Eternal recurrence?

Question

What are your thoughts on this theory? I find it to be rather frieghtening really.

For those of you who do not know what eternal recurrence is:
one day a person would be born with the same thought-processes as himself, and that the same applies to every other individual.

Answer 1

The -eternal returning- is not a philosophy itself . It is a tool-idea conceived by F.Nietzsche who used it to develop its thoughts.
here goes the concept:
Just pretend that your life is gonna start over ,after you died,exactly the same way it was, a sort of crystalized ,ever-replicating destiny, over and over, with you like paralized in it, and you can do nothing to avoid it.(you not even aware of it)
Scary,isnt it?
Well, according Nietzsche,once an individual is able to cope with this hypothesis, and ready to accept its implications and the destiny of no hope, as if it was true, then this individual realizes how much our beliefs (religions,morals,etc)are a dope to help us coping with the actual truth that there s no hope,no future out of the present life, no gods etc.
At this point, Nietzsche says, this individual is ready to move on from the 'moral of the slaves' (our social conventions), to another awareness..(Later becoming the beyond-man idea- or the over-man's)
Scary and great piece of thinking.
ciao

well said sauwelios.

Answer 2

It is *meant* to be frightening:

"A doctrine is needed powerful enough to work as a breeding agent: strengthening the strong, paralyzing and destructive for the world-weary."
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 862.]

"My philosophy brings the triumphant idea of which all other modes of thought will ultimately perish. It is the great cultivating idea: the races that cannot bear it stand condemned; those who find it the greatest benefit are chosen to rule."
[ibid., section 1053.]

"I want to teach the idea that gives many the right to erase themselves - the great *cultivating* idea."
[ibid., section 1056.]

"To *endure* the idea of the recurrence one needs: freedom from morality; new means against the fact of *pain* (pain conceived as a tool, as the father of pleasure; there is no cumulative consciousness of displeasure); the enjoyment of all kinds of uncertainty, experimentalism, as a counterweight to this extreme fatalism; abolition of the concept of necessity; abolition of the "will"; abolition of "knowledge-in-itself.""
[ibid., section 1060.]

And it is not, as googolullage says, "the SAME life, over and over again, until you "get it right"" - for this is a self-contradiction. It is the *exact same life*, so if you don't get it right "the first time", you will never get it right. And there is no first time, nor a last time, but you have already lived this life an infinite number of times, and will live it again, an infinite number of times - with the exact same outcome... And sickcured is also wrong, as everything you experience as new in *this* cycle, you will also experience as new in the next. There is no memory of past cycles, as *there is only one cycle, which is repeated*. It is no spiral, nor a sinoid, but a *circle*. Your life is only a *point* on this circle, and the next time this point is reached it will be the exact same point - and equally pointless!

"[E]xistence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: *"the eternal recurrence."*
This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the "meaningless"), eternally!"
[ibid., section 55.]

Answer 3

Peter D. Ouspensky dealt with this a lot. See "Tertium Organum" and/or "The Fourth Way"

I believe Nietsche may have
had some theory like it. It's like reincarnation, except that instead of a new life, you have to live the SAME life, over and over again, until you "get it right".

Actually, whether it's theory or fact, it's an interesting way to live your life--to live every day AS IF you're gonna have to do it again and again, so be on your most alert and best behavior.

Answer 4

a lot of Nietzche's worldview became mythological in its scope and the concept of eternal recurrence is data of this unusual dynamic. In my estimation, it type of feels a to coach Neitzsche's desire for some form of metaphysics that became previous present day rationalism. Like Nietzsche, i don't believe of that it may well be taken all that heavily.

Answer 5

Well - can be something like that ...
anyway - there is a theory that space-continium is a spiral , but not a usual one ( can not explain the form ).
Also there is a theory that Time-Continium as itself is a PERFECT LIQUID.

Well - does it become strange enought ...

And if we add a Quantum Physic ideas about Possibility of living at alot perallel universes - so ... it become one grath mess ...

Now imagine this all Recursed ...
Well - For me is hard to imagine it ...

Answer 6

Interesting. Do we know for a fact that this doesn't already occur, and we just don't run into our like-minded "doppelgangers" (for lack of better term)? In any case- scary.

Answer 7

It is really horrible. Cloning of the brains !

Answer 8

How boring it would be not to be able to experience things as new again.