Each thinker, according to Heidegger, essentially thinks one thought. Plato thinks the idea. Descartes thinks the cogito . Spinoza thinks substance. Nietzsche thinks the will to power. If a thinker does not think a thought, then he or she is not a thinker. He or she may be a scholar or a professor, a producer or a consumer, a fan or a fake, but he or she would not be a thinker. Thus, if Heidegger is a thinker, he essentially thinks (...) one thought. What is Heidegger’s one thought? It is neither life nor death, neither me nor you. It is neither technology nor art. It is neither spirit nor language. Heidegger’s one thought is being—or more precisely, the question of the meaning of being. And what is being? Neither presence nor absence--but rather, an ambiguous uncertainty. (shrink)

Several scholars align Nietzsche’s philosophy with Stoicism because of their naturalist approaches to ethics and doctrines of eternal re- currence. Yet this alignment is difficult to reconcile with Nietzsche’s criticisms of Stoicism’s ethical ideal of living according to nature by dispassionately accepting fate—so much so that some conclude that Nietzsche’s rebuke of Stoicism undermines his own philosophical project. I argue that affinities between Nietzsche and Stoicism belie deeper disagreement about teleology, which, in turn, yields different understandings of nature and human (...) flourishing, so that Nietzsche’s objections to Stoicism support his commitments to ethical naturalism and to affirming life’s eternal recurrence. (shrink)

The death of God and the death of eternity stand at the portals of modernity. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which Kojève called the modern counterpart to the Bible, concludes with the death of G...

This article examines Heidegger’s thoughts on Nietzsche’s philosophy of eternal return and the self-overcoming power of thinking. Scholarly commentators argue that Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche reduces the open possibilities of thinking about temporality, becoming and difference into a rigid metaphysical framework of being as a whole. However, a close reading of Heidegger’s thoughts on the eternal recurrence shows that his interpretive attempt to disclose the metaphysical ground of Nietzsche’s thinking reveals a deeper, dynamic dimension of Nietzsche’s recurrent efforts of self-overcoming. (...) In this light, I argue that Heidegger’s interpretive thinking intends to uncover an empowering ground of Nietzsche’s philosophical struggle to overcome the metaphysical limit of human thoughts facing the lively unity of difference. For Heidegger, Nietzsche’s thinking of the eternal recurrence is not to suggest a metaphysical doctrine of being but to grasp a determinate basis of one’s own existence, repeatedly seeking the greater possibility of being with others. (shrink)

Responding to a well-known essay by Bernard Williams, philosophers have engaged in what I call “the Makropulos debate,” a debate over whether immortality—“living forever”—would be desirable for beings like us. Lacking a firm conceptual grounding in the religious contexts from which terms such as “immortality” and “eternal life” gain much of their sense, the debate has consisted chiefly in a battle of speculative fantasies. Having presented my four main reasons for this assessment, I examine an alternative and neglected conception, the (...) idea of eternal life as a present possession, derived in large part from Johannine Christianity. Without claiming to argue for the truth of this conception, I present its investigation as exemplifying a conceptually fruitful direction of inquiry into immortality or eternal life, one which takes seriously the religious and ethical surroundings of these concepts. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to trace the transformations in Nietzsche's early thinking that led to the ideas published in Human, All Too Human, the first book of his mature philosophy. In contrast to his early works, in which he sides with art and philosophy in criticizing the scientific culture of his time, Nietzsche, in Human, All Too Human, hails the methodology of science as a way to overcome the metaphysical delusions of philosophy, art, and religion. However, in disagreement (...) with popular scholarly view, I show that Human, All Too Human does not represent a complete break with his earlier writings, but rather a shift in emphasis. I argue that the overall project connecting Nietzsche's early thought to Human, All Too Human is, first, the attempt to come to terms with the upheavals introduced into the cultural terrain by the Socratic turn, and second, to affirm a higher culture. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Nietzsche should be understood as a “thorough-going nihilist”. Rather than broaching two general projects of destroying current values and constructing new ones, I argue that Nietzsche should be understood only as a destroyer of values. I do this by looking at Nietzsche’s views on nihilism and the role played by Nietzsche’s cyclical view of time, or his doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same. I provide a typology of nihilisms, as they are found (...) in Nietzsche—negative, reactive and radical—through a close reading of an unpublished fragment in his later notebooks, remnants of which are scattered throughout his published work. I show how the progression between the different stages of nihilism are a “necessary consequence of the ideals entertained hitherto” , with the eternal recurrence of the same playing a vital role in this progression. The last stage of nihilism—radical nihilism—is ambiguous between a life-denying, or passive, nihilism and a life-affirming, or active, one; but, I argue, both kinds of nihilism preclude a construction of new values. But there is an inherent tension within Nietzsche’s account of nihilism insofar as it relies on the eternal recurrence of the same. This tension is brought out nicely by Löwith and partially resolved by Klossowski. There are at least two meanings of the eternal recurrence of the same. In one sense, the cosmological reading, it is intended to make sense of the idea that time is infinite and matter is finite by claiming that every possible combination of matter will recur infinite times. In the other sense, the anthropological reading, it is a kind of thought experiment, analogous to Kant’s categorical imperative: “live in every moment so that you could will that moment back again over and over” . There is a tension between these readings insofar as one must will to live in such a way that they will do it again, over and over , but also that what they do will make no difference, for what one decides to do has been done innumerable times. I argue that this tension can only be resolved by considering Nietzsche as aiming at “goal-lessness as such” and placing him as an active nihilist. (shrink)

Guided to the notion of the eternal return by the philosophical intuitions of the Greek antiquity, Nietzsche turned to the physical sciences of his day in order to further his inquiry. This extensive intellectual engagement represented a genuine attempt to investigate the possible continuity of meaning between the mythical tradition, on the one hand, and the rational-empirical (i.e. scientific), on the other. In particular, Nietzsche was intrigued by the manner in which the relationship between myth and science played out in (...) the wide-ranging debates on the eternal recurrence and entropy. Obscuring the view, however, lay the debris of metaphysical imports into the discourse of secular modern science. In the course of his ambitious undertaking to disentangle physics from metaphysics, Nietzsche discerned a possibility for synthesising the scientific explanation for his ‘fundamental conception’ (EH: Z, §1) with the mythical wisdom of the ages. His inferences proved nothing short of explosive. The doctrine of the eternal return of the same, instead of the docile cosmic torpor, urged the radical revaluation of all values. The measure of the eternal return’s power was to dissolve its impersonation – the Übermensch – into a form of well-being. Nietzsche was convinced that his ‘mightiest idea’ (NF-1881:11[148]) illuminated the path we must follow lest we wish to incur the full force of the ‘frightening wisdom of Silenus’ (BT: §4). (shrink)

In this thesis, I use the work of Friedrich Nietzsche to offer a detailed account of existential sin. I show that existential sin as a form of self-understanding is deeply embedded in the Christian theological tradition, and that Nietzsche’s account of existential sin should be understood as part of this same tradition. In my reading of On the Genealogy of Morality I show that we need to place sin in close relation to bad conscience, guilt and the genealogical method itself. (...) However, despite being grounded in Christian thought and dependent upon the figure of the Christian God in its origin and emergence, I follow Nietzsche in positing that existential sin continues to exist after the death of God. It is by considering sin as not only a form of self-understanding, but also as a cultural memory, that we can make sense of this claim. For Nietzsche existential sin is at its root a mistaken understanding of human nature that has taken hold of us through Christianity. However, I argue that we need to consider existential sin as a socio-historical answer to the ontological problem of meaningless suffering. Existential sin responds to a fundamental experience of the human condition. With this in mind, in the final chapter of the thesis I examine possible avenues of redemption from post-Christian sin. What options are open to the person suffering from post-Christian sin-consciousness if she cannot turn to religious narratives? I argue that Nietzsche’s redemptive method of genealogy is not sufficient, and that life-affirmation is too demanding. However, a weaker version of life-affirmation in which meaningless suffering is affirmed as necessary, but not desired, does provide a promising alternative answer to the problem of meaningless suffering. (shrink)