Nietzsche: Affirming Life Through Eternal Recurrence

Affirming Life

Nietzsche seeks to affirm life, accepting it as it is: a spontaneous instinct that manifests as a struggle of forces where some are created and others are destroyed, where nothing is permanent. Life is a creative force, asserting the will to power, which is the desire to live (vital force). In his critique of philosophy, Nietzsche states that decadence starts with Socrates and is reflected in the traditional concepts of Western culture, which is a reflection of Platonic Dualism.

Nihilism

Nihilism is a consequence of the decadence of Western culture, which has fundamentally denied life and affirmed nothing. There are two types of nihilism:

• Passive Nihilism: This is the discovery that all cultural values are false and everything Western society has accepted heretofore has lost validity.
• Active Nihilism: This starts from the denial of false values that go against life and proposes a new ethos, a new morality. This task of creation revives the desire for power and a new type of man, the Superman.

The New Morality

The new morality can only be realized after the death of God. Nietzsche states that God is dead, and man has killed him. The expression "God is dead" cannot be understood literally, as if God could die, and if there were a God, he could not die. Therefore, it is a metaphor depicting the death of Western culture. The death of God is contrary to the values of life and the Dionysian values of reason. This involves the liberation of man, who will become Superman and make the change in morality. God, therefore, is no longer an obstacle to life. The two forms of nihilism are related to the death of God: passive nihilism culminates in the death of God, and in turn, the death of God is the starting point of active nihilism.

The Theory of Eternal Recurrence

Nietzsche notes the following contradiction: On the one hand, life is change and becoming and as such is subject to time limits, as is the will to power. But on the other hand, the love of life leads the will to power to a desire for eternity. This contradiction is resolved by Nietzsche with the theory of eternal recurrence. He takes this idea from the Presocratics, especially Heraclitus's cyclical view of the universe.