Nietzsche’s Eternal Return: Thought Experiment or Cosmology?
Wood engraving. AI art Introduction Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Eternal Return remains one of the most provocative and enigmatic ideas in his corpus. Is it a metaphysical hypothesis about the nature of time or a literary-ethical challenge posed to the individual? Readers have long debated this tension. On one hand, the idea appears as a poetic test of one’s commitment to life; on the other, Nietzsche seems to flirt with cosmological speculation. This ambiguity is not merely accidental—it reflects Nietzsche’s aphoristic style and his philosophical embrace of opposites, such as Dionysus and Apollo. Yet we must ask: does the evidence support both readings, or are we misreading Nietzsche through modern eyes? The Literary Birth of Eternal Return Nietzsche first introduces the Eternal Return in The Gay Science §341. There, he does not describe it as a theory but dramatizes it through a fictional encounter with a demon: “What if a demon were to steal after you into your lone...