Nietzsche, immortality, singularity and eternal recurrence

Abstract

Joan Copjec has shown that modernity is privy to a notion of immortality all
its own – one that differs fundamentally from any counterpart entertained in
Greek antiquity or the Christian Middle Ages. She points to Blumenberg and
Lefort as thinkers who have construed this concept in its modern guise in different
ways, and ultimately opts for Lefort's paradoxical understanding of immortality
as the ‘transcending of time, within time' before elaborating on a
corresponding notion in Lacan's work. It can be shown that Nietzsche, too,
provides a distinctly modern conception of ‘immortality', articulated in relation
to his notions of affirmation, singularity and eternal recurrence. In brief,
this amounts to his claim that, to affirm even one single part or event in one's
life entails affirming it in its entirety, and, in so doing – given the interconnectedness
of events – affirming all that has ever existed. Moreover, once
anything has existed, it is in a certain sense, for Nietzsche, necessary despite
its temporal singularity. Therefore, to be able to rise to the task of affirming
certain actions or experiences in one's own life, bestows on it not merely this
kind of necessary singularity, but what he thought of as ‘eternal recurrence' –
the (ethical) affirmation of the desire to embrace one's own, and together
with it, all of existence ‘eternally', over and over. This, it is argued, may be
understood as Nietzsche's distinctive contribution to a specifically modern
notion of immortality: the ability of an individual to live in such a way that
his or her singular ‘place' in society is ensured, necessarily there, even after
his or her death.

South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 26 (1) 2007: pp. 70-84