Would you live it again?
On the axis: Temporal orientation · the time of a life
A demon offers you to relive your life, identical, endlessly: would you want it? The test reveals whether you truly inhabit your time, rather than hanging it on tomorrow or mourning it as yesterday.
This problem is brought out by the thought experiment The eternal return:
Imagine that one night, in your loneliest solitude, a demon slips beside you and says: « This life, as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live once more and countless times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain, every pleasure, every thought, and this very moment, will return in the same order. » The hourglass of existence would be turned over endlessly, and you with it. does not ask whether this is true: he makes it a trial. For the question it raises reaches you today: would you want to live your days, as you fill them, over and over forever? is less a cosmology than a test: do you love your life enough to will it, identical, for all time?
Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882)
Would this thought crush you, or would you welcome it as good news? What you answer says a great deal about the time you are living.
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Justification
and command us to love the moment enough to will its eternal repetition: the weight falls on the fullness of the affirmed present. A share of project remains, since the is a task to accomplish, but Nietzsche devalues the excess of historical memory that paralyzes action.
The Gay Science, §341 · On the Use and Abuse of History for Life, §1
Justification
works as a test: if a demon told you that you will relive this very life, identically, infinitely, would you curse him, or would it be your greatest joy? To say yes to every instant is : not 's resignation, but the highest affirmation, to love the necessary so much that one wills its eternal return.
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.Ecce Homo, "Why I Am So Clever", §10
Ecce Homo, "Why I Am So Clever", §10 · The Gay Science, §276 and §341
Anchors: Nietzsche
leads to: Relation to the past