Eternal Recurrence Theme Analysis

Throughout the novel, Zarathustra speculates about something called the eternal return, or recurrence. Eternal recurrence is the idea that everything in existence has been recurring for an infinite number of times across time and space and will continue to do so. (This isn’t the same thing as the concept of reincarnation, because Nietzsche posited that beings would return in the same bodies.) For Nietzsche, eternity isn’t “better” than this life—it’s the recurrence of this life, both good and bad. While Nietzsche acknowledged that the idea of the eternal return could be a paralyzing burden for the weak (because of their guilt over sin and dread of life’s hardships), he saw one’s ability to embrace the eternal return as the ultimate expression of the will to power. Put another way, because the strong are capable of throwing off the guilt imposed by old values and accepting both the good and bad of existence, they alone are capable of relishing Eternity without dread. Nietzsche uses Zarathustra’s praising of eternity to suggest that eternity—because it involves embracing and exerting one’s will within this life, not in a better, future one—is the ultimate happiness for the strong. Eternal recurrence is a playground for the strong, precisely because the strong fully embrace life as it is.

Eternal recurrence is the ultimate happiness for the strong, because it’s the ultimate affirmation of this life instead of its denial. Though eternal recurrence is a dreadful prospect to those who bear guilt for sin and who fear suffering, it isn’t a burden for the strong, because they carry no such guilt or fear. When Zarathustra’s companion animals discuss this teaching with him, they state, “You would say, without trembling, but rather gasping for happiness: […] ‘I shall return, with this sun, with this earth […] not to a new life or a better life or a similar life: I shall return eternally to this identical and self-same life […] to speak once more the teaching of the great noontide of earth and man, to tell man of the Superman once more.” Whereas eternal recurrence would be reason for the weak to “trembl[e],” it’s a source of happiness and liberation for the strong. While the weak despise life and long for a better one, the strong, affirming all of life, are not only content but happy to return to this one an infinite number of times. Eternity is the ultimate joy for the strong, because it’s the highest affirmation of life. In a hymn to eternity, Zarathustra sings, “if ever I sat rejoicing where old gods lay buried, world-blessing, world-loving, beside the monuments of old world-slanderers: for I love even churches and the graves of gods, if only heaven is looking, pure-eyed, through their shattered roofs […] Oh how should I not lust for eternity and for the wedding ring of rings—the Ring of Recurrence!” Zarathustra contrasts himself, as one who blesses and loves the world, with those dead gods and their prophets who “slandered” the world. Eternity disproves the world-denying teachings of those “slanderers” and is the ultimate vindication of the strong, who embrace the world.

Because eternity affirms life, it’s also the ultimate expression of the will to power that the strong exert. Another verse of Zarathustra’s song exclaims, “If my virtue is a dancer's virtue […] if my wickedness is a laughing wickedness, […] for in laughter all evil is present, but sanctified and absolved through its own happiness […] Oh how should I not lust for eternity[!]” While this aphorism is rather confusing at face value, it basically means that, for Zarathustra, the “dancer” is one who’s liberated from “good and evil” and who fully embraces life, meaning that neither the dancer’s “virtue” nor “wickedness” are bound by the morality of the weak. “Goodness,” for the strong, is happiness and exertion of the will to power. Because the strong person embraces eternal recurrence, they are completely free to exert his will and is fully happy, meaning that even what the weak would call his “wickedness” is fully absolved. It’s no wonder that such a person would love “eternity.” Like the “death of God,” Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal recurrence completely subverts traditional religion and morality by locating ultimate happiness not in an otherworldly afterlife, but in this very life.