When Nietzsche Wept: Eternal Return

My favourite scene from "When Nietzsche Wept". I wouldn't recommend the movie, but I liked this part...

From "The Gay Science", §341:

What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you:

"This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!"

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?

Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine!"

Category:

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Tags:

• When
• Nietzsche
• Wept
• Josef
• Breuer
• Sigmund
• Freud
• Life
• Feminism
• Freedom
• Existentialism

[ThermalHD]

lol, when i read the title at first it said eternal rectum.

[mavaddat]

@ThermalHD Yeah, that video violated the YouTube terms of service... It can now be found on Fox News.

[VegsoulWhiteWolf]

Pity for the awful acting...

[mavaddat]

@VegsoulWhiteWolf Agreed.

[qaplatlhinganmaH]

@Ko252

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Dick, Philip K.

[nactan]

@YoutibYoutib yeah, "genius". google "Tannhäuser". how tastes change...

[bobdy9988]

This was the greatest gift I ever received.

[dugwyler]

@ridinist I agree -- it takes a lot. Nietzsche dedicated one of his books to "the very few," and by this he meant just this sort of person; the rarity, who, despite everything, lives as they believe they should live, regardless of the demands made by their time and place. The person who knows suffering is a virtue, who knows a Sisyphean task is a blessing. I'd agree that there are Eastern elements to this... and Nietzsche, after all, did admire Jesus on many points... for being such a person.

[ridinist]

@dugwyler and it is really hard to shout "the eternal YES!" it takes a lot to see one's life and say I will live like this forever. Myself, I usually want a sense of an escape. But to joyously hold on to a life -- a career, loved ones, mistakes, successes -- is what -- correct me if I am wrong -- Nietzsche encourages. What the man does in the film strays from that ideal of facing one's unending life. Strangely too, the burden of unending life, seems Hindu/Buddhist, even Christ-like(?)

[dugwyler]

@ridinist I think "opposite" is a bit of a stretch. It's a terrible film and it makes Nietzsche out to be rather pathetic, but the basic idea of the eternal recurrence isn't all that inaccurate. They have the important part: it's not so much whether your life will repeat an infinite number of times exactly the same way, so much as how you respond to the idea that it could. Does it fill you with horror? Or -- does it fill you with joy and make you shout the eternal YES!

[ridinist]

@aiayumi though he considered the overman the one who could gladly live their life over and over again. lift that heaviest burden again and again gladly.

[ridinist]

It should be stated that this film scene is opposite of the actual writing of Nietzsche on the idea of eternal return. Google or read the excerpt from Nietzsche's the Gay Science. What he actually says is shocking.

[SHITCAKES4U]

Candy anyone??? Something else? Eternal return of the candy perhaps!! muhaahhahahahaaaa. I'll be back.

[PornographicSoul]

Nietzsche had pretty good english haha

[Ak47eier]

Nietzche Is the only one who have the better theory about what happened when one die! Everything that has been told by a religion and the state are In did the biggest lies ever, the only thing they want Is to make you give your effort,power,thoughts and even your life to the Idea of non sense so they can shine through lifetime! fuck the religion and the state! Live your life.