NIETZSCHE’S AMBIVALENCE: THE ILLUSIVE PEDAGOGUE OF THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE

Abstract

Friedrich Nietzsche is commonly known for his challenges of objective truth and morality, his metaphysical skepticism, epistemological perspectivism, and for popular quotes such as “God is dead” and “There are no facts, only interpretations.” Hermeneutically, his work teeters on a tightrope that spans the great abyss of existentialism. Sway to far to the left, and you will read him to be a racist dogmatist. Stumble and fall to the right, and he is understood as advocating for nihilism and the eternal meaninglessness of life. Nietzsche’s battle against dogmatism and nihilism come to a head in his concept of the eternal recurrence. This paper will examine the fundamental aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy including his metaphysical position, his perspectivism, and his naturalism. It will examine how his philosophy relates to the indifferentist, non-cosmological, and cosmological interpretations of the eternal recurrence. Finally, it will claim that Nietzsche, as the illusive pedagogue of the eternal recurrence, is able to cross this great abyss with the use of ambivalence. It will show how through the use of ambivalence, his teaching can simultaneously avoid dogmatism, affirm life as nihilistic, and avoid the individual implications that existential nihilism seemingly entails. Nietzsche’s ambivalent presentation of the eternal recurrence allows for his readers to perspectivally affirm their lives as existentially meaningful in an existentially meaningless world.