ABSTRACTIn this article I argue that we should understand Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence as the ideal of life affirmation opposed to philosophical pessimism, the view that life is not worth living. I first articulate Nietzsche’s psychological account of pessimism as a vengeful focus on the past and an aversion to time understood as transience. I then consider the question of why a person with the opposite psychological orientation – a creative relation to the future and an endorsement of time (...) – would will the eternal recurrence of all things. My answer appeals to Nietzsche’s notions of will to power and the redemption of the past from its senselessness. The interpretation of eternal recurrence that emerges from this approach takes Nietzsche’s vision of a great, world-redeeming individual to be integral to his doctrine of eternal recurrence. This is just one way in which it differs from common interpretations of eternal recurrence as a cosmological theory or thought experiment. (shrink)

In this article I argue that we should understand Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence as the ideal of life affirmation opposed to philosophical pessimism, the view that life is not worth living. I first articulate Nietzsche’s psychological account of pessimism as a vengeful focus on the past and an aversion to time understood as transience. I then consider the question of why a person with the opposite psychological orientation – a creative relation to the future and an endorsement of time (...) – would will the eternal recurrence of all things. My answer appeals to Nietzsche’s notions of will to power and the redemption of the past from its senselessness. The interpretation of eternal recurrence that emerges from this approach takes Nietzsche’s vision of a great, world-redeeming individual to be integral to his doctrine of eternal recurrence. This is just one way in which it differs from common interpretations of eternal recurrence as a cosmological theory or thought experiment. (shrink)

Hegel’s assertion that self-consciousness is desire in general stands at a critical point in the Phenomenology , but the concept of desire employed in this identification is obscure. I examine three ways in which Hegel’s concept of desire might be understood and conclude that this concept is closely related to Fichte’s notions of drive and longing. So understood, the concept plays an essential role in Hegel’s non-foundational, non-genetic account of the awareness that individual rational subjects have of themselves. This account, (...) I argue, is part of a larger concern with demonstrating the relation between theoretical and practical capacities of the subject. I also argue that my reading explains Hegel’s emphasis on the figure of the bondsman in “Lordship and Bondage.” The bondsman’s experience of itself and its world instantiates Hegel’s views on the integration of subjective capacities and the reality of objects of experience. (shrink)

By a will to truth Nietzsche understands an overriding commitment, unlimited in scope, to believing in accordance with evidence and argument. I show that the critique of this commitment found in Nietzsche’s later works uncovers the psychological grounds of our modern will to truth and establishes its affinity with distinctively moral commitments. I argue that Nietzsche’s critique nevertheless provides no answer to his question concerning the value of a will to truth in general. Nietzsche’s examination of the will to truth (...) aims instead to establish that we presently lack any standard for determining its value. (shrink)

Book I of HH would seem to announce the end of Nietzsche's concern with the philosophical pessimism that shapes BT and figures prominently in HL. In BT he endorses the pessimistic thesis that the best thing for a human being is to die soon, while he announces in HH that the even the words "optimism" and "pessimism" are outdated since they play a role in a theological discourse that is gradually dying out. This change is connected with another, namely Nietzsche's (...) growing intolerance of metaphysical speculation of any sort. In place of the wild metaphysics of BT, which postulates Apollinian and Dionysian drives as ultimate constituents of reality and associates the latter with a primal... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article examines Nietzsche's notion of monumental history in “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” and considers its importance for Nietzsche's later work. In the first section, I examine the connections between monumental history and the work of Polybius, Thucydides, and Livy. Here I argue that Nietzsche takes his notion of monumental history directly from the practice of history in the ancient world. In the second section, I demonstrate that Nietzsche regards the production of illusions as (...) the principal benefit of monumental history, while he criticizes its mendacious and conservative tendencies. Finally, I argue in the third section that the collection of characters we encounter in Nietzsche's later works—including the free spirits and the figure of Zarathustra—ought to be understood through Nietzsche's account of the uses and disadvantages of monumental history. These exemplary figures neither falsify nor glorify the past, but they remain illusions in the service of life. (shrink)

This paper considers Hegel's views on space and his account of Kant's theory of space. I show that Hegel's discussions of space exhibit a deep understanding of Kant's apriority argument in the first Critique , commit him to the central premise of that argument, and separate his concerns from the familiar problem of the neglected alternative. Nevertheless, Hegel makes two objections to Kant's theory of space. First, he argues that the theory is internally inconsistent insofar as Kant's identification of space (...) with an a priori intuition is incompatible with the doctrine of productive imagination in the transcendental deduction of the categories. Second, Hegel argues that the apriority argument is insufficiently critical insofar as it relies upon an unexamined theory of subjectivity as a set of representational capacities. I conclude by outlining Hegel's strategy for undermining the assumptions concerning subjectivity that give form to Kant's transcendental philosophy. Because Hegel's positive views on space depend upon his articulation of an alternate notion of subjectivity, the account of Hegel's position on space offered here remains incomplete. On the other hand, considering Hegel's discussions of space demonstrates both the nature and the importance of his examination of subjectivity in the Phenomenology. (shrink)

In the concluding section of Twilight of the Idols, entitled "What I Owe the Ancients," Nietzsche tells us that his debt to the Greeks has little to do with Greek philosophy. Plato is portrayed as simply a step toward Christian moralism, and Nietzsche states more generally that "the philosophers are the decadents of Greek culture" (TI "Ancients" 3).1 In contrast, he remarks that "my recreation, my preference, my cure from all Platonism has always been Thucydides" (TI "Ancients" 2). This esteem (...) for Thucydides is found throughout Nietzsche's published works and notes, without the counterbalance of even a single critical remark.2But what exactly does Nietzsche owe Thucydides? Some elements of that debt are clear .. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence is an essential part of his mature philosophy, but the theory’s metaphysical commitments and practical implications are both obscure. In this essay I consider only the metaphysical elements of the theory, with the aim of determining whether it is possible that we live our lives infinitely many times, as the theory maintains. I argue that the possibility of eternal recurrence turns on issues in personal identity and the metaphysics of time. As I proceed, I (...) also consider the relation between Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence and theories of recurrence found in the work of Heraclitus, the Pythagoreans, and the Stoics. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.