Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Felix]

That may not have been Russell's interpretation, I can't find the reference. But passages from Thus Spake Zaruthustra and The Gay Science re: eternal recurrence support it.

From the Gay Science:
"What if a demon crept after you into your loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to you: “This life, as you live it at present, and have lived it, you must live it once more, and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh, and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must come to you again, and all in the same series and sequence – and similarly this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and similarly this moment, and I myself. The eternal sand-glass of existence will ever be turned once more, and you with it, you speck of dust!” – Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth, and curse the demon that so spoke? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment in which you would answer him: “You are a God, and never did I hear anything so divine!” If that thought acquired power over you as you are, it would transform you, and perhaps crush you."

[Belindi]

Liminality, the role of the trickster in Jungian archetype, religion, and art, the socially marginal individual,rites of passage,

liminality.org/about/whatisliminality/

[GaryLouisSmith]

I have written about it extensively, but not on this forum. You could read my website, but I know you won't. Why don't you tell me what you think Nietzsche meant and I will comment on that.

To you ER and Samsara are the same or almost so when in fact they amount to opposites.

1- There is no karma, teleology, or moksha involved in the forever repeatable events of Eternal Recurrence as envisioned by Nietzsche. There is no Purpose to ER as there is in Samsara...a fundamental difference. One is a process, the other an endlessly repeating statistic.

2- Samsara would in itself be an eternal reiteration, including its final resolution, within the context of ER. Having achieved moksha you would continue the same striving for eternity.

3- Within ER the same events apply to the same person in every excruciating detail forever. This cannot be happening if Samsara is to complete itself in moksha. The former is akin to law; the latter is a journey on a path to avoid future journeys.

4- Escape from pain (which you apply as a common motive) has no function in ER because whether you had more or less or none has zero effect on it statistically repeating forever.

There’s much more that can be written but that would amount to wasted energy.

ONE thing they do have in common; both ideas are completely absurd. ER makes sense only as metaphor in relation to N’s concept of Amor Fati and from there to his vision of the Übermensch.

Just one comment. You have made the many iterations of life temporal and linear, one after the other. It seems to me that, like a yogi who is many places at once, they all occur at once, simultaneously.

[GaryLouisSmith]

GaryLouisSmith: I still believe that Nietzsche’s Doctrine of the Eternal Return is the same as the Hindu idea of Samsara.

My understanding is that Eternal Recurrence was a thought experiment by Neitzsche: the will and passion for life of his mythical Superman is so great that he can say Yes! to his life, no matter how miserable, even if he had to repeat it eternally (appears that he himself failed miserably at that challenge). If this is a correct representation of his idea (as Bertrand Russell and others have suggested), it is obviously far from the Buddhist conception of Samsara.

GaryLouisSmith: What I am arguing is that there are or might well be mystics who meditate of Samsara. Why is that such an unbelievable idea?

It's believable, but you won't get too far by meditating on what is self-evident. But meditating on what is not self-evident can be very productive.

Yes, Russell is the last person I would look to as a teacher of Hindu/Buddhist ideas. I think most people responding here have made the mistake of thinking the Eternal Return as a temporal succession of lives. It was an ecstatic vision, not a thought experiment. He could see in an instant the repeating lives. They all occur at once, simultaneously. If you look at it like that you are then true to the vision of the Yogi, who is able to be many places at once. Yes, this goes against commonsense, but all mystical visions do.

[GaryLouisSmith]

I'm sure there are charlatans in Kathmandu and elsewhere. I'd not be surprised if some mystics meditate using the idea of Samsara.

Does eternal recurrence include the particular recurrence idea of Golden Age, Silver Age, Brass Age, and Iron Age ? By itself eternal recurrence is a useless idea but if I'd will my life to recur eternally just as it is/was I'd have to regard my life as a very Good Thing. Which I don't. I'd rather aim to stop repeating it just as it is/was. In other words I'd rather aim for better.

Aiming for better (and Nirvana perhaps) is facilitated by throwing out dead ideas. It's the latter I most associate with Nietzsche.

I think you are trying to make all this practical and helpful for leading a good life. I think that is a mistake. What we are dealing with here in the persons of a mystic and Nietzsche is an ecstatic vision. In an instant they can mystically see all the many, infinite, iterations of life. It's like Arjuna being given a vision of Mahayogi Krishna. A yogi is able to be many places at the same time. Likewise one is able to be many persons with many lives at the same time. The many iterations of life that Nietzsche and the mystic mystically saw all occurred in an instant, not spread out temporally. I suppose the pain in Nietzsche's life and the pain of that vision, as with Arjuna, were one.

[GaryLouisSmith]

I'm sure there are charlatans in Kathmandu and elsewhere. I'd not be surprised if some mystics meditate using the idea of Samsara.

Does eternal recurrence include the particular recurrence idea of Golden Age, Silver Age, Brass Age, and Iron Age ? By itself eternal recurrence is a useless idea but if I'd will my life to recur eternally just as it is/was I'd have to regard my life as a very Good Thing. Which I don't. I'd rather aim to stop repeating it just as it is/was. In other words I'd rather aim for better.

Aiming for better (and Nirvana perhaps) is facilitated by throwing out dead ideas. It's the latter I most associate with Nietzsche.

Actually charlatans are not that big of a problem in Kathmandu. Everyone understands the need to make some money. What is a BIG problem is vamachara, left-handed or black yoga/tantric magic. Men will tell you that boksis are everywhere, crazy women with mantras who can give you all kinds of problems in life. I once even had a medical doctor tell me that it was a big problem he had to deal with. Just because someone goes to medical school doesn't mean he doesn't believe. Many doctors believe in it. My young Nepali friend had a persistent back ache so he went to a shaman/jhakri, who told him that it wasn't a village boksi, but that he pulled a muscle playing football.

Do you know Christian Science as a religion? It started in Boston with Mary Baker Eddy. In the US every city has one or more of these churches. Surprisingly, it's usually the upper class of people who belong - Boston Brahmans and all that. Look at this section on malicious animal magnetism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bake ... _magnetism . It's fun. btw - the Christian Science Monitor is a very good liberal newspaper - https://www.csmonitor.com/ .

[Sy Borg]

Joachim Kohler has very convincingly proven that Nietzsche was gay and he minced. He may have lisped.

Essential information, no doubt.

Still, I agree with you our inability to grasp Kant's noumena.

Our brains and nervous systems cannot process enough information, or quickly enough, for us to perceive actual reality as it unfolds. As things stand, our impressions are only ever of the past (due to the 40ms cortex processing time), never the exact present moment, and those impressions are only rough sketches of what is actually going on.

More things happened in the first 40ms of the big bang than has happened in the entire history of the Earth.

Planck Epoch (or Planck Era), from zero to approximately 10^-43 seconds (1 Planck Time):
This is the closest that current physics can get to the absolute beginning of time, and very little can be known about this period. General relativity proposes a gravitational singularity before this time (although even that may break down due to quantum effects), and it is hypothesized that the four fundamental forces (electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and gravity) all have the same strength, and are possibly even unified into one fundamental force, held together by a perfect symmetry which some have likened to a sharpened pencil standing on its point (i.e. too symmetrical to last). At this point, the universe spans a region of only 10-35 meters (1 Planck Length), and has a temperature of over 1032°C (the Planck Temperature).

Grand Unification Epoch, from 10[sup]–43[/sup] seconds to 10[sup]–36[/sup] seconds:
The force of gravity separates from the other fundamental forces (which remain unified), and the earliest elementary particles (and antiparticles) begin to be created.

Inflationary Epoch, from 10[sup]–36[/sup] seconds to 10[sup]–32[/sup] seconds:
Triggered by the separation of the strong nuclear force, the universe undergoes an extremely rapid exponential expansion, known as cosmic inflation. The linear dimensions of the early universe increases during this period of a tiny fraction of a second by a factor of at least 1026 to around 10 centimeters (about the size of a grapefruit). The elementary particles remaining from the Grand Unification Epoch (a hot, dense quark-gluon plasma, sometimes known as “quark soup”) become distributed very thinly across the universe.

Electroweak Epoch, from 10[sup]–36[/sup] seconds to 10[sup]–12[/sup] seconds:
As the strong nuclear force separates from the other two, particle interactions create large numbers of exotic particles, including W and Z bosons and Higgs bosons (the Higgs field slows particles down and confers mass on them, allowing a universe made entirely out of radiation to support things that have mass).

Quark Epoch, from 10[sup]–12[/sup] seconds to 10[sup]–6[/sup] seconds:
Quarks, electrons and neutrinos form in large numbers as the universe cools off to below 10 quadrillion degrees, and the four fundamental forces assume their present forms. Quarks and antiquarks annihilate each other upon contact, but, in a process known as baryogenesis, a surplus of quarks (about one for every billion pairs) survives, which will ultimately combine to form matter.

A lot of reality can happen in very short periods of time. We humans apprehend useful snippets of it, either in the moment or as stored knowledge, but our knowledge has enough holes to fill the Albert Hall, so to speak.

[Jklint]

To you ER and Samsara are the same or almost so when in fact they amount to opposites.

1- There is no karma, teleology, or moksha involved in the forever repeatable events of Eternal Recurrence as envisioned by Nietzsche. There is no Purpose to ER as there is in Samsara...a fundamental difference. One is a process, the other an endlessly repeating statistic.

2- Samsara would in itself be an eternal reiteration, including its final resolution, within the context of ER. Having achieved moksha you would continue the same striving for eternity.

3- Within ER the same events apply to the same person in every excruciating detail forever. This cannot be happening if Samsara is to complete itself in moksha. The former is akin to law; the latter is a journey on a path to avoid future journeys.

4- Escape from pain (which you apply as a common motive) has no function in ER because whether you had more or less or none has zero effect on it statistically repeating forever.

There’s much more that can be written but that would amount to wasted energy.

ONE thing they do have in common; both ideas are completely absurd. ER makes sense only as metaphor in relation to N’s concept of Amor Fati and from there to his vision of the Übermensch.

Just one comment. You have made the many iterations of life temporal and linear, one after the other. It seems to me that, like a yogi who is many places at once, they all occur at once, simultaneously.

The point is simply this you know nothing of Samsara or Eternal Recurrence otherwise you would have noticed the obvious and never conflated the two. You also don't have a single argument against what I wrote otherwise you would have made it instead of coming up with another stupid reply which has nothing to do with what I wrote. Like any troll who doesn't know what to say in response, you've done this quite often.

It seems to me that, like a yogi who is ... taneously.

What a completely deficient brain-dead reply! If you think that a yogi can be in many places at once, you'd better see your local shrink if there's any around in Kathmandu.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Just one comment. You have made the many iterations of life temporal and linear, one after the other. It seems to me that, like a yogi who is many places at once, they all occur at once, simultaneously.

The point is simply this you know nothing of Samsara or Eternal Recurrence otherwise you would have noticed the obvious and never conflated the two. You also don't have a single argument against what I wrote otherwise you would have made it instead of coming up with another stupid reply which has nothing to do with what I wrote. Like any troll who doesn't know what to say in response, you've done this quite often.

It seems to me that, like a yogi who is ... taneously.

What a completely deficient brain-dead reply! If you think that a yogi can be in many places at once, you'd better see your local shrink if there's any around in Kathmandu.

I love a good rant and you are certainly capable of that. Please go on.

[GaryLouisSmith]

Still, I agree with you our inability to grasp Kant's noumena.

A lot of reality can happen in very short periods of time. We humans apprehend useful snippets of it, either in the moment or as stored knowledge, but our knowledge has enough holes to fill the Albert Hall, so to speak.

Actually I don't believe in Kant's Noumena. As for very short time periods, if space is infinitely divisible, which I think it is, then within what we consider very tiny gaps there is enough room for universes within universes, times within times, and maybe my lost youth. Infinity is a lot of fun to think about. One can easily get lost in it. And maybe go crazy.

[Jklint]

The point is simply this you know nothing of Samsara or Eternal Recurrence otherwise you would have noticed the obvious and never conflated the two. You also don't have a single argument against what I wrote otherwise you would have made it instead of coming up with another stupid reply which has nothing to do with what I wrote. Like any troll who doesn't know what to say in response, you've done this quite often.

It seems to me that, like a yogi who is ... taneously.

What a completely deficient brain-dead reply! If you think that a yogi can be in many places at once, you'd better see your local shrink if there's any around in Kathmandu.

I love a good rant and you are certainly capable of that. Please go on.

No reason to rant when there's nothing to learn from one's opponent and more so when he becomes thoroughly boring. Best to silently retreat and let others who find you more enthralling than I ever could continue the conversation. The air here feels a lot less oxygenated than it used to be a few years back.

On to other things! no hard feelings; it's all as expected.

[GaryLouisSmith]

I love a good rant and you are certainly capable of that. Please go on.

No reason to rant when there's nothing to learn from one's opponent and more so when he becomes thoroughly boring. Best to silently retreat and let others who find you more enthralling than I ever could continue the conversation. The air here feels a lot less oxygenated than it used to be a few years back.

On to other things! no hard feelings; it's all as expected.

No hard feelings. We all play our part. I'll see you when you come back.

[Sy Borg]

Still, I agree with you our inability to grasp Kant's noumena.

A lot of reality can happen in very short periods of time. We humans apprehend useful snippets of it, either in the moment or as stored knowledge, but our knowledge has enough holes to fill the Albert Hall, so to speak.

Actually I don't believe in Kant's Noumena.

You argued for noumena with Consul not long ago.

So now you are saying that we can sense reality unfiltered?

[GaryLouisSmith]

Actually I don't believe in Kant's Noumena.

You argued for noumena with Consul not long ago.

So now you are saying that we can sense reality unfiltered?

Consul sent me something by Donald Cray Williams and I was lampooning that piece. Consul knows that I am an anti-substantialist, a phenomenological realist and that I would never speak well of any kind of hidden reality beyond what appears. Read that high-flying idiotic piece by Williams.

[Felix]

GaryLouisSmith: I think most people responding here have made the mistake of thinking the Eternal Return as a temporal succession of lives. It was an ecstatic vision, not a thought experiment. He could see in an instant the repeating lives. They all occur at once, simultaneously.

If it's the same life over and over again, as Neitzsche described, then there are obviously no successive lives, it's an eternal time loop. I guess it would be too much to ask to expect you to make sense, at least occasionally?