Do you belive in eternal recurrence?

Well said, really made things click when I read this.

Thanks again,
-BaC

I find myself in agreement with Nietzsche in most circumstances, including his suggestion that the world's forms, including ourselves, recur in an infintie cycle.; I am no, however, no physicist. Here is the source of my confusion: what is horrifying about this notion; how is this the heaviest of all burdens to bear?

Assuming that eternal recurrence is a reality, I have already lived this life of mine an infinite number of times; i am wholly unaware of this fact. If, in one's life, one is unaware of all the previous repetitions of said life, what effect does that have on life: none. My fundemental view on the afterlife, namely that there is not any such thing, remains undisturbed by the doctrine of eternal recurrence.

If people were aware of these previous existances, in detail, as if they were born with all the memories of what they were about to experience, then all luves would be very short, as I suspect almost everyone would lose their minds and kill themselves, which apparently is not happening.

Maybe you hit it on the nose, and that is why we forget all the past.

If you could rewinding time would be the best way. Of course when it started all over it would start evolution again. As they say, only the strong will survive.

-Marc

I'm no physicist or "expert" in paradoxes, but Nietzsche's own rejection of atomistic cause and effect vis-a-vis the "will" seems to preclude the possibility of a universe in which there are only a finite number of possibilities. I refer most specifically to BG&E section 21 and his attack on the concept of the "unfreedom of the will", that is, will and willing as the result of the great billiard-ball course of atomistic cause and effect.

Perhaps I have misunderstood him, but I believe N's position to have been that the core energy of existence (or at least the emergent property of such, that is, life) - his "will to power" - was not constrained by any mechanical possibilities. That is, though there are certainly a finite number of possible physical outcomes of any particular act of willing, there are not a finite number of things that can be willed. This is, by my understanding, the whole concept of "free" will in his naturalistic system. Willing (which is life) is not a predictable sequence of physical events, one following from the next.

If the possibilities for willing are infinite, then it follows that even in an infinity of time, the same state could not repeat itself. And since Nietzsche clearly rejects Cartesian dualism in favor of a shockingly modern "emergent phenomenon" theory of life (BG&E 36) with "will" as its only source of causality, it follows that the possible arrangements of reality are infinite - reality defined as a single entity - everything is "will to power".

It seems to me that Nietzsche's attack on the concept of objective truth flows from this source. What is "truth" in a universe of infinite possibilities? In order for truth, in the Platonic sense, to exist, the infinite must be constrained into the finite. Nietzsche wholeheartedly rejected that.

I think his concept of eternal recurrence was really more a challenge than a statement on his opinion of reality. Can you live with the idea of it: a profound test of just how well one has accepted his concept of existence...even if eternal recurrence, itself, is not "true". Eternal recurrence is only possible in a "billiard ball" universe in which "life" or "will" or whatever you want to call it has no causal force outside of deterministic atomism - that is, life cannot "create" force on its own, and our existence is just a physical wave of atoms or energy or "wills to power" or whatnot crashing into each other from the big bang to the end of time and over and over and over. I think Nietzsche considered this track of thinking among the most profound denials of life.

As for my own opinion, I do not believe in eternal recurrence.

Here's my problem. I've read about a few diferrent cosmological models that involve the universe repeating itself, including a quite brilliant one from Roger Penrose where the increase in entropy is counter-acted by black holes absorbing all matter in the universe and slowly decaying until the universe reaches a singularity where it can "Bang" again.
Let's for a second discuss not the merits of the models, but the consequence of a hypothetical system where they apply. The only precedent we have is the universe we currently live in. It's not sufficient to say the universe has to repeat exactly this way every time the cycle repeats, but you'd be mistaken if you didn't take our universe as it is now as a possible outcome. Now, if the cycle repeats itself perpetually, this universe will certainly be represented again, possibly an innumerable amount of times.
Here's my problem with the statement daleader said about how he is the only him. I certainly exist. The universe certainly exists and I reside within. I would not exist if the universe did not exist. The process the universe went through resulted in me. Science has done a pretty good job of explaining the human body functionally. We've got specific gene sequences, and all I am (most likely) is a physical manifestation in this world. Matter and energy arranged certain way is what we are. What precedence have we to assume that the universe could go through the same process it went through about 13 billion years ago and have all events lead up to our time now and result in the same bodies that exist now but not the same people. What is the basis of the belief that a repeat system would not involve a repeat lifespan of every living thing within the system?