First stated in The Gay Science §341, “The Greatest Weight”: a demon steals into your loneliest loneliness and says that this life you will have to live once more and innumerable times more. “Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.’”
Friedrich Nietzsche said the thought came to him in August 1881 by a pyramid-shaped boulder near Surlej, at Lake Silvaplana, “6000 feet beyond man and time.”
The cyclical view of time has ancient roots — the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, and the Indian yugas and kalpas.
Sententiae
phrases in the originalAmor fati
Origin. Nietzsche’s Latin coinage — The Gay Science §276 and Ecce Homo — for loving everything that happens, not merely enduring it. The attitude echoes Stoics like Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. — Friedrich Nietzsche
For radical acceptance; saying Yes to life including its suffering.
Explore Next
related by shared connectionsThe Gay Science
Nietzsche’s most joyful book — where God is first declared dead, the madman runs into the marketplace, and the thought of eternal recurrence first appears.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Nietzsche’s prophetic prose-poem — Zarathustra descends from his mountain to teach the Übermensch, the will to power and eternal recurrence.
The Übermensch
Nietzsche’s “overman” — the human being who, after the death of God, creates new values and affirms life wholly.
Beyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche’s “prelude to a philosophy of the future” — an attack on the prejudices of philosophers, from Plato to Kant, and a sketch of the free spirit.
On the Genealogy of Morality
Nietzsche’s three essays tracing “good and evil”, guilt, and the ascetic ideal back to their hidden, all-too-human origins.
Zarathustra
Nietzsche’s prophet who, after ten years in mountain solitude, descends to teach mankind the Übermensch — and finds no one ready to listen.