Nietzsche’s «Eternal Recurrence» and the antiquity

Philosophy

Abstract

The subject under research in this paper is relation between Nietzsche’s idea of the «Eternal Recurrence of thesame» and Ancient Greek culture. «Eternal Recurrence» has two forms in the philosophical heritage of FriedrichNietzsche: the form of thought about the way of life and the form of a cosmological doctrine like the ancientGreek philosophy of nature. The first form is paramount, because the doctrine is just a form of a thought. Some ofthe previous researches in this area were focused on the cosmological aspect of Nietzsche’s idea. This approachcaused misinterpretation. In fact, Ancient Greek philosophical doxography related to the problem of cyclic timeand eternal recurrence has no adequate analogy. Nevertheless, it should not become the basis for negation of therelation between «Eternal Recurrence of the same» and the antiquity, because this approach takes Nietzsche’sidea and ancient culture separately from each other, as if there is no correlation between them. To avoid this mistake, the author used philosophical hermeneutics as a research method. The main idea of this paper is based onNietzsche’s affirmation of the essential link between «Eternal Recurrence of the same» and the antiquity. According to Nietzsche, philosophy is an exception from antiquity, and not its focus. The purpose of the current researchis to discover the connection of ethical consequences from the concept of Eternal Recurrence with ancient culturein general and with the ancient concept of time particularly. The main attention is focused on the separation of the«mysterious phenomena of antiquity» and the «Apollonian» life of the polis, «Olympus of Illusion». Eternal Recurrence implies a return of the political and artistic antiquity, but not Dionysian sides of the Ancient Greek culture. The «Eternal Recurrence» is a repetition of typical phenomena: agonism, polis, war, art. With regard to theancient concept of the time’s nature, Nietzsche’s theory stated not return to the same, but the present moment as the most important. All human forces must be given to the present moment. Through the example of Hellenic understanding of time (mythical «great» past, present moment and glory in the future), it is traced that «the past»and «future» were of decisive significance for the «present» in antiquity.