I don't think Nietzsche liked dwarves much. I doubt his real views would be put into the mouth of a dwarf. Thing is, though we look down both the roads, no one ever goes down them. Whichever way we look, it is always from the the archway of this moment, and we never stray from it. The image works better without the dwarf's commentary, which is why he is a dwarf. The image is static, there is no coming or going except in the diseased imagination of the dwarf. That is his function in the story, to point out the wrong way to think the wrong conclusion to draw..

Just a brief babble on the side if I may.

If we were to say "time is circular", then what could that mean other than events reoccurring?

Doesn't really seem to be meaningful otherwise, does it?

This then means that there's something other than time (itself) — call them eventees (like objects or whatever) — that taken together arrive at a configuration identical to a prior configuration.

Yet, the phrases "arrive at" and "prior" already presuppose temporality in some sense. (Don't really want to get into concise definitions/semantics/dictionaries.)

Well, a more mathematical approach might have us employ an ordered set (with a metric), so we can speak of before (less than), simultaneously (the same), and after (greater than), which is relational. The metric gives us duration (distance), which is numeric/scalar.

Anyway, the idea was just that something other than time is needed to give meaning to time (with our usual verbiage).

(end babble)

I won’t address the metaphysical issue—and it’s highly debatable in Nietzsche scholarship how significant that issue is—but I thought I’d step in to quote the first appearance of the idea in Nietzsche’s work:

What if one day or night a demon came to you in your most solitary solitude and said to you: ‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live again, and innumerable times again, and there will be nothing new in it; but rather every pain and joy, every thought and sigh, and all the unutterably trivial or great things in your life will have to happen to you again, with everything in the same series and sequence – and likewise this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and likewise this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned over again and again, and you with it, you speck of dust!’

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke to you thus? Or was there one time when you experienced a tremendous moment in which you would answer him: ‘You are a god, and I have never heard anything so divine!’ — The Gay Science, §341

So here at least it’s a thought experiment to test one’s attitude to life. And in the later work, Zarathustra eventually comes to welcome the prospect of an eternal return—passing the test, so to speak.

Various flavours of nihilism. Ought to inspire one to seek mokṣa.

If we were to say "time is circular", then what could that mean other than events reoccurring? — jorndoe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return

Ought to inspire one to seek mokṣa, — Wayfarer

He never had the moxie for moska. I find that much Nietzsche reads like black comedy - possibly apropos given the Dionysian revels from which comedy traditions originally sprang.

He never had the moxie for moska. — Tom Storm

:rofl: :100:

the first appearance of the idea in Nietzsche’s work: — Jamal

The Riddle and the Vision restates the problem using the same imagery of the the spider and the moonlight. In both there is the moment, followed by acceptance.

So here at least it’s a thought experiment to test one’s attitude to life. — Jamal

Describing it as a thought experiment is too detached. It is without the struggle:

Courage also slays dizziness at the abyss; and where do human beings not stand at the abyss? Is seeing itself not – seeing the abyss?

Courage is the best slayer; courage slays even pity. But pity is the deepest abyss, and as deeply as human beings look into life, so deeply too they look into suffering.

time itself is a circle.”

I agree with this. Human experience of time is chronological and linear (memory of the past and anticipation of the future).

Time outside of human experience is nothing more than repetitions, regular patterns, geometries: frequencies, oscillations, cycles, rates of vibration, rhythms, to-and-fro swinging, orbits, etc.

The connection between what we observe and how we form linear chronological accounts (human or personal history) is thus our clocks - our "time measuring devices" or maybe more accurately our "linear time creating and counting devices". Which all work as cycles that are single discrete units for linear counting. Seconds, minutes, hours, seasons, tides, sundials, pendulums, etc.

In essence linear time comes from a). conscious awareness and b). the chaotic changeable interaction of thousands of nature's cycles interacting with eachother: accelerating or decelerating, destroying or creating one another.

Which means the "past" state of affairs is never the same as the "present" or "future one" and adds reason to consider them as linear and progressive, one after the next.

But as far as nature is concerned, there is only the "rate-scape" - different parts of spaces experiencing different rates of change based on energy and matter content/interaction, no simultaneity or no universal "now".

Between the two roads is the gateway "this moment". But it is always this moment. This moment is neither the past or the future, and so in what sense is there a return? — Fooloso4

For me, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard go hand in hand, explaining one another. The eternal return is related, but not identical to Kierkegaard's repetition.

Time is cyclical. Birth, youth, maturity, old age, and death are everywhere. Everything goes through this same circle over and over.

But if this was all, there would be no way to be conscious of it. That consciousness requires a contrast, an opposition. In this case the opposing idea is eternity: the limit of time going forward and backwards. When we see the cyclic nature of time, we have stationed ourselves in eternity. This is all phenomenology. It's not an attempt to do cosmology. The only truth we have about the world at large is metaphors.

Interesting comparison. For Nietzsche eternity is not an opposing idea. Whether or not the eternal return is cosmology is an open question. A question that keeps returning.

Whether or not the eternal return is cosmology is an open question — Fooloso4

Seen in the light of his ideas about the nature of truth, it seems unlikely.

What are his ideas about the nature of truth that makes this seem unlikely?

What are his ideas about the nature of truth that makes this seem unlikely? — Fooloso4

Sounds like you have fun with Nietzsche ahead of you. :grin:

Various flavours of nihilism. Ought to inspire one to seek mokṣa — Wayfarer

Moksa is a classic form of nihilism in Nietzsche’s sense of the word. “For Nietzsche nihilism is not in any way simply a phenomenon of decay; rather nihilism is, as the fundamental event of Western history, simultaneously and above all the intrinsic law of that history.”(Heidegger, The Word of Nietzsche)

When we see the cyclic nature of time, we have stationed ourselves in eternity. — frank

:up:

Perhaps philosophy is essentially a leap out of the circle in order to gaze on it from above -- to see it as the gods see it.

Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away. (Homer)

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. (Ecclesiastes)

Whichever way we look, it is always from the the archway of this moment, and we never stray from it. — unenlightened

This might be one way to interpret 'existence is time.'

If all that will happen has happened before over and over what is the starting and end point of what happens?

Between the two roads is the gateway "this moment". But it is always this moment. This moment is neither the past or the future, and so in what sense is there a return? — Fooloso4

It’s interesting that almost all ‘postmodern’ readings of eternal return depict it as the return of the same absolutely new difference, rather than the literal return of the same experience. The return is each time a new throw of the dice.

“When we say that the eternal return is not the return of the Same, or of the Similar or the Equal, we mean that it does not presuppose any identity. On the contrary, it is said of a world without identity, without resemblance or equality. It is said of a world the very ground of which is difference, in which everything rests upon disparities, upon differences of differences which reverberate to infinity (the world of intensity). The eternal return is itself the Identical, the similar and the equal, but it presupposes nothing of itself in that of which it is said. It is said of that which has no identity, no resemblance and no equality. It is the identical which is said of the different, the resemblance which is said of the pure disparate, the equal which is said only of the unequal and the proximity which is said of all distances.” (Deleuze)

There is a return because there is never just this moment in isolation . Simultaneous with the appearance of the ‘now’ is the passing away of the former ‘now’.

Heidegger says something similar in his Lectures on Nietzsche. Both readings are difficult to square with the specificity of Nietzsche's actual words:

‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live again, and innumerable times again, and there will be nothing new in it; but rather every pain and joy, every thought and sigh, and all the unutterably trivial or great things in your life will have to happen to you again, with everything in the same series and sequence – and likewise this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and likewise this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned over again and again, and you with it, you speck of dust!’ — The Gay Science, §341

Sounds like you have fun with Nietzsche ahead of you. — frank

That was a contemptuous reply. I sense an underlying animus is underway.

Perhaps you were thinking of the following:

Origin of knowledge.- Over immense periods of time the intellect produced nothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helped to preserve the species: those who hit upon or inherited these had better luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny. Such erroneous articles of faith* which were continually inherited. until they became almost part of the basic endowment of the species. include the following: that there are enduring things; that there are equal things; that there are things, substances, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in itself. It was only very late that such propositions were denied and doubted; it was only very late that truth emerged-as the weakest form of knowledge. It seemed that one was unable to live with it: our organism was prepared for the opposite; all its higher functions. sense perception and every kind of sensation worked with those basic errors which had been incorporated since time immemorial. Indeed, even in the realm of knowledge these propositions became the norms according to which "true and "untrue,. were determined down to the most remote regions of logic. Thus the strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth but on its age, on the degree to which it has been incorporated, on its character as a condition of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to be at odds there was never any real fight. but denial and doubt were simply considered madness. Those exceptional thinkers, like the Eleatics. who nevertheless posited and clung to the opposites of the natural errors believed that it was possible to live in accordance with these opposites: they invented the sage as the man who was unchangeable and impersonal, the man of the universality of intuition who was One and All at the same time, with a special capacity for his inverted knowledge: they had the faith that their knowledge was also the principle of life. But in order to claim all of this, they had to deceive themselves about their own state: they had to attribute to themselves, fictitiously, impersonality and changeless duration; they had to misapprehend the nature of the knower; they had to deny the role of the impulses in knowledge; and quite generally they had to conceive of reason: as a completely free and spontaneous activity. They shut their eyes to the fact that they. too, had arrived at their propositions through opposition to common sense. or owing to a desire for tranquility, for sole possession. or for dominion. The subtler development of honesty and skepticism eventually made these people. too, impossible; their ways of living and judging were seen to be also dependent upon the primeval impulses and basic errors of all sentient existence.
This subtler honesty and skepticism came into being wherever two contradictory sentences appeared to be applicable to life because both were compatible with the basic errors. and it was therefore possible to argue about the higher or lower degree of utility for life; also wherever new propositions. though not useful for life, were also evidently not harmful to life: in such cases there was room for the expression of an intellectual play impulse, and honest~ and skepticism were imminent and happy like all play. Gradually, the human brain became full of such judgments and convictions. and a ferment, struggle, and 'lust for power' developed in this tangle. Not only utility and delight but every kind of impulse took sides in this fight about "truths". The intellectual fight became an occupation, an attraction, a profession, a duty, something dignified-and eventually knowledge and the striving for the: truths" found their place as a need among other needs. Henceforth not only faith and conviction but also scrutiny, denial, mistrust, and contradiction became a power; all "evil" instincts were subordinated to knowledge, employed in her service, and acquired the splendor of what is permitted, honored, and useful and eventually even the eye and innocence of the good.
Thus knowledge became a piece of life itself, and hence a continually growing power-until eventually knowledge collided with those primeval basic errors: two lives, two powers both in the same human being. A thinker is now that being in whom the impulse for truth and those life-preserving errors clash for their first fight, after the impulse for truth has proved to be also a life-preserving power. Compared to the significance of this fight, everything else is a matter of indifference: the ultimate question about the conditions of life has been posed here, and we confront the first attempt to answer this question by experiment. To what extent can truth endure incorporation?
That is the question; that is the experiment. — Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 110, translated by Walter Kaufman

Describing it as a thought experiment is too detached. It is without the struggle: — Fooloso4

Note that the end of the quoted passage shows that we are the "thought" experiment. Pretty darn attached.

Heidegger says something similar in his Lectures on Nietzsche. Both readings are difficult to square with the specificity of Nietzsche's actual words — Paine

I suppose the following, in which Nietzsche equate eternal return with will to power, is more consistent with the direction of those readings:

And do you know what 'the world' is to me? Shall I show you it in my mirror? This world: a monster of force, without beginning, without end, a fixed, iron quantity of force which grows neither larger nor smaller, which doesn't exhaust but only transforms itself, as a whole unchanging in size, an economy without expenditure and losses, but equally without increase, without income, enclosed by 'nothingness' as by a boundary, not something blurred, squandered, not something infinitely extended; instead, as a determinate force set into a determinate space, and not into a space that is anywhere 'empty' but as force everywhere, as a play of forces and force-waves simultaneously one and 'many', accumulating here while diminishing there, an ocean of forces storming and flooding within themselves, eternally changing, eternally rushing back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and flood of its forms, shooting out from the simplest into the most multifarious, from the stillest, coldest, most rigid into the most fiery, wild, self-contradictory, and then coming home from abundance to simplicity, from the play of contradiction back to the pleasure of harmony, affirming itself even in this sameness of its courses and years, blessing itself as what must eternally return, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no surfeit, no fatigue - this, my Dionysian world of eternal self-creating, of eternal self-destroying, this mystery world of dual delights, this my beyond good and evil, without goal, unless there is a goal in the happiness of the circle, without will, unless a ring feels good will towards itself - do you want a name for this world? A solution to all its riddles? A light for you too, for you, the most secret, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly? - This world is the will to power - and nothing besides! And you yourselves too are this will to power - and nothing besides!” (Writings from the Late Notebooks, 38[12])

Sounds like you have fun with Nietzsche ahead of you.
— frank

That was a contemptuous reply. I sense an underlying animus is underway. — Paine

Wow, you really misread that. Digging in to discover Nietzsche's theory of truth was fascinating for me.

Wow, you really misread that — frank

That’s how I read it too. You were asked to justify what you said and instead of answering you assumed a posture of superior knowledge to completely dismiss your interlocutor.

Digging in to discover Nietzsche's theory of truth was fascinating for me. — frank

What I find disappointing is your unwillingness to discuss what you discovered.

That’s how I read it too. You were asked to justify what you said and instead of answering you assumed a posture of superior knowledge to completely dismiss your interlocutor. — Jamal

I think Nietzsche's view of truth is fundamental to understanding him. It's best taken him from the horse's mouth rather than a snippet from someone who's typing on their phone while at work.

Try to imagine the best in people before you settle on nasty.

What I find disappointing is your unwillingness to discuss what you discovered. — Fooloso4

Understanding Nietzsche's view of truth is fundamental to understanding him in general. I think you'll be very gratified if you look into it. Really.

Try to imagine the best in people before you settle on nasty. — frank

Try to take my comments about your behaviour seriously. You really haven’t absorbed it at all.

Try to take my comments about your behaviour seriously. You really haven’t absorbed it at all. — Jamal

I think the best plan would be for me to keep my comments to myself.

Moksa is a classic form of nihilism in Nietzsche’s sense of the word. — Joshs

At least Schopenhauer had some idea of the meaning of it.

I think you'll be very gratified if you look into it. — frank

Thanks for the advice, but I am not looking for suggestions about something I have been doing for many years

I am not going to press you on this. If you do not want to or are not prepared or are not able to answer I will leave it there. But you left a window open to the possibility that when you are not at work typing on your phone you might provide a substantive response.

Perhaps it will address Nietzsche's themes of the relation between knowledge, truth, and life, objective truths,"deadly truths", truth and history, and so on.

But I see now that before I have finished writing this you might have closed the window and plan to keep further comments to yourself.