Breve recuento de campañas electorales y uso de TIC

In GS 285, Nietzsche first introduces his concept of eternal recurrence (GS; Kaufmann:

footnote 13, 230): Now that God the guarantor is dead: „Excelsior! —…,du hast keinen fortwährenden Wächter und Freund für deine sieben Einsamkeiten’ “ (KGW V 2, FW IV 285, 207: 23, 24), or: “Excelsior. ‘…you have no perpetual guardian and friend for your seven solitudes’ ” (GS 285: 299). Human beings cannot secure inner peace any more – they must therefore strive to achieve it: „ ,deinem Herzen steht keine Ruhestatt mehr offen, wo es nur zu

191 finden und nicht mehr zu suchen hat’ “ (KGW V 2, FW IV 285, 207: 29, 30), or: “ ‘…no resting place is open any longer to your heart, where it only needs to find and no longer to seek’ ” (GS 285: 230). Moreover, such an ambitious human being, on the one hand, comes to want to have no rest any more, while, on the other, he or she wishes to get away from this desire but finds him- or herself entrapped within its confines: „ ,du wehrst dich gegen irgend einen letzten Frieden, du willst die ewige Wiederkunft von Krieg und Frieden: — Mensch der Entsagung, in Alledem willst du entsagen? Wer wird dir die Kraft dazu geben? Noch hatte Niemand diese Kraft!’ “ (KGW V 2, FW IV 285, 207: 30, 208: 1 – 4), or: “ ‘you resist any ultimate peace; you will the eternal recurrence of war and peace: man of renunciation, all this you wish to renounce?

Who will give you the strength for that? Nobody yet has had this strength!’ ” (GS 285: 230, all italics mine). Nietzsche concludes with a lake image, hoping for the human being to become self-contained and self-responsible without the existence of God:

Es giebt einen See, der es sich eines Tages versagte, abzufliessen, und einen Damm dort aufwarf, wo er bisher abfloss: seitdem steigt dieser See immer höher. Vielleicht wird gerade jene Entsagung uns auch die Kraft verleihen, mit der die Entsagung selber ertragen werden kann; vielleicht wird der Mensch von da an immer höher steigen, wo er nicht mehr in einen Gott ausfliesst (KGW V 2, FW IV 285, 208: 4 – 11),

or: “There is a lake that one day ceased to permit itself to flow off; it formed a dam where it had hitherto flown off; and ever since this lake is rising higher and higher. Perhaps this very renunciation will also lend us the strength needed to bear this renunciation; perhaps man will rise ever higher as soon as he ceases to flow out into a god” (GS 285: 230).

Nietzsche’s five points are quite clear: 1) there is no divine authority any more; hence 2) there is no peace; 3) such a state is both willed and resisted; and 4) there is no escape from this alternation or recurrence; but 5) there is a hope for the recurrence to enhance human existence.

The core phrase of Nietzsche’s here is the eternal recurrence of war and peace. It suggests a

192 constant interplay of rest and activity in terms of change and return characterised by alternation.

The very process of alternation between different or gradually different states implies a kind of circularity but within certain confines – those of human nature. The finitude or wholeness of the latter is represented by the water image (lake) at the very end of the aphorism. The first image – the circle, suggested by the alternation of rest and activity – must be considered in conjunction with the second one – the lake. Taken together, the circularity of water contained happens within the boundaries of the dam around the lake. The circularity described refers to the way human energy, or the human will, operates. In his psychological interpretation of eternal recurrence (see Chapter 4), Parkes considers the lake image as related to the sea or ocean image, i.e., the circularity transpires between the self and the world. This aphorism, as is clear, focuses on the circularity within the self, since Nietzsche does not go beyond this water image, as he does in the other passages Parkes considers. According to Nietzsche, the whole world belongs primarily within the self. This self experiences itself as constantly struggling with itself. This self-struggling relation is expressed through the circular imagery of the eternal recurrence of peace and war, rest and activity, harmony and chaos. The self experiences itself as if in a circle. It is constantly pressed to respond meaningfully to the eternal recurrence of meaninglessness left in the wake of God’s demise. In this regard, the two main features of the circular image are alternation (recurrence) and rest and activity (states); of the water image, containment (lake) and fluidity (water). Read together, both the circle and the lake image express self-containment, wholeness, completeness – the moment – while the circularity itself represents the continuous flow, the endless temporal sequence of eternal recurrence.

While Nietzsche is explicit on the lake image generally representing the rest of time and given as a counterpart and a clue (the explicitly communicated desired state intimates the

193 implicit real one) to the concealed circular image of peace and war standing for continuous motion or movement of time, he hides, for self-interpretative purposes, the circle image behind, but at the same time reveals it through, the alternation of emotional states, just as he does with the lane image in GS 233. To the temporal lane image of necessity there is added the image of circularity or recurrence of peace and war: (as though) the lane becomes a circle and the inner strife necessary. At this point Nietzsche gets closer to considering the structure of time – the structure of the recurrent moment as full of contradictions represented by peace and war metaphors, the reconciliation of which the suffering and creative individual seeks and rarely achieves, and even that for a short period of time – a moment.