Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was born in Röcken in Germany the son of a Lutheran pastor. His father died in 1849; his upbringing was dominated by his pious mother, also his sister and aunts. His rigorous early education, which included classics, took place at the famous boarding school at Pforta, near Naumburg. For most of his life Nietzsche laboured under the effects of poor health, including weak eyesight; for days on end he was struck down by crippling migraines. Nietzsche studied philology at the University of Bonn and then at Leipzig; while a student he encountered the greatest influences on his early thinking, the composer Richard Wagner (1813-83) and the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). Nietzsche's outstanding academic achievements are indicated by his appointment, when only twenty-five, as Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel. He resigned from Basel in 1878 because of ill-health. From 1878 to 1889 he led an immensely lonely life wandering from place to place in Europe, often in the high Swiss mountains. It was during this time that most of his major works were written. His romantic intentions were always hopelessly unfulfilled, and he remained unmarried. In 1889 Nietzsche rushed into a street in Turin and embraced a horse that was being flogged; he then suffered a massive mental collapse that plunged him into a vegetative insanity for the rest of his life; during the last ten years of his life all spark of intelligence left Nietzsche's mind; the decline may have been due to acquired or inherited syphilis. Until the end of his life he was looked after mostly by his mother but also by his sister Elisabeth, who propagated mythology and obscurity around Nietzsche's work.
It is impossible not to be controversial in giving an account of Nietzsche's philosophy; this is partly because of the scattered nature of his views on any one subject, and partly because of his manner of writing. In concentrating on that part of Nietzsche's philosophy concerned with the nature of philosophy, knowledge and metaphysics, one must be aware that a great deal of his interest lies in the realm of values and how one ought to live one's life; but the two areas are intimately connected in Nietzsche's thought. Nietzsche's grounds for rejecting the possibility of absolute knowledge in general include values in particular. Although Nietzsche deliberately does not produce a systematic exposition of his views, nevertheless all parts of his philosophy are interconnected. The overriding consideration in the account of Nietzsche given here is to take seriously his repeated pronouncement that he was doing something quite different from what had gone before in philosophy. With this in mind, one should avoid attempting to fit him conveniently into any philosophical school. It is all too easy to construe Nietzsche as presenting albeit novel answers to the same old philosophical problems. His aim, however, is to question the very concepts in which traditional philosophical problems are couched. Traditional philosophy has been concerned to present to philosophical problems answers which it aims to be universally and objectively true. But the presupposition that lies behind this advancement of a philosophical position as universally valid is that such universal and objective truths are possible - and it is exactly this that Nietzsche denies is the case. This denial is not the same as advocating scepticism with regard to knowledge, for scepticism too assumes that knowledge must involve necessity and certainty, but thinks it is something we cannot attain.
The key to Nietzsche's philosophy is his attack on absolutism of any sort, final universally binding answers to philosophical problems, which easily leads to dogmatism. There are, in fact, no eternal transcendent truths waiting to be discovered, independent of all thinkers whatsoever.
Nietzsche refers to all views or theories as false or as fictions. Everything is false, and what we regard as true are but convenient errors required for our lives. This applies to our common-sense or herd view of the world, which he regards as a convenient fiction, but on which our survival has come to depend: it is a world of independent things, of various kinds, that causally interact according to certain laws, and is observed by a relatively permanent self. This view has become so deeply entrenched that we no longer recognize it as a view, among other possible views, at all. In particular, the a priori categories that Kant regards as universally valid, and hence objective, are regarded by Nietzsche as having no absolute necessity or universal validity, but as products of human interests and purposes; they are no more than psychologically a priori. All views of the world are attempts to schematize and organize experience for the sake of control and power over our environment. But there is no reason therefore to suppose that the way we view the world - our conception of reality - need be universally valid in terms of power and control for everyone. Nietzsche is opposing ideals which produce an ossified and idealized "fabricated world" which is then regarded as the only "real world". In Twilight of the idols Nietzsche says, "I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity."
We must come to see our truths, and our claims to knowledge, in all fields of activity for what they are: interpretations from certain perspectives. There is also no possibility of a complete view of anything or everything. Thus we find that he attacks metaphysics, knowledge, truth, moral values and values in general, in so far as definitive answers are proposed. Once we see that we have no more than different perspectives on the world, we are liberated from the tyranny of supposing that any view has ever to be accepted as a final universally valid view. It is not just a matter of being modest in our philosophical claims by saying that we are not sure if we have finally solved certain philosophical problems; it is a matter of actively denying that such final solutions are ever attainable.
Nietzsche objects to the pretence of philosophers that they have, or at least can have, a disinterested concern for the truth and knowledge, one that is unaffected by, and separable from, any considerations of conditions that would define in some way a point of view or perspective: the specific values, personal predilections, and attitudes to life that characterize what kind of people they are. It has been the habit of metaphysicians to juxtapose a superior absolute disinterested view of the world - which usually means positing another "real world" beyond or behind the apparent one - with the unthought-out vagaries of the common-sense view of the world whose chief aim has not been the disinterested pursuit of knowledge and truth. There is no such disinterested point of view which would fulfil the condition for describing reality; all views are inherently perspectival and thus not exhaustive; the view from nowhere is no view at all; it is not even an unattainable ideal.
Unlike the systems of metaphysics proposed by past philosophers, which give a view of reality, the indisputable value of the common-sense view of the world is that it at least has been of pragmatic use to us: it has promoted the survival of our species. Indeed, the common-sense view has prevailed and is regarded as "true" precisely because it aids survival; the views that did not aid survival have, of course, died out with their proponents or have been rejected as "errors". The entrenchment, the seeming necessity of our common-sense view, is determined not by its logically absolute or universal necessity or by its accurate reflection of reality, but by its huge value in promoting a particular kind of life and attitude to life: specific interests and values. The imposition of false simplifications or coarsenings by which we give order to our world is a precondition for survival; they arrange a world in which our existence is made possible. This applies to our belief in "things", natural laws and causality, the self, and even logic. In this sense Nietzsche's account of why we have the concepts we have, and which views we hold to be true, is naturalistic, rather like the position of Hume. Nietzsche says in the book The will to power that "Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme that we cannot throw off." We become the prisoners of our "truths" and "knowledge"; we forget they are fictions serving our survival, and instead of their serving our needs, we serve the "truths" and "knowledge" which we come to regard as more than instruments of survival. The "truths" and "knowledge" were designed to fit us and our needs; once we lose sight of this the relation is reversed, and we begin to fit the "truths" and "knowledge". For Nietzsche this relation is particularly important in the area of human values.
That a view promotes certain interests and values is not objectionable in itself because every view does this in different ways. What Nietzsche objects to is the dogmatism he sees as inherent in the various metaphysical systems of the past, which suppose they can rise above perspectival interests and values and present to us a disinterested, non-perspectival, complete, view of things truly, as they really are in themselves. The philosophers' metaphysical systems, however, are really doing the same kind of thing as common sense: they are producing organizing schemata that reflect specific deep values and interests. This would be fine provided we realized what we were doing, because we are not obliged to accept the systems unless we want to accept those specific values as well, values which point to a way of life and an attitude to life. The notion that metaphysics seeks a non-perspectival value-free view of reality contains latent dogmatism because if the view is transcendentally universal and necessary, as it is usually claimed to be, then it demands of everyone that they accept it regardless of their specific perspectival view and values. But Nietzsche's point is that there are only perspectives.
Nietzsche objects to the claim that the metaphysical systems of philosophers are superior to common sense in being more true in the sense of corresponding to the true nature of reality: all views are equally false or fictions in that sense. Nietzsche does not defend common sense against the metaphysicians because it gives the truer view of reality, but on the grounds that it has, at least in the past, proved beneficial to life. He does not attack common sense because it is false or a fiction - not presenting to us the truth about reality in the sense of corresponding accurately to reality - but because it has now become inimical to life and harmful to that which is strongest and best in us. Nietzsche wishes to replace the common view of the world, not on the grounds that his view is truer in the sense of more accurately describing reality in the way that traditional metaphysics advocates - the common view is not therefore claimed to be refuted - but because his view supports certain values, attitudes and a mode of life which he wishes to advocate for the future development of man. His attempt to replace common-sense or herd views of the world and values with new views does not involve utterly overthrowing existing values, but he admits it is dangerous because the herd view has undoubtedly had survival value; the ushering in of new views is difficult and opens up the possibility of our destruction through disorder or harmful views.
It is sometimes suggested that Nietzsche is rejecting the correspondence theory of truth, whereby we suppose we can accurately reflect an independent reality, and replacing it with a pragmatist theory of truth, whereby what is true is determined by the effects holding a conception has on the practical conduct of one's life and whether it thereby works. This, however, is most misleading if one thinks that Nietzsche's criterion for truth is the base utility of our views in the narrow sense of being practically useful. This would be greatly at variance with the whole spirit of Nietzsche's philosophical outlook. Nietzsche defends common sense because it has been shown to be motivated by serving specific values effectively - mainly practical values connected with survival - but that does not mean that a view has to serve those values, even if any view must serve some sort of values or other. He is in fact arguing against the delusion that what promotes life guarantees truth in the sense of truths which must be agreed to by all.
It has been said that while Nietzsche ostensibly rejects the whole notion of views and theories of reality accurately mirroring, or failing to mirror, a world which is an independently ordered objective reality, he tacitly assumes a correspondence theory of truth in saying that common-sense views, and indeed all views, are in that correspondence sense false. Nietzsche is thus accused of inconsistency in that if all views are false in failing to correspond to reality, there must be some absolute standpoint which does correspond accurately to reality, compared to which all existing views are not true; so, in fact, not all views need be false. If, as Nietzsche says, error might well be a condition for life, and views that promote life are not thereby shown to be true, it suggest that there is some sense in which some theory might be true in reflecting reality more accurately. Be that as it may, Nietzsche wishes to undermine and replace the correspondence notion of truth with a notion of "truth" that is open about its being motivated by promising some specific values or other, rather than claiming disinterestedly to pursue correspondence to an objective reality; and these values, and hence the associated "truths", need not be accepted by everyone. Nietzsche's claim is that we cannot rid ourselves of the values that motivate our "truths", which such "truths" in fact serve and which lead to our deciding what is "true". But it is arguable that because a view is shown to promote certain specific values, this is sufficient to show that the view cannot nevertheless just be true in the sense of reflecting reality.
Nietzsche does indeed present to us a theory in the "will-to-power" which is a view of the world; the world is the will-to-power, and nothing else besides. Partly he seems to do this in order to show that the world is such that no view of reality can ever be right if it claims the world has an objective order. But that seems to suppose some kind of correspondence notion of truth. However, he cannot consistently support his assertion that no view can accurately mirror reality by presenting an account of the world which gives just such an account of reality. The will-to-power must be advocated on grounds other than that it mirrors reality accurately, and this is what Nietzsche does.
Nietzsche's view is that the world is a never-ending flux or becoming with no intrinsic order. The world comprises power-quanta whose entire being consists in the drive or tendency to prevail over other power-quanta. Power-quanta differ from one another entirely quantitatively, not qualitatively, and they should not be thought of as things; their entire being consists of their activity, which is their attempt to overcome and incorporate in themselves other power-quanta. Each power-quantum is the sum of its effects; it is what is does. Thus the world is a constant flux of struggle, but it is not a struggle between "things", it merely involves a constant variation of power-quanta. We too are part of this flux. Human beings are nothing more than complex constellations of power-quanta.
In saying that the world is the will-to-power, Nietzsche sees the will-to-power as manifesting itself in multifarious ways. But the will-to-power as such in its general form is fundamental, and manifestations are modes of it. In all sorts of ways in personal and social life we see the will-to-power manifest: in the drive to control, organize and overcome. To control and make manageable does not mean necessarily physical domination, although this is one manifestation of the will-to-power. Any attempt to bring under control our environment is a mode of the will-to-power, and one of the prime examples of this is knowledge itself. Knowledge is a will-to-power because within what we know we have a framework in which what we deal with is manageable by being organized, so increasing our power. By organizing under concepts of things and kinds of things we have something that we call the world under which we transform nature into something that is, in the broadest sense, mastered, its disorder overcome and under control.
Nietzsche is advocating a view of reality in which his perspectivism and his belief in the value of that freedom resulting from the creative capacity to give various interpretations are supported, he is not claiming a disinterested motivation. These new interpretations are not easily achieved, nor can they be gratuitously adopted, since they involve the adoption of values which fundamentally guide our lives and characterize who we are.
Nietzsche's view of the world has an affinity to that of the Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus, whom he admired. In such a world of universal flux it is certainly extremely difficult to see how any theory of reality which identifies as real certain permanent "things" which behave in certain ways could be anything but false and a gross simplification of a flux so complex and ever-changing that it defies any theoretical description at all. It is a world without objective order, so there is nothing for putative objective truths concerning reality to be true of. Except in so far as it is trivially described as a world of constant change, it is a world in which no description can be objectively true at all. All views of reality which aim to be universally true presuppose some objective fixity, so any view which purports to be universally true of reality must be false if there is no such fixity. And it might be argued that a view like Nietzsche's, which merely asserts that there is no objective order, is no view of reality at all. Reality has no ultimate nature; that the world has a character is denied. Nietzsche is asserting that the world has no objective order; the denial that we can assert this without contradiction seems to amount to the assertion that it is a necessary truth that the world has an objective order – which surely cannot be right. There is nothing fixed for truths to correspond to. This leaves us free, although not frivolously so, to invent our own organizing systems, but not under the pretence that we are reflecting an already existing reality.
In rejecting the correspondence theory of truth, it must be emphasized that Nietzsche is not, I believe, giving a new general criterion of truth at all; that he is not arguing that one set of considerations is universally valid when deciding upon truth. That idea includes the rejection of both the correspondence theory and a generalized rejection of both the correspondence theory and a generalized pragmatic theory which would impose one universally binding way of deciding on the truth. There is no universally valid criterion for truth, no single scale along which truth can be graded; but there are different views which serve or promote certain values and modes of life, yet all are "illusions" if they are required to be more than valid from a certain point of view. This is close to relativism, but not equivalent to the notion that one view is as good as any other. Some views are better than others from the standpoint of a certain set of values, interests, and attitudes to life, although they are not binding on all; it will certainly not be the case that one view will do as well as another for a specific standpoint; some "truths" will promote it, and some will be inimical to it. The view accepted is inseparably linked to the deepest values in life, the lives themselves, and who one is, and one cannot easily or flippantly swap one view or set of truths for another.
This, however, is not the only interpretation of Nietzsche's view of truth. Some commentators have argued that Nietzsche wishes to replace the correspondence theory of truth with a form of pragmatist theory; this is pragmatic value determined not by base usefulness but in terms of a more general criterion of power and control appropriate for those people of higher "rank-order", those capable of maximal power, control and creativity. Thus truth in the new sense can still be graded along a single scale, but this time not arranged in order of greater correspondence to "the facts" (which Nietzsche says do not exist apart from interpretations or views), but arranged in rank according to effectiveness of power and control.
Nietzsche famously proclaims that "God is dead", not so much because the belief that God exists is false – although Nietzsche thinks this is the case – but because God is a bastion for justifying objective values which must be valid for all. Nietzsche further wants to banish even the shadow of God from the world, that is, he wishes to banish the lingering effects of the belief in God from the world; for even non-believers still often act as if somehow there were a transcendent order of values outside the world, and as if this world were not the only world. He claims that it has not sunk deep into our consciousnesses, and our way of living, that this world is the only world – there is no world beyond. If we accept this, it profoundly changes the evaluations we make in and of our lives. It is Nietzsche's aim to present to us a transvaluation of all existing values for the new life, and a suitable world-view, for truly free spirits, for the higher man's potentialities. Thus Nietzsche's views are not advocated because of their more accurate mirroring of reality – because no view does that – or because they are universally valid; but because of their efficacy with respect to certain values and ways of life which Nietzsche believes in and wants us to consider.
Another way of putting Nietzsche's perspectivism is that all truths and knowledge about the world are interpretations: a mode of organizing our experience under concepts which give us a world-view with the condition that no such view can possibly be complete because it is dependent on qualifying reference to a point of view. Nietzsche does not object to any view because it is an interpretation; he objects only to the view being seen as more than an interpretation, whilst there are values it probably deviously and dishonestly promotes under the false banner of being the objective truth. This applies to the various systems of metaphysics, Kantian a priori categories, natural science, common sense, and even logic. What Nietzsche objects to is what are in fact interpretations down to their most basic constituents being viewed as other than interpretations and as absolute transcendental objective truths.
What underlies Nietzsche's position is a general attack on the whole notion of separating our theories about the world from the world itself. There are no facts but only interpretations, and no world left over once all interpretations are subtracted. Our theories, when considered in their entirety, cannot be compared with reality because there is no reality outside our interpretation which is not itself part of an interpretation. There is no neutral ground on which to stand whereby our interpretation can be compared with reality because to have a conception of reality with which an interpretation could be compared is itself to articulate an interpretation. So Nietzsche is not saying we always have mere interpretations, because the use of the word "mere" here suggests a comparison with something we actually have that is not a mere interpretation, compared with which mere interpretations are shown to be "mere". Nietzsche denies that there is a view which is not an interpretation; he denies the existence of a non-perspectival, non-interpretative view that would alone make any sense, by contrast, of any view being merely or only an interpretation.
It might be suggested that there obviously is an interpretation-independent reality. But the response to this is that this view of the world is itself an interpretation. The obviousness of the view that there is an interpretation-independent reality made up of objective "things" of various kinds that behave in certain ways, and our inability to see it as an interpretation, both derive from the way that the view is deeply entrenched in our form of thinking and way of life; and this entrenchment manifests itself chiefly in the structure of our language. Our world-view is inherited in our language, and for this reason we have to use language self-consciously and critically. Deeply embedded in language is the notion of a "subject" to which "predicates" are applied, and we take this to reflect a metaphysical as well as a linguistic distinction. The structure of the language we use to speak about the world implicitly involves a metaphysics: it immediately leads us to talk of the world as containing relatively autonomous "things", which "causally" interact, which are observed by relatively permanent "selves". Indeed, the notion of "things" results from the projection onto the world of the fiction of the "self" (the "I" or "ego"); and the "self" derives from our linguistically requiring an "agent" whenever we speak of actions. We do not just say "think", but grammatically normally require a subject who does the thinking.
Rather like Hume, Nietzsche explains our belief in causally necessary connections through our acquiring it in a way that is rationally unjustifiable; the belief is rather a result of non-rational processes whereby through the observation of constantly conjoined events we acquire habits of association; there are no objective causal connections. The division of the world into recognizable repeatable events and things is the imposition of a fiction by us. No two things are ever really identical, and no two events the same: but we ignore differences in order to establish an order; and we are not refining our experience by this process, but rather coarsening it by making similar what is different. More sensitive creatures who refused to categorize under universal terms would have perished, for a simplified world is required for survival. We treat the world as if what is referred to in our concepts is real. But these organizing concepts are only psychologically a priori, not transcendentally a priori as Kant suggests.
Such concepts are rightly said to be irrefutable by experience; experience already presupposes them and is organized in accordance with them. But that does not mean, particularly with respect to our values, which we have inherited - our whole notion of a single scale for "good" and "evil" - that our entrenched beliefs cannot be overcome: they may not be refutable, but they can, perhaps with difficulty, be replaced by something new. Philosophy has spent much of its energy finding a rational justification of existing values without first questioning the value of those values themselves.
We find it difficult to articulate any other interpretation of reality than our usual one because a metaphysics is embedded in the very language in which any other view is to be expressed. The same applies to values. It is not that Nietzsche thinks there is some ideal language which would free us from the common-sense or herd interpretation or metaphysics and give us a true picture of the world: a correct or true metaphysics. Rather we are to be freed from the tyranny of seeing any views as true in the sense of mirroring reality in order to release our powers to create new independent interpretations that are fashioned to suit what we value most in life; but we can do this only once we are released from pursuing the chimera of the absolutely true complete view of reality and universally correct system of values.
Another way of putting the point about all views being interpretations is that the old philosophical dichotomy of the appearance/reality distinction is eliminated; the "real world" goes because there is no single universal complete description possible; it cannot be formed from piecing together or summing various different views either. That does not mean we are left with the merely apparent world; "appearance" and "reality" are mutually dependent contrasting concepts, and once the "real world" goes, there remains no sense to the supposedly contrasted "apparent world", so that goes too. The apparent world is the world; the world as construed under an interpretation is the world. To suppose otherwise is merely tacitly to suggest that there is another view which is not an interpretation characterizing "the world" with which our supposedly mere interpretation characterizing "the world" with which our supposedly mere interpretation could be compared; but there is no view that is not an interpretation; any other view would always be an interpretation too.
Nietzsche found it difficult to express his perspectivism because of the way that a certain view is already inherent in the language which we have to use to express ourselves. It seems as though in asserting perspectivism – that there are only interpretations of the world – that we admit that there is a real world which could be described in some way that was not an interpretation. This, it can be argued, is merely a grammatical point: only trivially are our interpretations different perspectives on "the world", because this notion of "the world" is utterly empty until an interpretation is submitted to fill it in; so there is no "world" to compare with all interpretations; take the perspectival interpretations away and "the world" vanishes. Truth and knowledge necessarily involve having a view; without a view involving certain basic concepts there is nothing for propositions to be true of, no world for us to know; but there are no concepts we have to regard as necessary and universally binding.
It is sometimes said that Nietzsche's perspectivist position is plainly self-refuting. For if all views are perspectives – that is, interpretations – then perspectivism must apply to itself, so perspectivism may be false. There are a number of complex discussions of this matter. Some critics are unable to see how self-refutation can be avoided. Others argue that perspectivism does not apply to all views, but only to "first order" views about the world, and it does not therefore apply to itself, which is a "second order" view about views. Still others argue that perspectivism is not self-refuting: perspectivism must admit that it is possibly false, but that is not the same as admitting that it is false; that it is false could be shown only by actually producing a view that was not an interpretation – one that is free from being motivated by, and independent of, specific values – and not merely by suggesting that a view which is not an interpretation is possible. Perspectivism, on this account, cannot claim that it is necessarily true, and that means it cannot claim that views which are not interpretations – which are objectively true – are impossible.
Nietzsche's perspectivism is not equivalent to relativism if relativism is construed as saying the world has more than one character and there is no way of choosing between various complete views of that world; perspectivism denies that the world has any character independent of interpretations, and that any view could possibly be complete or exhaustive. Perspectivism also holds that some views are better than others on the grounds that they are more fitted for certain purposes, promoting the way one wishes to live one's life and the values one holds most deeply about life, but these values are not universally applicable to all individuals of different sorts at all times and places; they are not "better" from all points of view. Nietzsche rejects the positions which suggest that there are views of the world and systems of values that are binding on everyone equally. He also rejects the notion and pretence that truth can be pursued in a disinterested fashion. The view that there is one truth, and one system of values, is itself a view which is intended to promote – although it may do so covertly and even deviously – certain values which involve holding back more creative and courageous spirits who want to counter the idea of universal truths and values binding on all is itself one manifestation of the will-to-power, to control; but it is also a sign of weakness; for the belief in universal objective views and values binding on all itself manifests the lack of power or strength and creativity – unlike the "highest type" or "free spirits" - to transfigure the world with new views and interpretations of one's own and sustain those views and interpretations without the support of a belief in their being universal and absolutely objective.
It can clearly be argued that, far from leading to an advocation of domination and tyranny, Nietzsche's position that there cannot be objectively true or false values suggests that each person must now go away and find his own way, do his own work – as Zarathustra suggests at one point – and Zarathustra tells of one way which gives new meaning to the world. As Nietzsche writes in Thus spoke Zarathustra, at the end of Part I:
I now go away alone, my disciples! You too now go away and be alone! [...] Truly, I advise you: go away from me and guard yourself against Zarathustra! [...] Perhaps he has deceived you [...] One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil [...] You are my believers: but of what importance are all believers? You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account. Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.
In Ecce homo, before quoting from the above passage of Zarathustra, Nietzsche points out that these words are "Precisely the opposite of that which any sort of 'sage', 'saint', 'world-redeemer' and other décadent would say in such a case . . . He does not only speak differently, he is different."
However, there is the possibility that pursuing my own way, such as that involved in the way of the Übermensch (Superman) depicted by Zarathustra, could involve the subservience of others, in particular that of the "herd", who have a slave mentality in that they need masters to lead them, and who lack the creative power to generate and sustain their own new views. Nietzsche indeed seems to suggest that such subservience is required.
There are two central notions in Nietzsche's world-view: the will-to-power and eternal recurrence.
The doctrine of "eternal recurrence" has its origin in the idea that the world is infinite in time, but finite in space or energy, and therefore states are bound, given sufficient time, to repeat themselves. Thus this world is our eternity. Although Nietzsche does seem to have believed in "eternal recurrence" as a scientific cosmological theory, the importance and main grounds of the view lie not there but, rather, in its power as a myth whereby our decisions are concentrated on this world; we had better be authentic and true to ourselves, and not wasteful of our lives, for this is the only life we have and we are destined to repeat what we choose for eternity. We must free ourselves of the attitude carried by the belief that this life is a "waiting room" for something else. There is nothing beyond, no life beyond, which would compensate for, or relieve us of, the weight placed on our choices in this life. To carry this burden is to support the values of strength and independence, and not to view this world as inferior: this is amor fati, a yea-saying to life.
These views are better because of their fecundity in promoting a certain way of life. But this notion of better does not apply with absolute universality. The life is that of the "Superman" or Übermensch, as foretold by Zarathustra. This is the life of the "Beyond-Man" or "Overman" who sees all views as interpretations, and is released as a free spirit to transfigure the world according to newly created "truths" and values which are his own, and he has the strength or power to do so. The notion of the Übermensch as creator involves the idea of creating one's own self. Now we are, of course, free to accept this view or not. If we wish to embrace the values of strength and enhance our feeling of power and control as free spirits, then Nietzsche commends to us the will-to-power and eternal recurrence as "truths" to live by. Previous interpretations have outlived their usefulness and have become constraining and inimical to the exploration of new interpretations that would transform or transfigure our world-view. Once we see common sense, and indeed any view which seems more than an interpretation, as an interpretation, we are liberated to explore, and will feel we should explore, other ways of viewing the world. Nothing could be more stultifying to pursuing other ways of viewing the world than the belief that one has found the final correct, complete, view; the pursuit of other views will in such circumstances, as with much metaphysics, carry no conviction and will be seen as a mere game played away from the only correct view. But once the notion of an absolutely correct view, and even its pursuit, is abandoned, the exploration of alternative modes of interpreting the world cannot in this way be deleteriously compared. This mode of viewing the world – that all views are interpretations from a perspective – commends itself to those who have the strength to break with habit, custom, the belief in absolute standards, and to produce their own views, suited to their own values and purposes, which in turn will fundamentally characterize who they are. One cannot separate the basic beliefs and values one holds, and what one does, from who one is, but thereby who one is can be changed; and Nietzsche praises those who have the strength to give themselves laws and so create themselves.
The will-to-power, both as a view of the world as one of ontological flux with no objective order, and as an account of the drive behind knowledge itself, undermines that idea that knowledge can be a disinterested activity separable from specific values; knowledge is rather a means to support specific values. The doctrine of eternal recurrence emphasizes the weight of the choices we make in our new-found freedom as free spirits who have the strength creatively to transfigure our world with new truths and values in a way that has no end.
Source: Philosophy and Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy. Pages 190-202. SHAND, John. ISBN 0140124934