Essay on "Nietzsche Eternal Recurrence in Kundera's Novel the Unbearable Lightness of Being"

Essay 13 pages (5087 words) Sources: 7 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Eternal Recurrence in the Unbearable Lightness of Being

Nietzsche's philosophy of eternal recurrence is most clearly explicated in Thus Spake Zarathustra and The Gay Science. While some of his other works revisit this theory, the student of eternal recurrence would do best to examine these works first. The theory is interesting because of its many possibilities of interpretation. At its basis, eternal recurrence holds that each person eternally lives the same life over and over. After death, what Zarathustra refers to as "the hourglass" is turned over to start again. The soul is once again alive in the same body, to repeat the same life and the same decisions for all eternity.

Zarathustra approaches this idea from his "Superman" concept. The Superman is the person who has developed the will to power to achieve complete self-mastery. Being master over himself, the Superman can control himself perfectly. He revels in this power and experiences life according to the joy it brings. For Zarathustra, this should bring perfect joy. The will to power is Nietzsche's answer to the concept of fear, which he understands as a lack of power. In order to counter this, the will to power can be developed as a motivator for human action. This will to power also counteracts the nihilism that could develop as a result of the eternal recurrence principle and as a result of fear.

The joy of the Superman is perfect, as it means perfect mastery over the self and the world. Because of this joy, the Superman also revels in the beauty and joy of life itself, thus inviting and enjoying the eternal recurrence of his current life. Specifically, Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence, the elements of each life survive to such an extent that it will be gathered together once more to create the same person and the same life. This is eternal recurrence.

It is worth noting that Zarathustra explicates this principle first with the certainty and joy of the Superman, but then also with the horror and fear of the powerless. When addressing the principle first, Zarathustra uses joyous phrases and terms to convey his ideas. He focuses on the joys of the instant moment. It infuses him with happiness and with the desire for everything to return. All joy, in the philosopher's words, wants eternity. Its drive is towards everlasting life.

This idea of perfection in the moment and the everlasting is reminiscent of the Christian principal of eternity. Life is everlasting, and God is unchanging. In the same way the world and the lives in it do not change. The Superman enjoys this and invites even sorrow to repeat itself, because it means life eternal.

On the other hand, Zarathustra also experiences a chasm of depression in being the first to explicate the idea of eternal recurrence. In The Convalescent in Part III, he considers the implications of his teaching. The concepts of an eternal past and an eternal future repeating themselves perpetually makes the philosopher weary beyond measure. He is infinitely sorrowful that the weary and small truths he faces in his life must return eternally, to be faced over and over.

This eternity, for Zarathustra, tends to detract from the meaning of life by making all things similar to each other, including human beings. Even the greatest man seem similar to the smallest when considered in terms of eternal recurrence. There is no meaning, because there is nothing new and nothing that could be changed or developed in a different way than it has already been done. This prompts Zarathustra to "disgust in all existence."

This disgust is echoed in the writings of several authors, such as G.E. Gorfu, who finds the concept of eternal recurrence unacceptably horrifying, in addition to being inadequately substantiated by Nietzsche. Human life, according to Gorfu, cannot be simply a series of repetitions, doomed to last for an eternity, and having lasted for the same eternity.

Hi audience however encourages him to stop and consider the meaning of his teaching mission; to preach eternal recurrence and its meaning for the Superman. Zarathustra then uses the Superman and the will to power concepts to extract himself from his depression. He moves through a type of "dark night of the soul," where he learns to make peace with his philosophy and its position in life, as well as the position of his life in his philosophical view. Zarathustra concludes that life is indeed meaningful. By recurring as the same person living the same life, the Superman experiences it as an eternally recurring adventure. It is joy, because it does not annihilate. Regardless of the pain often experienced in a lifetime, the comfort is that it never ends.

Philosophers such as Matt Pike acknowledge that Nietzsche does not offer a large amount of significant proof for his views, but also point out that there is nothing to disprove it either. This theory of eternal recurrence, and its likelihood or lack thereof is addressed as a central theme in the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. The characters, as well as the reader, experience eternal recurrence on a variety of levels. Most notably in terms of Zarathustra's assertions, one might mention Tomas and Tereza, who keep returning to their relationship regardless of the sorrow it brings them both. They find a deeper meaning than surface joy in the relationship. They find the meaning of companionship and commitment to outweigh whatever satisfaction they find in returning to their lives as single people.

In the novel, Kundera offers the reader a glimpse of four lives in the form of four protagonists, who are inextricably linked with each other. Occasionally, the author intrudes with his own voice to make a philosophical observation. He for example opens the novel with a direct consideration of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. He disputes Nietzsche's view that each life is literally recurring and that all events repeat themselves. The author uses significant events such as the French Revolution as substantiation for his views. He notes that eternal recurrence cannot possibly be interpreted on a literal level, as the recurrence of events such as the French Revolution and the Holocaust would certainly diminish their impact. With these views, Kundera appears to hold the view that the recurrence of these events would occur within a single lifetime on the one hand, and that human beings are aware of this recurrence on the other. Both these elements appear to be absent from Nietzsche's philosophy. Eternal recurrence is neither horrific, nor can it be proved precisely because human beings are unaware of it.

However, there are a number of different interpretations of the eternal recurrence phenomenon. One possible interpretation is for example the philosophy of reincarnation, as mentioned by Gorfu in rather negative terms. Proponents of this idea however rejects Nietzsche's view that, being unaware of all previous lifetimes, there is no improvement or growth. Reincarnation instead promotes the ideal that the human soul migrates and grows with each migration, until it reaches sufficient maturity to reach eternal bliss.

Another interpretation is the metaphorical (Corbett), which is also the interpretation favored by Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Having substantiated his idea that Nietzsche's philosophy cannot be meant literally, the author proposes that things in life do repeat, but they do so in different form. In the opening pages of his book, Kundera (1) says:

Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return im-plies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn some-thing that is ephemeral, in transit?

Hence, Kundera's modification of Nietzsche's theme is that life and events are repetitive, and also change as they repeat. In this way, recurrence can be recognized, but only by those who pay attention. A further element of Nietzsche's philosophy that Kundera addresses is the Nihilism that flows from eternal recurrence. Being unaware of eternal recurrence, according to Nietzsche, condemns human beings to repeat all their decisions and all their mistakes throughout all eternity. This also condemns humanity to the ultimate meaninglessness of existence -- which Gorfu and other philosophers refer to as the "horror of existence."

Kundera on the other hand considers the balance of free will and meaning, even while promoting eternal recurrence in some form in his novel. Ultimately, he notes that life is as meaningless without a repetitive element as it is with Nietzsche's form of Nihilism. In the final pages of his novel, he for example refers to the necessity of repetition for meaning in life. Kundera laments the fact that the human experience of time is linear rather than circular. The very recurrence advocated by Nietzsche as being meaningless is what Kundera would name the ultimate meaning in life. Throughout the novel, Kundera attempts to demonstrate this with the central relationship of Tereza and Tomas, which is orbited by the… READ MORE

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