philosophical conversations

interpreting Nietzsche's eternal return

Whilst reading Adam Thurschwell's article 'Spectres of Nietzsche: Potential Futures for the Concept of the Political in Agamben and Derrida' I chanced upon a passage about Giorgoi Agamben's interpretation of Nietzsche's eternal return. Thurschwell's account of this states:

'For Nietzsche, the doctrine of the eternal return is designed to overcome the will to power's inability to master the past, the "it was" that names the "will's gnashing of teeth and most secret melancholy ", the fact that "the will cannot will backwards".'

Thurschwell adds:

'Agamben certainly shares Nietzsche's understanding up to a point; like Nietzsche, he views liberation from the past--humanity's "wandering through traditions"--as the goal of both philosophy and politics. But as Agamben points out, it is not simply the past that brings the will up against its limit, but the present moment as well.'

Thurschwell says that Nietzsche's solution is to embrace the eternal return (and the associated doctrine of loving one's fate) and thus transform every 'thus it was' and thus it is into a 'thus I willed it.' Agamben rejects Nietzsche's metaphysics of the will in favour of human potential.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at March 16, 2005 07:36 PM | TrackBack