VALENTIN TIEMP

how inarticulable is the ‘thought of thoughts’. In one a note from the period of the

composition of The Gay Science he introduces the idea that everything might

recur, adding: ‘Beginning of August 1881 in Sils-Maria, 6,000 feet above sea level and much higher above all human things’ (KSA 9:11 [141] p. 494). In the section

on Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Ecce Homo he refers to this note when he describe

the genesis of the thought. He writes: ‘The founding conception of this work [i.e.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra ], the thought of Eternal Return, this highest formula of

affirmation that can ever be attained, belongs to August 1881: it is cast onto a sheet with the subtitle: “6,000 feet beyond humanity and time” ’ (KSA 6 p. 335).

How should it be interpreted ? Is the doctrine a scientific theory (fully fur- f

nished with scientific proofs in the notes of the later 1880’s), or a speculative cos- f

mology, or a moral imperative ? In a sense it is all and none at the same time. As I 5

shall show, Nietzsche presents the doctrine in certain ways as part of his wider strategy of resistance to the philosophy of transcendence. Hence I shall dispute Heidegger’s reading^, which would place the doctrine at the core of Nietzsche’s thought, more fundamental even than his notion of will to power.

If we turn first to the scientific version of Nietzsche’s doctrine, we encounter a certain embarrassment. Nietzsche’s argument runs thus: ‘If the world may be thought of as a certain definite quantity of force and as a certain definite number of centres of force . . . it follows that in the great dice game of existence, it must pass through a calculable number of combinations. In infinite time every possible combination would at some time or other be reached; more, it would have been reached an infinite number times. And since between every combination and its next recurrence all other possible combinations would have to take place, and

each of these combinations conditions the entire sequence of combinations in the a

same series, a circular movement of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated: the world as a circular movement that has already repeated itself infinitely often and plays its game in infinitum’ (KSA 13: 14 [188] p. 376). We feel embarrassed not only because the argument is not particularly convincing (or rather about as con­ vincing as Zeno’s paradox of the arrow), but also because the manner of argumen­ tation and the premisses of the argument run counter to the nature of his work in 1888, with its ever increasing hostility to the sciences and scientific thinking.

Fortunately we are spared the embarrassment since David Wood has re­ minded us^ that we need not interpret Nietzsche as actually being persuaded by his own argument. Instead, Wood maintains, Nietzsche is employing the language of

contemporary sciences merely to demonstrate that his theory is as valid in scientific

terms as the contemporary conception of time as a linear process, Nietzsche could

I l l proof, but rather as trying to demonstrate, to those for whom mechanistic science

does constitute the valid model of understanding, that a notion of cyclical time is

no less valid than one of linear time. Nietzsche’s own understanding is of course that the doctrine requires a level of comprehension far above that of everyday human thinking, yet given that this is not possible for all, he is obliged to present it in different terms.

The same can be said for his cosmological ‘proof’ of cyclical time, which as Wood observes mimics the language of Aristotelian thinking, A fragment from 1885 addresses the understanding of time as linear in a manner analogous to the scientific ‘proof’, in other words by countering the teleological assumptions of Aristotelianism on its own terms: ‘If the world had a goal, it must have been reached. If there were an unintended final state for it, this too must have been reached. If it were at all capable of tarrying, of becoming fixed, of “Being”, if, amongst all its Becoming, it were capable just for one instant of “Being”, then all

Becoming would long since have come to an end, similarly with all thinking, with I

all “spirit”. The fact of “spirit” as a Becoming proves that the world has no goal, no j

final state and is incapable of Being’ (KSA 11: 36 [15] p. 556).

Again Nietzsche is not trying to prove the veracity of his doctrine, rather he is bringing under scrutiny the implications of the Aristotelian assumption of linear time, leading towards a moment of apocalypse and subsequent redemption. He is cashing out in these terms what it would mean to maintain both a recognition of the dynamics of world history and belief in a telos which would amount to a transcendence above and beyond the world of Becoming. Implicit in this polemic is also an assault on Hegelian dialectics. For, Nietzsche is arguing, if spirit, or Geist, is defined as activity, and in Hegelian thinking its activity constitutes the unfolding of world history, the question as to why it should suddenly cease upon assumption to Absolute Knowledge remains unanswered. The fact that the telos of Hegelian

Geist is stasis , final inactivity, calls us to re-examine the view of spirit as essential

activity.

On this view then, we need not view the more scientific or cosmological as­ pects of Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence as troublesome aberrations. Rather, they are part of a polemic informed by an ad hominem approach to its targets, and it is this ad hominem (or feminam 1 ) approach which most graphically illustrates Nietzsche’s treatment of metaphysics as a textual practice, where the manner to undermine such practices is not to critique them in the name of some other, higher truth, but rather to assimilate oneself to the peculiarities of their discourse in order to dismantle them from within.

In his earlier work, most especially in the second of the Untimely Medita­

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