Reconsider Eternal Recurrence: A Nietzschean Re-evaluation of Death

Nietzsche’s doctrine of Eternal Recurrence occupies a central – though profoundly ambiguous – position in his philosophical corpus. Whether interpreted as a brick of his metaphysics, a psychological test of life affirmation, or a literal cosmological thesis, the doctrine continuously induces transformative philosophical and existential responses across time and spaces. This thesis aims to investigate a particular implication of the doctrine, namely, how Eternal Recurrence challenges the classical and existential meaning of death as the absolute boundary of human existence. Traditionally, death is conceptualized as end par excellence – an irreversible cessation of life that confers meaning and urgency upon human existence. Eternal Recurrence, in disrupting temporality, demands a radical reinterpretation of death, and significantly destabilizes established metaphysical and religious paradigms that treat death either as definitive extinction or a gateway to transcendental other-worldly immortality. My thesis proposes that Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence constitutes a radical re-evaluation of death, dismantling traditional metaphysical and religious frameworks predicated upon human finitude, thereby opening novel pathways toward affirmation. The doctrine completes Nietzsche’s project of the re-evaluation of all values, which involves two central negations: first, the negation of values themselves, particularly those rooted in Christian morality; and second, the negation of the being who issues these values – namely, we as beings-in-the-world who are naturally concerned with our existence, or, in Martin Heidegger’s terms, beings for whom Being “is an issue”. Yet, importantly, Eternal Recurrence by itself does not establish any positive foundation; rather, it aims to dismantle, negate, and even turn against itself. The doctrine must be acquired and overcome, subjected to its own scrutiny, again and again. Any putative foundation, including the doctrine itself, must be perpetually shattered if the radically affirmative mode of life that Nietzsche envisions is to be made possible.