Two books on Nietzsche
Eternal recurrence features prominently in both
Recently, I have circled back, like a hawk, to rediscover a momentous thinker who strongly shaped my ideas in high school (as is common among teenagers): Nietzsche. My primary reason to circle back to him is that I think he is right about most things. Another reason lies in my frustrations with the realities of academic life. Much of scientific pursuit today, regardless of its content, lacks the joyous and life-affirming character that Nietzsche appropriately called Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft). And no, gay science does not refer to DEI-inspired science (although, as a queer scholar, I appreciate the polysemy). Rather, participating in Gay Science entails an attitude, disposition, or capacity to joyously unite the affairs of the mind with the affairs of the body - or, more appropriately, with the tragic cosmic dance. The challenge is finding ways to cultivate it in academia. This is difficult when the PhD process, the bureaucratisation of the university, and the publish-or-perish rat race are designed to discipline and standardise the young without much regard to their mental or physical wellbeing, let alone spiritual vitality. But complaining about it perpetuates the very negativity that is the problem; the only solution is to simply do things differently, and to cultivate the positive spirit in one's everyday practice.
To that end, I wanted to review two interesting books on Nietzsche - a 60s classic by Gilles Deleuze and a brand new Cambridge Elements book (just released in January 2025!) by Neil Sinhababu. Together, they can help to understand Nietzsche better. In particular, they convinced me that the idea of Eternal Recurrence still matters.
“Nietzsche and Philosophy” by Gilles Deleuze (1962)
Deleuze is a difficult thinker to recommend to most people. Analytical philosophers are bound to find his writing style foreign and impenetrable. Even among continental philosophers, Deleuze is one of the least comprehensible, similar to (late) Derrida and Baudrillard. His apologists (among whom I count myself) can rightfully point to the creativity, originality, and daring of his conceptual apparatus as mitigating factors. I do not think they fully excuse his persistent unwillingness to provide clear definitions and logical arguments. But there is a hypnotic, propulsive, and inspiring quality to his writing that helps to explain why so many artists, political theorists, sociologists, and philosophers like his work. However, there is also another side to Deleuze. In some books, his indomitable creative spirit is married to a (relatively!) rigorous and analytical methodology. This is the case with Nietzsche and Philosophy, which I would rank high among all his works. It is clear that Deleuze knew and loved his Nietzsche. Despite many unclear passages and poetic licenses (especially towards the end), this book is much more readable than his later hallucinatory, "schizoanalytic" work with Felix Guattari, such as Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia and A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. With regard to his contributions to philosophy, I think Deleuze should be best appreciated as a creative and deep commentator on the subversive classics of Western philosophy: Spinoza, Nietzsche, Hume, Bergson, etc... His own vitalism, or "transcendental empiricism," cannot be understood without a thorough knowledge of these thinkers. Through his fluid integration of the insights of these thinkers into his own conceptual apparatus, Deleuze has managed to create something deeply original (and occasionally crazy!) but also something deeply rooted in the philosophical canon. Reading Nietzsche and Philosophy, one of his early works (before Difference and Repetition), one can clearly see the influence of Nietzschean concepts and themes creeping into what later becomes Deleuzeanism.
What does he do with Nietzsche? He explains how his concepts, such as the Will to Power, the Eternal Return, the Overman, Action, Joy, and Affirmation, are interlinked into a coherent philosophy of life. He also explains how these concepts may run counter to, and undermine, the "reactive" philosophies of Christianity, Kantianism, Hegelianism, Utilitarianism, etc. According to Nietzsche and Deleuze, what matters most is a certain attitude or comportment towards life that judges and evaluates things according to their contribution to master morality vs. slave morality ("higness" vs. "baseness"). Deleuze's attempts at systematizing Nietzschean concepts and aphorism do not always work, since Nietzsche was a playful trickster who often contradicted himself. However, for the most part, Deleuze creates a coherent picture of a Nietzschean philosophy of affirmation that owes as much to the interpreter as to the source material - which is perfectly in line with the Nietzschean claim that there are no facts, only interpretations. And while I think Deleuze's poetic interpretation of Zarathustra in the latter third of the book veers too far into purely subjective interpretation (unconstrained "perspectivism"), he mostly manages to hold it all together under a suggestive and coherent narrative structure. My major gripe, however, is that Deleuze gives Nietzsche a few too many free passes when the latter is being obscure, unfair, pedantic, or self-contradictory (which happens a lot). Deleuze seems afraid to criticize his master's teachings. It is a great irony that Deleuze's approach to Nietzsche can be surprisingly, well, "slavish." It seems hard to develop a master morality without embracing a new master, but a philosopher should be wary of clinging too many hopes onto anyone - even Nietzsche.
While there are echoes of the later, relatively impenetrable Deleuze in this book as well, and sometimes I got really frustrated with it, I think it mostly succeeds in 1) summarizing and systematizing Nietzsche in an exciting, coherent, and enticing fashion, and 2) summarizing and systematizing Deleuze's OWN philosophical system (in its early form). While Nietzsche scholars will undoubtedly find much that is idiosyncratic or unsupportable in his readings of Nietzsche, the most important thing is that his interpretation COMES ALIVE. This coming-alive - or resurrection - of Nietzsche motivates a fascinating new philosophy. I hope that Deleuze scholarship becomes more popular in analytical circles, since there is a lot that is fascinating in his (flawed) embrace of the Nietzschean task of creative transformation.
“Nietzsche on the Eternal Recurrence” by Neil Sinhababu (2025)
This is part of the prolific Cambridge Elements series, which contains short books intended as accessible introductions to various thinkers and concepts. The book asks: If the world as it is, including our own life, were to repeat itself forever, in the exact same way, how should we feel and act? What attitude should we take towards our own past, present, and future? Should we laugh, cry, keep living our lives, or retreat to solitude? This Cambridge Elements introduction to Nietzsche's idea of Eternal Recurrence is a very helpful guide to making sense of Nietzsche's life-affirming philosophy. Despite my enduring love for, and deep resonance with, the Nietzschean project, this book made me realize that I had thus far failed to fully appreciate the importance and beauty of the idea of eternal recurrence. For me, the core insight of eternal recurrence is that we can posit a test for ourselves in contemplating the infinities of human experience - we can take or leave the deeper "reality" of such infinities. This book convinced me of the importance of taking the thought experiment of eternal recurrence seriously, although I am not willing to go all the way to embrace its cosmic implications. And although I still think that the idea is problematic and hard to interpret, Sinhababu's little book joins the ranks of Deleuze's marvelous (but also idiosyncratic and obscure) Nietzsche and Philosophy as the most compelling exposition of the cosmic tragic joy entailed by the idea of eternal recurrence.
Sinhababu spends the majority of the book going through Thus Spoke Zarathustra where the idea is given prominence, with only slight occasional references to Gay Science, Ecce Homo, etc. For a slim book, this is undoubtedly the right thing to do, although the reader should be alerted to the fact that many of the earlier and later developments of Nietzsche's ideas are left out. But the main advantage of such a narrow focus is that it really allows the core idea to bloom organically as we follow the ordeals of Zarathustra and his strange cadre of companions. And Sinhababu's own self-declared normative commitment to Nietzschean philosophy, above and beyond his clear expertise in its factual content, really serves the narrative thrust well. Although it might lead him to ignore some weak spots in the theory, it allows him to vividly convey the emotional, psychological, and spiritual impetus that makes someone love Nietzsche.
Let me conclude with some final words that build on the two works. Reading Nietzsche can make us revaluate and redirect our own life projects. The Nietzschean project of the transvaluation of all values, and the affirmation of life in all its joy and sadness, is perhaps the most important normative project of the last two hundred years. It is possible to embrace the Nietzschean project as a rationalist secularist, but the cynical self-evaluation of the modern scientific attitude threatens to be sterile or destructive without the embrace of the artistic, emotional, and religious side of life. Contemplating a "crazy" cosmological hypothesis like eternal recurrence makes sense once you understand that the Nietzschean project entails the creation of a kind of psychodrama - which could take many diverse forms - that places human beings in a new relationship with other people, the cosmos, and themselves. For philosophers, myths like the eternal recurrence can serve as an "arms chair" thought experiment that forces us to reckon with the infinities involved in the human experience. But beyond that, it should rock our socks off. It offers us - not just philosophers but any brave seeker of truth and joy - the blueprint for a post-Christian, anti-nihilist, religion or "existentialist ritual" that can be used, instrumentally, for fostering character and value transformation. Whether this can be done through philosophy alone is an open question; we almost certainly require art, culture, and science as well. At the very least, our private and collective goal - to the extent that we should think of it in those terms - should be giving birth to the "superhuman”; or, more modestly, a psychologically and ethically somewhat improved human specimen.