that when you grow up a little more, it sounds so Stupid and childish.
Thanks, amorfati4096. You’re right that amor fati is a stupid and childish idea.
@ Yes because Nietzsche was too naïve