Nietzsche Contra Schopenhauer: The Construel of Eternal Recurrence :: Philosophy

Nietzsche Contra Schopenhauer The Construel of Eternal Recurrence Several years after the completion of his chief work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and tersely before his final mental collapse, Nietzsche pinpointed in retrospect its central concern the fundamental conception of the work, the idea of eternal recurrence, the highest form of affirmation which can possibly be attained (6 335). To have admitted that the more or less important philosophical project of his life was the construction of a formula which could overcome nihilism and affirm life, betrayed not only what he believed to have been his sterling(prenominal) achievement. It also shows to what extent he was influenced by one of his idols and at the same time one of his greatest philosophical enemies that philosopher of the denial of life, Schopenhauer. It is clear that Schopenhauer remained for Nietzsche a unchanging object of admiration and profound ambivalence. The theory of art propounded in The Birth of Tragedy was obviously, as Nietzsche himself conceded, built on Schopenhauers aesthetics, although it parted company with the latter on its idea of the ultimate function of art. He dedicated one of his Untimely Meditations to Schopenhauer, his philosophical educator, though he was later to reject Schopenhauers epistemological and aesthetic doctrines. He came in the end to criticize Schopenhauer, along with Christianity, calling them enemies of life in their fundamental pessimism. Although in his late literary works Nietzsche called Schopenhauer nihilistic and decadent, he simultaneously praised him with the nomenclature he is the last German to be taken seriously...a European event, equal to Goethe, equal to Hegel, equal to Heinrich Heine (6 125). From all this we should be able to see that Nietzsches set about to construct a philosophy of affirmation through his idea of eternal recurrence was aimed in Schopenhauers general direction. I wish in this short paper to carry this claim further an d show that it has more than merely general validity. The way in which Nietzsche construes his idea of recurrence in The Joyful apprehension and Thus Spoke Zarathustra bears out well that the idea was, in all its details, directly influenced by and specifically marshalled against some of the main arguments of Schopenhauer. Nietzsche was thoroughly familiar with Schopenhauers writings and a comparison of some of Nietzsches major published passages on eternal recurrence and some of Schopenhauers central claims will make clear both Nietzsches obligation to Schopenhauer, and the way in which Nietzsche believed his refutation succeeded in creating what he held to be the most noble formula of the great affirmation.