“In all affairs, when they are past, however they have turned out, I have little regret.”
III.2
Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine that you have come to the end of your life, and as you lie on your death bed, about to expire, you are approached by some sort of spectral demon who tells you the following:
“This life as you now live and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence….The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it….” 1.
This is Nietzsche and this is his theory of Eternal Recurrence. While this series is devoted to Montaigne, let’s take a moment to consider Nietzsche’s thought experiment, as it will set the stage for Montaigne’s ideas on repentance and how to live without regret.
American philosopher John Kaag, in his book, Hiking with Nietzsche, writes of the Eternal Recurrence:
“Nietzsche suggests that the affirmation of the eternal return is possible only if one is willing and able to become well-adjusted to life and to oneself… This specter of infinite monotony was for Nietzsche the abiding impetus to assume absolute responsibility; if one’s choices are to be replayed endlessly, they’d better be the ‘right’ ones.”
Similarly, in an unpublished note, Nietzsche wrote: “The question which you will have to answer before every deed that thou do: ‘is this such a deed as I am prepared to perform an incalculable number of times?'” 2.
Now consider Montaigne, from the chapter, On Repentance, “If I had to live over agin, I would live as I have lived.”
To recap the time line, Nietzsche wrote roughly three hundred years after Montaigne. Montaigne was for Nietzsche one of the few writers of whom he expressed consistent admiration throughout the course of his career. A few scholars have looked deeply into the influence of the Frenchman upon the German. 3. We will, however, set all that aside, as I want to consider the question: Pretending that Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence is a real thing, how do we live in the here and now such that at the turning of the hourglass we are prepared to start all over without regret?
In an attempt to answer that question, I will, in my next post, return to Montaigne.
__________________________________
- The Gay Science, Friederich Nietzsche, section 341.
- Ludovici, Anthony M., ed. (1911). “The Eternal Recurrence”. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Twilight of the Idols. §28 – via Project Gutenberg.
- For a deep dive into this relationship consider, Nietzsche and Montaigne by Robert Miner, Springer International Publishing AG, 2017