the symbols of eternal return and the eternal return of symbols in friedrich nietzsche's also sprach

412 Pages·2015·1.68 MB·English

THE SYMBOLS OF ETERNAL RETURN
AND THE ETERNAL RETURN OF SYMBOLS
IN FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE’S ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA

IVAN NIKOLAYEVICH ZHAVORONKOV

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HUMANITIES
YORK UNIVERSITY
TORONTO, ONTARIO

April 2015

© Ivan Zhavoronkov, 2015
ABSTRACT
This work argues that Nietzsche employs the circle image to communicate his idea of eternal
recurrence in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The recurrences of circular and diurnal symbols (cycles) represent
the eternal return on both contextual and narrative levels, thereby creating within the narrative the ring of
rings, the ring of recurrence, i.e., affirmation of affirmation, as implicit in the circular image of the will
willing itself. Importantly, it demonstrates that diurnal symbols represent the eternal recurrence by
returning to themselves in the text, while Zarathustra’s identity changes throughout the diurnal cycle:
morning symbolises his rebirth; noon, his maturity; evening, his decline; and midnight, his death –
thereby manifesting the literary hero’s affirmative, creative response to meaningless existence in
accordance with the doctrine of life affirmation. Nietzsche’s work is revealed to harbour a hidden
symbolic diurnal structure comprised of twelve chronological diurnal cycles representing his most
abysmal thought. The underlying structure revealed by this reading demonstrates the eternal recurrence to
be the unifying idea of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Conflicts in existing interpretations of the eternal return reflect their commentators’ failure to
solve the problem of its communication in Nietzsche’s work due to their underestimation of the symbolic
form of the doctrine. Employing the methods of analogy and association, this project undertakes to solve
this problem by examining the relation between the circular and diurnal symbols and the eternal
recurrence. Careful analysis reveals the three-dimensional character of the doctrine as the return of the
moment inaugurating the moment and sequence of time: the return of same meaninglessness, meaningful
differences, and same meaningfulness – through the roundness (moment, or same meaningfulness) and
continuity (sequence, or meaningful differences) of circular symbols and the moment (moment, or same
meaningfulness) and temporality (sequence, or meaningful differences) of diurnal symbols, employed to
counter the same meaninglessness of daily existence. Thus, while the circular and diurnal symbols
incorporate the idea of eternal recurrence, thereby emphasising its life-affirmative aspect, the eternal
return calls for the creative recurrence of circular and diurnal symbols, with the symbols and the eternal
return merged into one creative, affirmative whole.
ii
ABBREVIATIONS
AZ – Also sprach Zarathustra
EH – Ecce Homo
ER – Eternal Return or Eternal Recurrence
BGE – Beyond Good and Evil
BT – The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music
FW – Die fröhliche Wissenschaft
GM – On the Genealogy of Morals
GS – The Gay Science
HH – Human All Too Human
KGW – Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Werke
TI – Twilight of the Idols
TL – “On Truth and Lie(s) in an Extra-Moral Sense”
TSZ – Thus Spoke Zarathustra
WP – The Will to Power
WM – Der Wille zur Macht

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT...........................................................................................................................ii
ABBREVIATIONS...............................................................................................................iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS.......................................................................................................iv
LIST OF TABLES.................................................................................................................vi
Epigraph............................................................................................................................... vii
Chapter 1: Introduction............................................................................................................1
The Meaning of Eternal Return: Rationality vs. Existence.....................................14
I. Eternal Return in Nietzsche’s Nachlass Material................................................15
1. ER as Cosmology...........................................................................................16
2. ER: Analytical Readings................................................................................18
3. ER as Metaphysics.........................................................................................24
4. ER: Cosmology vs. Existence.........................................................................28
5. ER as an Aesthetic Phenomenon....................................................................30
II. ER as Life Affirmation.....................................................................................32
1. Jaspers: ER as a Consequence of the Death of God........................................33
2. Soll: ER as a Possibility.................................................................................35
3. Magnus: Attitudinal Version, ER as a Test and Ideal......................................37
4. Deleuze: ER of Differences............................................................................40
5. Rosen: ER as Cosmology, Anti-Christian and Anti-Platonist..........................41
6. Seung’s Reconciliation of Cosmology and Existence .....................................43
Chapter 2: Analysis of the Eternal Return in “On the Vision and the Riddle” ........................46
1. ER as Metaphor (Stambaugh) vs. Literal Existentialness (Hatab)......................46
2. Zarathustra’s Image...........................................................................................52
3. The Deductive Argument..................................................................................54
4. An Objection to the Deductive Argument..........................................................60
5. Time Models.....................................................................................................63
6. The Temporal Argument...................................................................................70
7. ER as Life Affirmation......................................................................................77
Chapter 3: Introduction to Nietzsche’s Symbolic Language...................................................83
Chapter 4: Aesthetic Interpretations of Eternal Recurrence..................................................108
1. Bertram: Mythological Reading ......................................................................110
2. Higgins: Musical Interpretation.......................................................................112
3. Hatab: Repetition as ER..................................................................................116
4. Parkes: Mobility-Based Interpretation..............................................................119
5. Jappinen: Poetic Correspondence: Symbol and Narrative as ER......................121
6. Parkes: Psychological Interpretation with Metaphorical Implications..............124
7. Puszczalowski: ER of the Seasons...................................................................132
8. Ryan: Astral Interpretation..............................................................................134
9. Alderman: ER as a Dramatic Re-Enactment....................................................137
10. Nitske: (Undeveloped) Diurnal Interpretation 1............................................140
11. Solomon and Higgins: (Undeveloped) Diurnal Interpretation 2.....................142
12. Nehamas: ER as a Literary Narrative............................................................145

iv
Chapter 5: Circular Symbols and Eternal Recurrence..........................................................149
I. Reasons for Teaching through Metaphors........................................................149
II. Introduction to Literary Interpretation.............................................................164
Chapter 6: The Circular Representation of Eternal Return...................................................185
I. Analysis of the Circular Images in The Gay Science........................................185
1. The Musical Box in GS 109.........................................................................186
2. The Lane in GS 233.....................................................................................188
3. War and Peace in GS 285.............................................................................190
4. The Hourglass in GS 341.............................................................................193
II. Analysis of the Circular Images in Thus Spoke Zarathustra............................196
1. Eagle and Serpent: Wide Circles in “Zarathustra’s Prologue”.......................198
2. The Self-Propelled Wheel in “On the Three Metamorphoses”......................200
3. The Self-Propelled Wheel in “On the Way of the Creator”...........................202
4. The Self-Propelled Wheel in “On Child and Marriage”................................204
5. The Ring in “On Love of the Neighbor”.......................................................207
6. The Ball in “On Free Death”........................................................................211
7. The Ring in “On the Virtuous”.....................................................................215
8. The Circle in “On the Vision and the Riddle”...............................................217
9. The Snake in “On the Vision and the Riddle”...............................................221
10. The Belts in “Upon the Mount of Olives”...................................................225
11. The Apple in “On the Three Evils”.............................................................227
12. The Circles in “On Old and New Tablets”..................................................230
13. The Circular Images in “The Convalescent”...............................................234
14. The Ring in “The Seven Seals (Or: the Yes and Amen Song)”...................239
15. The Ring and the Ball in “At Noon”...........................................................245
16. The Ring in “The Drunken Song”...............................................................249
Chapter 7: Analysis of the Diurnal Symbols in Thus Spoke Zarathustra..............................254
Pre-Cycle............................................................................................................257
1st Day Cycle......................................................................................................260
2nd Day Cycle .....................................................................................................266
3rd Day Cycle......................................................................................................274
4th Day Cycle......................................................................................................282
5th Day Cycle......................................................................................................290
6th Day Cycle......................................................................................................298
7th Day Cycle......................................................................................................300
8th Day Cycle......................................................................................................306
9th Day Cycle......................................................................................................315
10th Day Cycle....................................................................................................322
11th Day Cycle....................................................................................................330
12th Day Cycle....................................................................................................343
Table: 12 Day Cycles and Main Events:..............................................................366
Concluding Thoughts on the Diurnal Structure....................................................................367
Summary.............................................................................................................................381
BIBLIOGRAPHY...............................................................................................................384

v
LIST OF TABLES
Table: 12 Day Cycles and Main Events...............................................................................366

vi
Epigraph

NIETZSCHE

He’s never more ill than his willing
Encroached by reproaches exceeding;
The heavenly valley unveiling,
He’ll take off the cover of breeding:

Within a secluded location
He lives in the mansion of wonder;
In homely and warm isolation
He dreams now of lightning and thunder.

(Ivan Zhavoronkov
Philosophical Stones in Poetical Tones 38)
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Chapter 1: Introduction
In the study that follows I take the position that the major problems in philosophy,
especially in humanities, remain centred around communication, which involves the question of
expression and understanding. This is especially true of the much-debated idea of eternal
recurrence (ER) in Nietzsche’s most complex work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (TSZ). I believe
that certain difficulties arising in explicating and, especially, locating the doctrine within the text,
to which attest numerous conflicts in existing interpretations, stem from the lack of appreciating
the symbolic form of eternal recurrence. I therefore propose to solve the problem of the
communication of the eternal recurrence by arguing that the key to the understanding of this
fundamental idea should be sought through the circular and, especially, diurnal symbols
Nietzsche uses to communicate his doctrine – the life-enhancing symbols, the recurrences of
which incorporate and reinforce, while being called for by it, the doctrine of life-affirmation.1 It
will thus be established that, while the circular symbols represent the idea of eternal recurrence

1 My earliest mention of Nietzsche’s diurnal symbols representing the eternal return dates back to my BA/MA thesis
entitled “Symbolism in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (comparing the original German with the
Russian, English, and French translations)”, Department of Foreign Languages and Department of Russian and
Foreign Literature, V.I. Vernadskiy Taurida National University (also known as M.V. Frunze Simferopol State
University), Simferopol, 2002. («Символика произведения Фридриха Ницше «Так говорил Заратустра» (в
сопоставлении оригинала с русским, английским и французским переводами)». Кафедра английского языка
и литературы, кафедра русской и зарубежной литературы. Таврический национальный университет им. В.И.
Вернадского (Симферопольский государственный университет им. М.В. Фрунзе). Симферополь, 2002.)
[“Simvolika proizvedeniya Fridrikha Nitsshe ‘Tak govoril Zaratustra’ (v sopostavlenii originala s russkim,
angliyskim i frantsuzskim perevodami).” Kafedra angliyskogo yazyka i literatury, kafedra russkoy i zarubezhnoy
literatury. Tavricheskiy natsional’nyy universitet im. V.I. Vernadskogo (Simferopol’skiy gosudarstvennyy
universitet im. M.V. Frunze). Simferopol’, 2002.]. See the published excerpt from this work in I.N. Zhavoronkov,
O.V. Masliyeva, A.E. Nazirov, “The Problem of Adequacy in the Literary Translations of the Symbols in Friedrich
Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” Proceedings of the Sixth Conference at the G.R. Derzhavin Academy ARSII
(or ARLA – the Academy of Russian Literature and Fine Arts). Russian Publishing House “Kultura” (“Culture”).
St-Petersburg, 2008. 3 – 10. Print. (И.Н. Жаворонков, О.В. Маслиева, А.Э. Назиров, «Проблема адекватности
литературного перевода символики произведения Фридриха Ницше «Так говорил Заратустра» – Сборник
трудов шестой конференции АРСИИ им. Г.Р. Державина – Российское издательство «Культура» – Санкт-
Петербург – 2008, стр. 3 – 10.) [I.N. Zhavoronkov, O.V. Masliyeva, A.E. Nazirov, “Problema adekvatnosti
literaturnogo perevoda simvoliki proizvedeniya Fridrikha Nitsshe ‘Tak govoril Zaratustra’ ” – Sbornik trudov
shestoi konferentsii ARSII im. G.R. Derzhavina – Rossiyskoye izdatel’stvo “Kultura” – Sankt-Peterburg, 2008, str.
3 – 10]. Print. My earliest suggestion that the symbols in Nietzsche’s text return to themselves dates back to my MA
major research paper entitled “Symbolism in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra”, the Graduate
Programme in Humanities, York University, Toronto, 2009.
1
through repetition on both contextual and narrative levels, the diurnal symbols do so, most
importantly, by constituting a chronological sequence of twelve diurnal cycles throughout the
text, from beginning to end – where the recurrences of both circular and diurnal symbols (cycles)
on the narrative level create the ring of rings, the ring of recurrence, i.e., affirmation of
affirmation, as implicit in the circular image of the will willing itself. As the diurnal narrative
unfolds, Zarathustra’s identity will be seen to change throughout the diurnal cycle: morning
symbolises his rebirth; noon, his maturity; evening, his decline; and midnight, his death, which
reflects, through the diversity of meanings it inaugurates, his affirmative, creative response to the
meaninglessness of existence, the very essence of the eternal recurrence as the doctrine of life
affirmation. It will be concluded, primarily, that the dynamic cyclical diurnal symbolic structure
of Thus Spoke Zarathustra portrays the eternal recurrence as the work’s unifying idea.
The debate about Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence is a long-standing one. Nietzsche
himself never clearly articulated this idea. Instead, he presented his doctrine in three different
ways: 1) the eternal recurrence in “The Greatest Weight” (The Gay Science (GS) §341; 1882) is
offered as a hypothesis written in fable form – as a kind of test; 2) the Will to Power (WP)
section 1066 (March – June 1888) from the unpublished Nachlass material provides an analytical
discussion of the eternal recurrence; and 3) Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883 – 1885) attempts a
poetical representation of the eternal recurrence, a sort of a combination of 1 and 2. For
Nietzsche himself, the latter of these contained the most important expression of the eternal
recurrence, something we know from his autobiographical essay, Ecce Homo (1888), where he
cites numerous passages from it and references it as a book on eternal return.2
Much research has been done on the topic of eternal recurrence. Interpretations range
from philosophical and scientific to philosophical and literary ones and, generally, may be

2 I use eternal recurrence and eternal return interchangeably.
2
divided into philosophical and aesthetic ones.3 The philosophical interpretations include the
following main classes: ontological readings (e.g. Heidegger; Deleuze); cosmological readings
(e.g. Löwith; Danto); existential readings (e.g. Jaspers); and normative readings (Kantian, moral,
ethical, GS 341 their source). Most interpretations are centred around the relation between the
cosmological version and its existential imperative. The aesthetic interpretations comprise
mythological (Bertram), musical (Higgins), repetitive (Hatab), mobility-based (Parkes) and
others (see Chapter 5) and attend to the language in which the doctrine is expressed. While the
former tend to disregard the language of eternal recurrence, thereby losing much of the
affirmative force of the doctrine while locating it within the confines of a particular passage or a
set of passages, the latter do not (fully) account for the relation between the idea and its means of
expression, thereby leaving a gap in understanding how the language, under the influence of the
doctrine, functions within the text. Moreover, there is no single aesthetic interpretation that
captures the recurrent character of the work – that shows the recurrence of images within the
text, that this recurrence constitutes the work’s structure and, finally, that this recurrent structure,
in turn, represents the idea of eternal recurrence. It is crucial, therefore, to come up with such an
interpretation in order to fully appreciate both the life-affirmative aspect of the eternal recurrence
and the recurrent language of affirmation in which the doctrine is expressed – as the unifying
idea of Nietzsche’s work. It would ultimately justify his own comment that Thus Spoke
Zarathustra is a book on eternal return.4
The main conception of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the eternal recurrence of
the same, has been studied in different ways. But Zarathustra’s doctrine has not been duly
approached from the symbolic perspective I follow in this dissertation; namely, I consider the

3 While philosophical interpretations are chiefly concerned with the meaning of eternal return, aesthetic
interpretations tend to focus on the literary means of its expression.
4 See the second sentence in the first section of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” in Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo (295).
3