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Living and Being Alive : Thoughts on the Relationship of the Human to Nietzsche's Concept of Eternal Recurrence

Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2016

Abstract

Nietzsche investigated if and how the current generation of humans, and more specifically, the scientists, can influence their future state. He has been thinking about how it would be possible for a human to participate actively in a generic formation process that includes him without contradicting with its preconditions.

In order to do this, knowledge about these preconditions has to be accumulated through (direct) experience. The precondition of human thought is the power of his urges, desires and passions in their continuously changing nature.

They express themselves in the Will to Power but have not yet been sufficiently understood as the forces of life that underpin everything. The specific manner of the human subsistence is formed depending on these forces.

Further, the clashing forces and their connection with the Will to Power are described; primarily based on the complex interpretation of Nietzsche's philosophy by Gilles Deleuze. The human can access the powers directly through himself.

This enables him to seek their perfection. Here we can follow Nietzsche's argumentation, in which a human that is subdued to the forces of life manifested in social standards is assigned to specific modes of human existence such as scientist, bureaucrat and others.

This is contrasted to Zarathustra, the life-affirming human. The pinnacle/culmination of Zarathustra's life forces is expressed in the recognition that he will not be able to affirm life in the same extent as those that will succeed him.

That is why his demise is an affirmation of the life-process. This line of argumentation is traced in the works "Also sprach Zarathustra" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) and "Jenseits von Gut und Böse" (Beyond Good and Evil).