Identity And The Eternal Return

020 Cooke (16-34)

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 16

Eternal Return and the Problem of the Constitution of Identity Alexander Cooke The basic conception of the work, the idea of eternal recurrence, the highest formula of affirmation that can possibly be attained—belongs to the August of the year 1881: it was jotted down on a piece of paper with the inscription: “6000 feet beyond man and time.” I was that day walking through the woods beside the lake of Silvaplana; I stopped beside a mighty pyramidal block of stone which reared itself up not far from Surlei. Then this idea came to me. —Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

Introduction: Nietzsche and the Doctrine of the Eternal Return

T

he doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the same presents itself as both the most problematic and difficult aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy. While described above, and in other letters of Nietzsche’s surrounding the month of August 1881 (see Klossowski, 1997, 55–56), as the “highest formula of affirmation,” in The Gay Science, written during the same period, the same thought is communicated as the heaviest burden: The heaviest burden.—What if a demon crept after you one day or night in your loneliest solitude and said to you: “This life, as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live again and again, times without number; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must return to you, and everything in the same series and sequence—and in the same way this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and in the same way this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned again and again—and you with it, you dust of dust!”—Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who thus spoke? Or have you experienced a tremendous moment in which you would have answered him: “You are a god and never did I hear anything more divine!” If this thought gained power over you it would, as you are now, transform and perhaps crush you; the question in all and everything: “do you want this again and again, times without number?” would lie as the heaviest burden upon all your actions. Or how well disposed towards yourself and towards life would you have to become to have no greater desire than for this ultimate eternal sanction and seal? (GS, 273–74)

From such a cursory examination, the eternal return seems no more than a belief or an ethical concept. However, the content of Nietzsche’s thought indicates Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 29, 2005 Copyright ©2005 The Friedrich Nietzsche Society.

16

020 Cooke (16-34)

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 17

Eternal Return and the Problem of the Constitution of Identity

17

something much stronger than a personally held belief. While its grounds will be problematized in due course, the doctrine of the eternal return can be given a proof, in the strongest sense of the word. The eternal return takes two forms: (1) a cosmological or physical doctrine; (2) an ethical or selective doctrine. As pointed out by Pierre Klossowski, these two aspects are summarized in the following single claim: “Act as though you had to relive your life innumerable times and will to relive it innumerable times— for in one way or another, you must recommence it and relive it” (Klossowski, 1997, 56–57). How can one provide a proof, first, for the physical doctrine— that one’s life must eternally return—such that the second, ethical or practical doctrine can be elucidated from Nietzsche’s philosophy? For Nietzsche, the world is constituted by force. If force is the fundamental constitution of the world, it can only nourish itself on itself. It has no exterior source or supplement to fuel it; otherwise it would no longer be fundamental and singularly essential. Force must therefore be finite. If force is finite, it would seem that the world is proceeding to an end state of entropy. Nietzsche argues, though, that if the universe had an end, it would already have been reached (WP, 36). The final state of Becoming—Being—if it were at all possible, would no longer become. The fact that one experiences time as movement—that the present moment is always passing—disproves the possibility of having reached an end state. There can therefore only be pure Becoming. There “is” only pure Becoming. Being, then, “is” pure Becoming. If there is neither start nor end to Becoming, how does one experience the very passing of the Moment that justifies the fact of Being as Becoming? The present or Moment, such that it can be experienced as passing, must be both past and yet-to-come. For Time to incorporate the Moment in two states (past and yet-to-come), at some point, the same passage of Time must recur or return. Insofar as there is no end point to becoming, it must recur eternally. The physical doctrine of the eternal return is elucidated by Heidegger thus: “The world’s becoming, as finite, turning back on itself, is therefore a permanent becoming, that is to say, eternal becoming. Since such cosmic becoming, as finite becoming in an infinite time, takes place continuously, not ceasing whenever its finite possibilities are exhausted, it must already have repeated itself, indeed an infinite number of times” (Heidegger, 1991, 109). Or, as Deleuze writes, “It is not being that returns but rather the returning itself that constitutes being insofar as it is affirmed of becoming and of that which passes” (Deleuze, 1983, 48). Regardless of the internal consistency of the physical proof, the fact is not explained that Nietzsche experienced it as both the highest affirmation and the heaviest burden. It is only by way of elucidating the selective doctrine that the burdensome nature of the thought becomes apparent. As will be seen, the

020 Cooke (16-34)

18

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 18

Alexander Cooke

ethical understanding of the eternal return is the most apparent point of equivocality among commentators on Nietzsche. Further, the thought of the eternal return can be accused of standing as no more than a belief. This is as a result of the fact that it indicates the philosophical impossibility of any end point, which must include identity in general, insofar as it takes itself as its own beginning, presence-to-itself or end point. From the point of view of subjectivity, for example, one can point toward the self-affirmation of one’s own being in enunciating “I am.” Such a statement, according to its “common” understanding, presupposes that the “am” is a quality of Being, not Becoming. Further, that it is a category of Being and not Becoming enables the “I” which enunciates it to say also: “I am not x,” and, more important in the present context, “x is not I.” The decision made, in this example, over that which is proper or not to one’s ownmost being is a claim to what Klossowski, citing Nietzsche, refers to as “sovereignty” (Klossowski, 1997, 106; WP, 255). One states: “I am x and you are not.” However, the self-affirmation of the eternal return is, insofar as it is thought by Nietzsche, a disappropriation of the very possibility of self-affirmation. As Blanchot puts it, “The affirmation wherein everything is affirmed disperses as it takes place: the very place of its affirmation, the thought that bears it, the existence that causes it to exist, the unity of the instance of its occurrence, and the still indispensible coherence of its formulation” (Blanchot, 1993, 274–75). It is only by taking seriously Nietzsche’s doctrine that one begins to realize the implications that such a thought has on Being, for beings as a whole, and, what is most profound, the implications it has on that being which “experiences” the “highest attunement.” However, unless one can account for the holding sway or self-affirmation of a being within becoming from within the doctrine of the eternal return, it remains problematic whether the self-constituted identity that thinks the highest thought can ever be anyone other than Nietzsche. This problem can be put from a more philosophical point of view: How does the eternal return account for the formulation of identity? To address this question I will pay closest attention to two readings of Nietzsche’s highest attunement, given by (1) Martin Heidegger and (2) Gilles Deleuze. While in general agreement with the physical proof for the eternal return, as will be seen, they differ significantly with regard to their understanding of its selective or ethical aspect. Heidegger, in his lectures on “The Eternal Recurrence of the Same” (Heidegger, 1991), attempts to detail the doctrine in relation to the Will to Power as the most essential thought: the thought of Being as a whole, while arguing for the selective aspect as a phenomenological attunement. Deleuze, however, introduces a more nuanced understanding of the Will to Power, and attempts to develop a selective ontology in Nietzsche and Philosophy and Difference and Repetition (Deleuze, 1983; 1997).

020 Cooke (16-34)

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 19

Eternal Return and the Problem of the Constitution of Identity

19

Heidegger: Eternal Return of the Same Having already established a critique of the history of metaphysics in Sein und Zeit in 1927, and in the process of constructing his own original philosophical system in Beiträge zur Philosophie between 1936 and 1938, it is not surprising to find in Heidegger’s lectures on Nietzsche between 1936 and 1940—in particular, his lectures on the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, conducted in 1937— a certain “reduction” of Nietzsche’s thought. While it must certainly be admitted that Heidegger is influenced by Nietzsche, it has been argued by Deleuze, for example, that Heidegger is Nietzsche’s potential, but this potential was never actualized (Deleuze, 1992, 113). Heidegger went too quickly, and thus did not see the singularly troubling element of Nietzsche’s thought of the Eternal Return. Nonetheless, Heidegger’s placement of the eternal return in the proximity of his fundamental ontology opens up the question of where the hardest thought stands in relation to Being. The manner in which Heidegger proceeds in his reading of Nietzsche can only be explained with reference to his “fundamental ontology.” Beginning as a critique of Husserlian phenomenology, Heidegger attempts to establish both the ontic and the ontological determinations of Being. Unlike those preceding him— figures in the history of Western metaphysics, including Descartes, Kant, and, as he saw it, Nietzsche—Heidegger attempts to explicate an understanding of Being that precedes beings in general (Heidegger, 1996, 9). Proceeding hermeneutically, the being that questions (Da-sein) must account for its thrownness into an already constituted world, while also elaborating the ontological structures that give rise to its power of asking the question (whether the question of Being or beings). Da-sein is established, by Heidegger, as always being-in-the-world, its reference to this world determined by Care. Without the structure of Care, Da-sein has no possibility of understanding itself and its possibilities of being-there (Heidegger, 1996, 180). In establishing the mode by which Da-sein comes to realize the limits of its being-in-the-world, through dying, Da-sein establishes the horizon of possibilities of Being determined by temporality (Heidegger, 1996, 333). The realization of the limits of Da-sein occurs in Being and Time as a result of the fundamental attunement of Angst (ibid., 174–75). Angst, it must be emphasized, does not in-itself determine Da-sein’s limit; it is required only as an ontic “experience” that gives way to the fundamental ontological understanding of Being. Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same is explicated from within the fore-held framework of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. As such, the concept of “fundamental attunement” holds a particular place and plays a particular part within the structure of Heidegger’s ontology. It is the very status

020 Cooke (16-34)

20

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 20

Alexander Cooke

of Nietzsche’s “fundamental attunement” that is at stake in understanding the reading given by Heidegger. While in general agreement with the physical proof of the eternal return, Heidegger’s situation of Nietzsche as another thinker in the history of Western metaphysics (Heidegger, 1991, 205) forces the understanding of the “high tonality” to extend to its relation to that Being which precedes beings. Unsure whether Nietzsche’s essential thought is merely another understanding of beings, or whether it points to the possibility of a nonmetaphysical understanding of Being, Heidegger attempts to think the essence of the thought of the eternal return. In following Heidegger, I wish to look at two aspects of his reading of Nietzsche: (1) the implications of the physical doctrine for the experience (and thus, Being) of time; and (2) his understanding of the selective doctrine in relation to his fundamental ontology. There are, for Heidegger, three communications of the thought of the eternal return: (1) The Heaviest Burden (in The Gay Science); (2) The Vision and the Riddle (in Thus Spoke Zarathustra); and (3) The Vicious Circle (in Beyond Good and Evil). In each case, the communication revolves around a question or a call to thinking in some way. In each case, Heidegger concludes that the thought leads one to “solitude.” It is a personal act of faith, even if it leads to an essential understanding of the thought within the being which thinks it. There is an essential solitude to the thought of the eternal return. From Nietzsche’s point of view, this solitude refers to the essence of the thought itself, insofar as it indicates Being only as pure Becoming. The doctrine, insofar as it utterly transcends any notion of “Being,” cannot be communicated, for communication implies at least two “distinct” beings. However, the eternal return exceeds even this conception of solitude: it cannot even be authentically experienced by an individual to his or her own self, no matter how hard one tries to reappropriate the experience after the fact. Even one’s common understanding of “solitude” is challenged. Things are not quite the same for Heidegger. The communication of the doctrine or its experience leads to Zarathustra’s solitude, his communication with his soul and his soul alone, “because he has found what defines him” (Heidegger, 1991, 60). Indeed, in the “second” communication, Heidegger attempts to account for the interaction between Zarathustra and the dwarf at the gateway of the Moment (see Z, 176–80) as though these two beings are distinct. After a brief encounter, the dwarf “leaves” Zarathustra’s world. How does Heidegger account for the “absence” of the dwarf after it has been confronted with the eternal return? The dwarf ran away (Heidegger, 1991, 55). Compare Zarathustra’s account of the dwarf’s departure: “Where had the dwarf now gone? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Had I been dreaming? Had I awoken?” (Z, 179). There is no explanation or justification for the dwarf’s absence. At this point of his journey, it seems difficult to ascribe an objective relationship between Zarathustra and his world, since the very being of the world is challenged.

020 Cooke (16-34)

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 21

Eternal Return and the Problem of the Constitution of Identity

21

For Heidegger, though, the disappearance of the dwarf is not as a result of the “dream-like” nature of the thought itself, the nature of the most difficult thought as essentially exceeding consciousness (which directly implies the ability to say “I, Zarathustra; you, dwarf”). The dwarf, the spider, and the gateway, which is itself explicitly named “Moment,” are all moments unable to be demarcated according to an objective rule of time, or to an objective world. Zarathustra cannot communicate the eternal return to another being because the thought itself is incommunicable. It threatens Zarathustra’s self-certainty and thus the ability to make a distinction between one being and another which is necessitated by the structure of communication. Beginning with his reconfiguration of Zarathustra’s world (which is a reimplementation of a world already negated by Nietzsche: a world of beings, of things), Heidegger is then able to situate the eternal return in a very particular way: the experience of the eternal return does not threaten the “world,” since the dwarf is able to “flee.” Only the relation of Da-sein to itself is threatened, since, presumably for Heidegger, there is no possibility of Da-sein fleeing itself. Dasein is driven only further into its own solitude. Indeed, the eternal return appears to be the very mode of Da-sein’s ownmost relation to itself and no one else: “one man’s circle is not another man’s circle” (Heidegger, 1991, 53). Heidegger’s reading of “The Vision and the Riddle” will be seen to have been of utmost importance in determining his (mis-)appropriation of Nietzsche. What is implied in Heidegger’s reading of this passage? This question will be addressed later in terms of a broader understanding of Heidegger’s placement of Nietzsche. For the time being, I want to examine Heidegger’s understanding of the “Moment” in relation to Time. The “eternity of recurrence, hence the time of recurrence, and thus recurrence itself, can be grasped solely in terms of the ‘Moment’” (Heidegger, 1991, 98), at Midday, the hour of the shortest shadow, immeasurable by any “timepiece” (ibid., 140). The thought of the eternal return is an event, it occurs in the immeasurable “blink of the eye” [augenblick] (see ibid., 40n). However, for Heidegger, the thought also acts as a gateway onto a greater understanding of Being—to Nietzsche’s most fundamental metaphysical position. How, near the gateway of the Moment, is time conceived by Heidegger? Between infinite past and infinite present, Da-sein cannot know anything of a life that precedes it. When Da-sein thinks back, it simply does not find anything, since to speak of a relation extrinsic and prior to Da-sein’s world presupposes a relation to Being that is “objective,” given that it exceeds Da-sein’s ownmost finitude. Indeed, and more important for Heidegger, it is not simply the attempt to think that which precedes Da-sein’s own being-in-the-world that creates the problem. Rather, the very attempt to think “prior” relies on the absolute necessity of the realization of certain possibilities. However, not all thinking is thinking back. Standing on the other side of the moment is “thinking proper”: thinking ahead

020 Cooke (16-34)

22

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 22

Alexander Cooke

(Heidegger, 1991, 135). Instead of challenging its own “thrownness” by looking back, Da-sein faces forward, toward the horizon of its future possibilities. If thinking proper is purely thinking ahead, Heidegger must still be able to account for thinking back. It is here that Heidegger’s fore-conception of Being is again explicitly evoked. Heidegger argues, “If you allow your existence to drift in timorousness and ignorance, with all the consequences these things have, then they will come again, and they will be that which already was. And if on the contrary you shape something supreme out of the next moment, as out of every moment, and if you note well and retain the consequences, then this moment will come again and will have been what already was” (Heidegger, 1991, 135–36). The doctrine of the eternal return does not allow for any field of possibilities in the future. A relation with the determination of Da-sein’s future possibilities also, insofar as everything returns, implies a determination of Dasein’s past. Everything has been decided for Da-sein, except for the moment of affirmation of the eternal return. Only the affirmation or negation of the eternal return changes Da-sein’s relation to the thought. For Heidegger, by objectifying Zarathustra and the dwarf, the site of affirmation “is” only in Da-sein. The possibility of affirmation or negation is still able to be decided by Da-sein. In locating the site of affirmation of the eternal return in a self-affirming Da-sein, as a decision by a human, Heidegger perceives a problem in any affirmation of the eternal return: what if the “worst” people adopt the doctrine? Unlike those either unaware or indifferent to the thought, in affirming the eternal return it is possible that the “worst” people see themselves as propelled “beyond all mediocrity” (Heidegger, 1991, 147). What is to stop the eternal return from becoming a philosophical justification for oppression? Again, implicit in Heidegger’s anxieties over the heaviest burden is the assumption that in affirming the being of becoming, Da-sein can still affirm itself as a self. Only given this possibility can the eternal return lead to what Heidegger calls “solitude” without also fundamentally questioning this solitude. Within Nietzsche’s thought, however, there remains no reason for the “worst” to decide themselves above the “mediocre.” One must be careful to distinguish the forces of Creation and Destruction (ibid., 144) from the absolute conscious control of the Human. The human is, for Nietzsche, an assemblage of forces. These forces not only prevent the permanence or “fixity” of the Human but also constitute their own ontological fixity within the doctrine of the eternal return. What are the implications of Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche for the selective aspect of the eternal return? One must first attempt to grasp exactly what Heidegger makes of this aspect. Perhaps Heidegger’s most explicit statement can be seen in the following quotation: “A decision has to be reached as to who has or does not have the energy and the attunement required to hold firm in the truth” (Heidegger, 1991, 130–31). Only those beings that have the capacity to

020 Cooke (16-34)

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 23

Eternal Return and the Problem of the Constitution of Identity

23

affirm the heaviest, most tragic thought will return. But things are still not clear. A revealing attempt can be found just after the question of the decision is raised. Heidegger describes two types of “human beings,” those “fleeting” beings and the rare “others”: Those who do not “believe” in [the truth of the eternal return] are the “fleeting ones.” By that Nietzsche means two things. First of all, the fleeting ones are fleeing ones, in flight before magnificent, expansive prospects which presuppose an ability to wait. The fleeting ones want their happiness right there where they can latch onto it; and they want the time to be able to enjoy it. These people who flee are fleeting in yet another sense: they themselves are without stability, are transient creatures; they leave nothing behind; they found nothing, ground nothing. (Heidegger, 1991, 131)

Heidegger’s interpretation of what this means, however, is most revealing. Indeed, it is worth quoting the passage at length, since such (thoroughly anthropological) descriptions by Heidegger are rare, even if inspired by the thought of another: The others, those who are not fleeting, are “the human beings with eternal souls and eternal Becoming and pains that tell of the future.” We might also say that they are the human beings who bear within themselves a great deal of time and who live to the full the times they have—a matter that is quite independent of actual longevity. Or, to turn it around the other way: it is precisely the fleeting human being who is least fit to serve as the human being of proper transition, though appearances seem to suggest the opposite, inasmuch as “transition” implies evanescence. The fleeting ones, who do not and cannot think the thought, “must, according to their own nature, finally die off!” “Only those who hold their existence to be capable of eternal repetition will remain: and with such people a condition is possible to which no utopian has ever attained!” (Heidegger, 1991, 131)

How can one possibly resolve such statements with Heidegger’s acceptance that the “little men” also recur forever (Heidegger, 1991, 57)? One can now begin to render Heidegger’s understanding of the selective aspect of the eternal return. Affirmation of the eternal return alters only the phenomenological experience of Da-sein, the relation of Da-sein to its possibilities, not its reality, let alone the ontological determinations of the being of Da-sein. It bears no “real” relation to the world: “It is not merely that another series of happenstances unfolds; what is different is the kind of happening, acting, and creating. Color, the very look of things, their eidos, presencing, Being—this is what changes. ‘Deep yellow’ and ‘incandescent red’ begin to radiate” (ibid., 131–32). Yet a further ontic distinction may be made. Before the possibility of an affirmation or negation of the eternal return (which alters the phenomenological experience of Da-sein and its relation to its world), Heidegger indicates the ontological determination of a being in terms of its possibility of “hearing” the eternal return: “Only the few, the rare, only those who have ears for such inaudible revolutions will perceive the ‘Incipit tragoedia’” (ibid., 28). Heidegger does not adequately address the

020 Cooke (16-34)

24

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 24

Alexander Cooke

implications of raising the concepts of the “few” or the “rare,” even though the “heroic” is considered. Nevertheless, in his analysis of heroism, Heidegger takes pains not to determine “who” is heroic enough to say “Yes,” or to detail the conditions for a being to say “Yes” to the heaviest burden. The only being that is admitted to be capable of saying “Yes” is Zarathustra: “The thought of eternal return of the same is so much the hardest to bear that no prior, mediocre human being can think it; he dare not even register a claim to think it; and that holds for Nietzsche himself. In order to let the most burdensome thought . . . begin, Nietzsche must therefore first create poetically the thinker of that thought” (ibid., 30). Aside from a figure constructed (and, for the most part, determined) by Nietzsche himself, the figures in Heidegger’s reading—the heroic, the mediocre, the fleeing, and so forth—are never elaborated such that the conditions for their respective attunements to the doctrine of the eternal return can be made clear. The beginning of the thought occurs in a fictional construction, the only “being” (if one could call it that) able to “hear” it, the most rare, is selected only to put the thought into existence. Only then, once it exists, does the power to experience the thought remain for all beings: “The little men too are; as beings they too recur forever. They cannot be put out of action; they pertain to that side of things that is dark and repulsive. If being as a whole is to be thought, the little men too wait upon their ‘Yes.’ That realization makes Zarathustra shudder” (ibid., 57). One might surely argue that the event of the hardest thought negates the fundamental nature of the eternal return. It would seem that the eternal return adequated being in 1883 (or was it 1881? And when, exactly, since the experience of the thought was hidden from Nietzsche’s friends well after the Moment of its experience?). By all appearances, this threatens the transcendental nature of the doctrine, since the eternal return denies the very concept of event. Without an examination of the preceding conditions for the heroic or, indeed, the Übermensch, Heidegger’s understanding of the selective doctrine of the eternal return is in direct contradiction to Nietzsche’s philosophy. Even the little men, then, are the “few” and the “rare.” It is only a matter of time for even the littlest beings to say “Yes.” What is happening such that Heidegger can nullify the being of the eternal return? Most certainly, the weight of the thought is reduced by placing a selfconstituting Da-sein at the bottom. However, given the focus of this investigation, I do not wish to speculate any further on the motives behind Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche. We will certainly not gain a deeper understanding of the thought of the eternal return. An illuminating insight is nevertheless gained in a text written by Heidegger during the same period as his lectures on Nietzsche. In “The question concerning truth (Nietzsche)” (Heidegger, 1999, 253–56), Heidegger sees in Nietzsche’s thought the necessity of an “ordering of ranks.” Would this ordering not allow for a more authentic understanding of the burdensome nature of the eternal return? For, if there is a hierarchy within Being, not just among those beings who have ears for the tune of the eternal return, one might be more able to account

020 Cooke (16-34)

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 25

Eternal Return and the Problem of the Constitution of Identity

25

for the little men who either say “No” to the eternal return or turn it into a “little ditty” (Z, 235). How is one to understand who really are the “few” and the “rare” who hear, and thus affirm, the eternal return? Heidegger does not even ask this question. His own ears are too deaf to the melody of the eternal return. Perhaps it is playing too loudly, too near to him: “We are too close to [Nietzsche] and are therefore compelled to see everything too much within that horizon . . . which Nietzsche wanted basically to overcome” (Heidegger, 1999, 254). In the space between Heidegger and Deleuze, it might seem, sufficient distance is gained from the horizon in which Nietzsche was operating. In Deleuze’s reading of the eternal return, greater appreciation is given to Nietzsche’s own ordering of the ground of Being (force). Being, as Becoming, is necessarily in an eternal state of disequilibrium. While Heidegger admits this fact (Heidegger, 1991, 88), he does not take the next step, clearly splitting an unstable Being into the forces of the Active and the Reactive. Only by doing this can one attempt to develop a “selective ontology”; further, it allows for the possibility of accounting for the holding sway of certain possibilities of being over others, whether they be the “heroic,” the “rare,” the “mediocre,” or simply the human.

Deleuze: Eternal Return of Difference The eternal return cannot conform to Heidegger’s structure. It threatens the mode by which Da-sein can ask the question of Being, given that the act of asking the question (of the eternal return) threatens the holding sway of Da-sein in the first place. Deleuze, attempting to avoid the hermeneutics of Da-sein, which presupposes the absolute necessity of Da-sein before developing an understanding of Being, asks the question of the question. Any hermeneutics—in the present context, a hermeneutics of existence (Da-sein)—presupposes the possibility of a meaningful intention toward the object appearing before consciousness. The hermeneutics of Da-sein presupposes that Da-sein can be gathered and hold itself together within its structures of understanding. Instead of positing the priority of the question of Being, Deleuze asks the “highest question of philosophy”: “Has existence a meaning?” (Deleuze, 1983, 18). That is, can Being even be meaningful, such that one can then ask the question? Behind this question is the problem of justice. Does existence need to be justified? And to whom or what is existence responsible? According to Deleuze, philosophers before Nietzsche have deemed existence blameworthy; some manner of existence prevents one from adequately understanding it in its immediacy. Existence, then, is only one step away from being held responsible (Deleuze, 1983, 22). Responsibility arises upon the ascription of a single understanding of Being. Any communication of Being, if divergent from its singular meaning, is based on a lack of adequate responsibility to Being.

020 Cooke (16-34)

26

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 26

Alexander Cooke

At which point, justification denies the world in its immediacy, placing the locus of value on something other than, or which stands above, the world itself. The very existence that justification seeks to validate is therein no longer existence as such, but rather a meaningless artifice. For Deleuze, existence is innocent (Deleuze, 1983, 22). It requires no reference to an Other, nor a being to univocally interpret it. If there is no static point of reference for any meaning, which Deleuze posits as Being, what is there but Becoming—an innocent Becoming? This is the point of entry for Deleuze’s discussion of the eternal return: if the meaning or Law of existence is Becoming— without beginning or goal (for this would constitute a univocal locus of reference that would thence be radically exterior and alterior to that to which it referred), then the only law is that of the eternal return: the Being of the return, returning eternally (ibid., 24). Accounting for the necessary plurality of existence, Deleuze’s understanding of the physical doctrine of the eternal return accounts for a nuance that Heidegger ignored. Force must always already be plural, hierarchical, different. Force only exists in relation to other forces, as either dominated or dominating; if it were univocal, it would at some point have had to negate itself. Already assuming the proof of the eternal return, if force had ever negated itself, it would not exist. Thus, there must be (at least) two modalities of force. Deleuze calls these forces Active and Reactive. Always constituted in a body, active forces are the superior and dominant; reactive forces are the inferior and dominated. Active forces necessarily “escape consciousness,” for “consciousness merely expresses the relation of certain reactive forces to the active forces which dominate them” (Deleuze, 1983, 41). That is, consciousness understands organisms only in reference to itself. For example, an object comes to consciousness, phenomenologically, in reference to that consciousness which intends the object. This is the reactive mode of understanding: reactive forces always only occur by reference to another, higher force that governs it. Active force, on the other hand, asserts itself as itself, without reference to other forces. Active force goes to the limit of its being, producing itself without constraint in its ownmost possibilities. While there seems a solid qualitative distinction between active and reactive (as dominant and dominated), Deleuze admits a problem: active forces can become reactive. Reactive force separates the power of active force from itself by interpreting it, or bringing it to consciousness. “An active force separated from what it can do, by reactive force thus becomes reactive. But does not this reactive force, in its own way, go to the limit of what it can do?” (Deleuze, 1983, 66). Reactive forces separate active forces from their ownmost possibilities of being (their power), which is unconscious. Ironically, this separation allows new ways of being—new powers. Indeed, as will be seen later, it accounts for the genesis of Ideas

020 Cooke (16-34)

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 27

Eternal Return and the Problem of the Constitution of Identity

27

Going-to-the-limit cannot be that which essentially accounts for the becoming-active of force. Nothingness is also a limit, the limit at which a force accepts its absolute domination by another, active force. The becoming-active of force can only occur upon the “affinity of action and affirmation.” Upon accepting the heaviest burden and/or the highest affirmation of the eternal return, a force must affirm its going-to-the-limit (transcendence) as it (necessarily) does so; in denying the necessity of transcendence, force divides itself between this necessity and a hatred or denial of it. Thus, “becoming-active is affirming and affirmative, just as becoming-reactive is negating and nihilistic” (Deleuze, 1983, 68). So far the discussion of active and reactive force has presupposed the cogency of the physical aspect of the eternal return. However, in admitting the possibility of the becoming-reactive of force, the universal being of the eternal return might appear to be negated, since reactive forces will their own nothingness, not the eternal return. As incidentally exemplified by Heidegger in his account of the interaction between Zarathustra and the dwarf, becoming-reactive forces introduce contradiction into pure becoming and thus attempt to call a halt to becoming as a whole (“Being is x and not y”). In Heidegger’s case, the enunciation is “I am Zarathustra and not the dwarf”; “I am here and not there.” It was seen that Zarathustra does not negate the dwarf; its absence occurs only through its being forgotten. Nonetheless, the fact of Heidegger’s perception of an objective presence to Zarathustra and the dwarf must be accounted for within the doctrine of the eternal return. It is only in the second, “selective” aspect of the doctrine of the eternal return that this problem can be resolved. The difference between Heidegger and Deleuze lies in the ontological status of the eternal return, especially its ethical or selective aspect: “It is no longer a question of selective thought but of selective being; for the eternal return is being and being is selection” (Deleuze, 1983, 71). Heidegger never allowed the eternal return to be the thought of Being. Heidegger split the doctrine from itself; he stopped the incipience of the doctrine; he denied the essentially affirmative nature of the thought, the necessarily unconscious nature of the eternal return. Heidegger was the one who attempted to introduce a consciousness that, from his own point of view, can think the eternal return without calling into question consciousness itself. Heidegger riddled the eternal return with contradiction, therein nullifying it. Deleuze, on the other hand, in attempting to do justice to the doctrine, affirms the essentially unconscious nature of the eternal return; he attempts to explore the becoming-active of forces that would be necessary for the truth of an eternal return. “In what sense is the eternal return selective?” (Deleuze, 1983, 68). Containing the imperative: “whatever you will, will it in such a way that you also will its eternal return” (ibid.), the doctrine contains a “creative” or practical element. Unlike Heidegger, who situates the eternal return only in the

020 Cooke (16-34)

28

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 28

Alexander Cooke

moment of decision, the eternal return for Deleuze has a real effect on beings. This statement must first be carefully qualified. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze tries to account for a theory that does not posit identity first. Rather, difference is attempted to be thought in-itself. Identity is still given, but only as a “second principle” (Deleuze, 1997, 40). The eternal return is used to describe a “world without identity” (ibid., 241). But a question is pressing: Which world is Deleuze referring to? This world? For the world of the eternal return is opposed to the world of nature (conforming to the law of “generality”). These worlds are not opposed as though one referred to the sensible, the other to the supersensible. Rather, the two worlds refer to two “modes” of “transcendentality.” As Deleuze says, “The laws of nature govern the surface of the world, the eternal return ceaselessly rumbles in this other dimension of the transcendental” (ibid.). The eternal return accounts for the conditions for the possibility of infinite existence, while the law of nature accounts for the conditions for the possibility of finite existence. The test of the eternal return submits all laws, all “beings,” to the selective test, while the law of nature, it seems, renders “Ideas” coherent to consciousness through an Identity secondary and derived from an eternal difference that exceeds it. The selective test of the eternal return, therefore, does not refer to real beings, for these are always already excluded from the eternal return. It seeks to affirm that which must return, that which is truly eternal, while evading the fleeting surges of beings, based on the categories of identity, resemblance, generality, etc. At the same time, insofar as the eternal return is the only truly universal condition for the possibility of all things, it must have a necessary relation to the natural law. Clearly, the transcendental law of the return ontologically precedes the transcendental law of nature or physis. The relation between these two modes of transcendentality will be examined later. Three “repetitions” belong to the selective test, three determinations of temporality: the Before, During, and After (Deleuze, 1997, 294). These determinations can be examined from the point of view of the eternal return. In particular, I wish to examine the manner in which each determination accounts for the laws of the return (difference) and of nature (identity). In the first place, the Before, repetition is of the Same. One wills what is to come; one wills Before that which comes all things which will come as coming. The eternal return wills the creation of new values. That is, insofar as one wills and affirms the whole, one wills and affirms the creation of any “thing.” Instead of selecting out reactive forces that negate active force, and thus still maintaining contradiction in the doctrine, the properly selective thought of the eternal return operates on different terms (Deleuze, 1983, 69). Active force does not negate reactive force. Rather, it is of the nature of reactive force to select itself out. Reactive force does not return, since it fancies itself as Being. Reactive force wills its own nothingness. There is no fascism or ter-

020 Cooke (16-34)

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 29

Eternal Return and the Problem of the Constitution of Identity

29

rorism in this thought. The weak necessarily destroy themselves. “Eternal return alone affects the true selection, because it eliminates the average forms and uncovers ‘the superior form of everything that is’” (Deleuze, 1997, 54–55). “Nothing which denies the eternal return returns” (Deleuze, 1997, 299). The reactive operates at the level of the law of nature; while creating average forms and generalizations of the diversity of force, these creations are nevertheless based on local or specific assemblages of force. The reactive as law of nature— as concrete, ontic, or empirical—is necessarily finite. The burden of the eternal return, and that which is hardest to overcome, has still not been conveyed. The Human, as one assemblage of force, is that which must be overcome. But this is fundamentally problematic considered from the second repetition: the During, Moment, or “Now.” Standing in the “Moment” of affirmation, the Human wills what is “Now.” The difficulty of this thought only becomes apparent once one acknowledges the essentially reactive, secondary, and local nature of the Human. The Human, in the very act of consciously willing or affirming what is “Now”—the presence of Becoming as no more present than pure Becoming—discovers its expropriation from the law of the eternal return. The Human discovers that “it” had, without knowledge of its own having done so, already willed the “Now.” The “it” of the human that had already intended the “now” is an intentionality that exceeds the consciousness that appropriated the thought. Clearly, however, the being that thought the eternal return and who gave it its original communication was itself a human. Is not the truth of the eternal return then negated by Nietzsche himself? The implications of affirming the eternal return for the being of the Human give rise to the greatest weight. Deleuze explains, “There are active forces of man; but these particular forces are only the nourishment of all forces” (Deleuze, 1983, 167). Active forces nourish the reactive forces that give the essential humanness to the Human (“I am x”). The active forces, revealed most effectively in Nietzsche’s high tonality, are those that ontologically precede and exceed the Human. The “I” can never “own” or appropriate active forces since they eternally exceed the grasp of the reactive. (Reactive force cannot exhaust active force. That is why it must only divide it from itself: increase the number of possibilities to reduce the specific intensity of active force.) What, then, of the human? If one is to believe Nietzsche, the human must have some direct relation to active force. Otherwise one would be quite justified in saying the eternal return is another measuring stick against which reactive forces can judge themselves. The only way reactive forces (which is, using Deleuze’s example, the being of the Human) can become-active is through active negation: “becoming-active as power of affirming” (Deleuze, 1983, 70): the affirmation of one’s necessary destruction, or the eternal joy of becoming. While Deleuze, following Nietzsche, refers to the becoming-active of the Human as

020 Cooke (16-34)

30

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 30

Alexander Cooke

the Übermensch, it must be noted that this figure is not conceived as a “superhuman.” Given the definition of Human as becoming-reactive, a super-human would clearly be no more than the extreme outcome of the will to nothingness. While Heidegger accepts the authenticity of Zarathustra’s trembling at the thought that all things will return, arguing that “Zarathustra is the initial and proper thinker of the thought of thoughts” (Heidegger, 1991, 30), Deleuze argues that “the small, petty, reactive man will not return” (Deleuze, 1983, 71). The Übermensch, unlike the smallest man and the super-human, is the figure that exceeds the becoming-reactive of the Human by affirming the active, unconscious creation of values (which, insofar as they are successfully created, must necessarily exceed old values). If Being is the eternal return of Becoming, if “Being” is difference and repetition, how can one account for the formation of identity? How, if it is possible, can values or Ideas be created? For Deleuze, “an Idea is a ‘complex theme,’ an internal multiplicity—in other words, a system of multiple, nonlocalizable connections between differential elements that is incarnated in real relations and actual terms” (Deleuze, 1997, 183). “The genesis takes place in time not between one actual term, however small, and another actual term, but between the virtual and its actualisation” (ibid.). Remaining in a Nietzschean standpoint, Deleuze posits instead of a “moral” imperative, a “problematical” imperative. Standing in the gateway of the Moment, Heidegger hears the call to make a decision, to divide possibilities according to a rule, a “moral” rule. Standing next to Heidegger, but infinitely far away, Deleuze hears a cacophonous call, the imperative to “throw the dice.” Unlike the moral imperative, the problematical imperative does not command one to win or lose, merely to throw the dice, to posit Ideas: “The most difficult thing is to make chance an object of affirmation” (ibid., 198). Chance is not arbitrary—once affirmed, all throws “win.” How does the problematical imperative account for the holding sway of a particular Idea? Through the test of the eternal return. Through active forgetting. This can be explained in two ways that essentially amount to the same thing, since there no longer exists the place for an ontic selection that can either be right or wrong, a throw that either wins or loses (thus, the possibility of responsibility is negated). On the one hand, everything that does not pass the test of the eternal return is forgotten. On the other hand, everything that cannot pass the test of the eternal return must be forgotten. The holding sway of a particular Idea is determined by its affirmation or anamnesis through time. But it is nevertheless still finite. There is no real destruction other than the affirmation that, in infinite time, that which is reactive simply cannot return. Destruction, within the law of the return, is no more than Forgetting. According to Deleuze, however, the return of the eternal return only occurs at the end of the line: as well as willing what is to come and willing what is, there is an affirmation of what has been. The affirmation from the standpoint of the

020 Cooke (16-34)

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 31

Eternal Return and the Problem of the Constitution of Identity

31

“After” creates the “strangely decentred circle” (Deleuze, 1997, 298) and is the highest test: only becoming-active forces are capable of affirming the eternal return. Thus, one can understand Deleuze’s statement: “The circle is at the end of the line” (Deleuze, 1997, 299). Otherwise, the gateway labeled “Moment” lies between two pathways each going in their own direction for an eternity (Z, 178). Nothing changes at the same time that everything becomes. Either way, any “differenciator” that accounted for the genesis of an Idea or Identity (law of nature) has been long forgotten (destroyed). The Moment is the point on “a straight line which mercilessly eliminates those who embark on it, who come upon the scene but repeat only once and for all” (Deleuze, 1997, 298). But the finitude of nature is only realized at the end, when all things can be affirmed. Deleuze asks, what “is the content of this third time?” (ibid., 299). In affirming only that which becomes again and again, the third time reveals, for Deleuze, only unconstrained difference (active forces). Any being, which, as a being, operates according to the law of identity or generality, cannot return. Any becoming, which conceives its own becoming according to a beginning or an end, as subordinate to a being, cannot return. Thus, within a selective ontology, obeying the high tonality of the eternal return, Deleuze accounts for difference in-itself as ontologically prior to all identity, resemblance, generality, etc. Identity is constituted as a generalization of differences, summarized in the law of nature. Identity can hold sway, but it fails to pass the ultimate test of infinity or universality: the eternal return. One must not take this as a denial of the existence of identity. The eternal return bears no relation to objects: objects themselves obey only the law of nature. Objectity is finite. The eternal return presents the infinity of time (the eternal return of the return: becoming) as the groundlessness preceding the ground (law of nature) of all beings. Any contamination, any attempt to render once and for all a law of nature, simply and straightforwardly does not pass the supreme test that would grant nature that privilege.

Conclusion By beginning with the self-affirmed identity of Da-sein, Heidegger could not account for Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal return on its own terms: the essential thought could not be thought in its essence, as the proof for the ontological primacy of difference. By reducing difference before he even began, the best Heidegger could do to understand the eternal return was to present it as the final culprit in a certain history of metaphysics that had already been found guilty. Heidegger’s misreading of “The Vision and the Riddle” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra was the most obvious case of this.

020 Cooke (16-34)

32

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 32

Alexander Cooke

Giving greater weight to the eternal return, by acknowledging an essential heirarchy or difference within force, Deleuze could employ Nietzsche’s doctrine to arrive at a distinction between two modes of transcendentality: the finite laws of nature (which conform to the representationalist categories of Identity, Resemblance, Generality, and so forth) and the infinite law of the eternal return (which is the eternal return of difference in itself). To establish the infinite conditions for the possibility of all things, each determination must pass the selective test of the eternal return: it must survive the finitude of nature. Clearly, given the essential finitude of Da-sein or the Human (even if no more than the nexus of the ontic and the ontological), any philosophy that privileges the intentional consciousness that gives rise to meaning must fail the test. As an ethical doctrine, the eternal return thus operates to reduce any moral imperative, any doctrine that employs the necessity of a decision. There is no priority of one mode of self-affirmation or another, one Idea or another; the self that affirms, the Ideas that are created, none can ever survive the highest test. This is the highest affirmation and the heaviest burden. It is at this high point, however, that one confronts a fundamental problem. Assuming the validity of the eternal return, it cannot be denied that it was thought by a figure named “Nietzsche,” while walking beside the lake of Silvaplana. Whether or not Deleuze or myself could claim to have adequately thought the heaviest burden, it remains the case that Nietzsche, Deleuze, and I have all attempted to communicate it. The problem lies in the fact that, at the level of the eternal return, it is strictly not possible for one particular Human and not another (given that each is essentially reactive) to adequately communicate or even think the hardest thought. For things not to go awry, there must be an ordering of ranks within reactive force. At the level of the eternal return, “the only unity, the only convergence of all the series, is an informal chaos in which they are all included” (Deleuze, 1997, 278). Thus, “no series enjoys a privilege over others” (ibid.). But why Nietzsche and not Wagner, or Schopenhauer, or Hegel? Clearly, one must be careful to distinguish the “eternal,” active distribution of series, which is chaotic, from the finite or, in the case of Deleuze, “human” distribution, which is sedentary (ibid.). Only the sedentary distribution accounts for a set of rules preexisting the “game” in which the distribution takes place. This game is plagued by a morality that sets up a delimited heirarchy of experience and possibilities of experience. It occurs from the essentiality of the human as reactive. Ideas are constituted from a particular morality: one idea holds sway over another. The holding sway of a particular series over another is due to a finite, reactive distribution. Thus, a man named “Nietzsche” experienced the thought of the eternal return, and not Wagner. One could, if one wished, conjure up a series or distribution that gave rise to the genesis of the eternal return in Nietzsche, and why it could never have emerged in other figures. Remaining as abstract as possible, in asking what is particular to Nietzsche such that he (and not someone else) was the first to ade-

020 Cooke (16-34)

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 33

Eternal Return and the Problem of the Constitution of Identity

33

quately communicate it, one can remain satisfied that there must have been a particular organization or distribution of force around Nietzsche and not others. Clearly, only the law of nature (reactive force) can be invoked in this ordering of ranks, not the law of eternal return (active force). It is concentrated in a single figure, through the law of generality that the return manifests itself. But if the eternal return is true, for a figure to have communicated the thought without turning it merely into a little ditty or a generality, there must be a relation between the law of return and the law of nature such that the former can present itself without being reduced to the latter. It is here that problems arise. It must be concluded that there must (always) have been a generalization that gave rise to the law of nature from out of the law of the eternal return. Only two possibilities can arise from this statement. Either, the law of nature has always existed and will never cease to exist. Once infinite, it would no longer be the law of nature, but would survive the selective test of the eternal return. Or, there must have been an event of generalization, an event of the law of nature. For this event to be grounded in any way, for it to have an origin, it can only refer to the law of the return. The law of nature would then be a possibility or potentiality of the eternal return. However, it has already been shown that if the eternal return contains a potentiality other to itself, it would have introduced a sedentary, reactive distribution to itself such that the event (indeed, any event) could arise. It has already been seen that if this event (the event of “Being,” of identity and not repetition) had happened, it would “be” Now. Returning to the physical proof of the eternal return, given that time is experienced as passing, the event cannot “be” now. It can therefore have never occurred. How, then, does one account for the genesis or constitution of the law of nature without introducing a new contradiction to the eternal return? The law of infinity must include finity within itself. The introduction of this finity, whether accorded a philosophical or a nonphilosophical status, will always negate the law of infinity: the doctrine of the eternal return. Perhaps, ironically, both Heidegger and Deleuze are right, but without realizing it. Nietzsche is both Human-all-too-human and Godlike. God is dead: “human beings murdered him. They murdered him . . . when they cut him down to their own size” (Heidegger, 1991, 66). At the same time: “the Gods are dead but they have died from laughing, on hearing one God claim to be the only one” (Deleuze, 1983, 4). Monash University Australia

REFERENCES Blanchot, Maurice. (1993). The Infinite Conversation. Trans. Susan Hanson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles. (1983). Nietzsche and Philosophy. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson. London: Athlone Press. ———. (1992). Foucault. Trans. Séan Hand. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. (1997). Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. London: Athlone Press.

020 Cooke (16-34)

34

3/21/05

12:12 PM

Page 34

Alexander Cooke

Heidegger, Martin. (1991). Nietzsche. Volume II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same. New York: HarperCollins. ———. (1996). Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. (1999). Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning). Trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Klossowski, Pierre. (1997). Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle. Trans. Daniel W. Smith. London: Athlone Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1968). The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books. ———. (1969). Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books ———. (1974). The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House.