Eternal Recurrence — Central concept in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, first formulated in The Gay Science (§341) as a thought experiment: “What if a demon told you that this life, as you now live it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more?” The idea operates simultaneously on multiple registers: (1) as an existential criterion — the “greatest weight” that selects: only one who can affirm life integrally can bear to desire its eternal repetition; (2) as cosmology — the hypothesis that, in a universe finite in forces but infinite in time, all configurations recur cyclically (theme of the posthumous fragments, 1881–88); (3) as an ethical-selective thought — it functions as an imperative: “live in such a way that you would want to live again” — replacing transcendent morality with an immanent criterion of value. Deleuze (Nietzsche and Philosophy, 1962) interprets eternal recurrence as a selective ontological principle: only that which affirms itself returns, only the active — the reactive and the nihilistic eliminate themselves. The concept connects with amor fati and the will to power as elements of Nietzsche’s affirmative thought.
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