Nietzsche at the Deathbed: the Eternal Recurrence as a Counter to the ‘Preaching of Death’

Abstract In recent scholarship, the dominant reading of Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal recurrence has been as a thought experiment. This paper responds to this in two ways. First, this paper relocates eternal recurrence in the context of Nietzsche’s abiding concern with the ‘preaching of death’, a powerful, life‐negating weapon of the ascetic priest. Second, it presents it as a reality Nietzsche believed himself to have encountered through a ‘mystical’ experience. Zarathustra functions as Nietzsche’s ‘proof’ of this experience. ‘The heaviest weight’ section is equivalent to the priest’s examen; an introspective and challenging exercise which applies a ‘graced perspective’ to one’s life. This is a cosmological reading of eternal recurrence, however, it re‐classifies Nietzsche’s scientific ‘proofs’ for the doctrine as exercises of fides quaerens intellectum . Whilst this interpretation makes Nietzsche’s doctrine more esoteric, it is textually grounded, and strongly accords with Nietzsche’s mature project of overcoming the priest’s historic influence.