| Nietzsche made scant announcements of the doctrine of eternal recurrence in his published writings, and provided neither an explanation for how it works nor an indication for how to make sense of this outlandish string of words. The majority of commentators interpret it as an ethical-normative teaching that would consist in the challenge for the individual to love (his) life to the point of desiring the eternal recurrence of the whole "everything." By extension, Nietzsche scholars also suggest that Nietzsche considered his doctrine as a cultural weapon in the struggle to overcome what he called "European nihilism.";I reconstruct a genealogy of the thought "eternal recurrence" through a near-exclusive focus on Nietzsche's (posthumously published) notebooks and on some of his preparatory lecture notes. This approach yields certain roots and ramifications of the thought, its possible relation to Nietzsche's hypothesis "will to power," and its fundamental value, first of all for the philosopher himself.;Nietzsche's "passion for knowledge" (his words) in general, and for the question of what is called "knowledge" in particular, rolls out of the abundance of folds of his private notebooks. I propose Nietzsche's "thought of thoughts" (as he called the doctrine of eternal recurrence) as an overarching principle in Nietzsche's fateful showdown with the Titan Plato, as a corrective to Plato's logos of knowledge, as a thought that does not invert, but rather incorporates Platonic idealism; in other words, as Nietzsche's fundamental metaphysical position, in the way that I set it up. |
