Deleuze’s Eternal Return

This is a quick post (I hope) that I’m dashing off just to note down an objection to Deleuze’s reading of the eternal return and the beginnings of my reply to it. I’m currently (re)reading Nietzsche and Philosophy. Though the first time I read it was a summer in undergrad during which I’m sure I got nothing, not seeing the forrest for the trees. I think that is the most frustrating thing about reading Deleuze and what a good reader of Deleuze needs to strategize: Deleuze almost never shows you the forrest. He takes you for a walk through the trees and trusts you to make your own map. That is, he rarely tells you what he’s doing, he just does it. It’s up to you to figure out what the big picture is and how all his movements fit into it.

Anyway, one of the current things I’m trying to contextualize is Deleuze’s extremely idiosyncratic reading of Nietzsche’s eternal return. The standard reading, as far as I’m aware, is that the eternal return is the return of the same: everything as it is will recur exactly how it is. This interpretation is a problem for Deleuze’s pluralistic reading of Nietzsche, where difference and diversity are never exhausted. So Deleuze reads it as a doctrine about the eternal return of chance, of the eternal creation of the radically new. Difference is the eternal being of becoming. There are, of course, objections.

One objection I found recently is in James J. Winchester’s Nietzsche’s Aesthetic Turn. Winchester’s approach is historical; he’s attempting to determine whether Deleuze’s reading is what Nietzsche himself had in mind. There are reasons for not liking this approach to Deleuze, since it seems Deleuze wants to read philosophers in ways that bring out aspects of their work that are hidden even to them. Deleuze is more faithful to the concept than the intentions of the philosopher. But let’s go along with Winchester. Here is his objection:

The problem with [Deleuze’s] interpretation is that Nietzsche often claims that everything recurs exactly as it has been. Some passages support Deleuze’s reading of the eternal return, but his interpretation seems directly to contradict those passages from Thus Spoke Zarathustra suggesting that it is not chance that returns but the identical moment. The unbearable nature of the eternal return in Thus Spoke Zarathustra is incomprehensible unless the doctrine means that everything comes again exactly as it was:

“. . . not to a new life or a better life or a similar life: I come again to this life which is the same [gleichen und selbigen) in both the big events and the small ones. . . . The small man returns eternally!” (Z, “The Convalescent”)

Curiously enough, it is exactly this section—which I find the most problematic for his understanding of the eternal return—that Deleuze chooses to support his reading of the doctrine! He men­tions Zarathustra’s bemoaning of the eternal return of the small man, but interprets it to mean, in what seems to me a flagrant mis­ reading of the text, that the little man does not return. Deleuze quotes from Ecce Homo, where Nietzsche writes of the eternal joy of becoming (EH, “BT,” 3), and concludes that since the little man does not share this joy, he cannot return.

p. 78

Winchester’s criticism is fairly elliptical. He points to a passage from Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra where we find the claim that “the small man” (i.e. reactive forces) return eternally. This is exactly what Deleuze wishes to deny. Winchester presents Deleuze’s only recourse here to be pointing to the fact that, in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche claims that there is an “eternal joy of becoming.” And since joy is active, reactive forces cannot return.

Winchester is quoting from §14 of Chapter 2 of Deleuze’s Nietzsche and Philosophy here, where Deleuze is discussing the ethical dimension of the eternal return. In this section, Deleuze indeed cites the passage from Zarathustra that Winchester quotes. However, Deleuze discusses the same passage a few pages earlier, in §12 of Chapter 2, even quoting it at more length than Winchester. Here we see Deleuze give an defence of why he reads this passage as supporting his interpretation. This is Deleuze:

This [reactive] condition of man is of the greatest importance for the eternal return. It seems to compromise or contaminate it so gravely that it becomes an object of anguish, repulsion and disgust. Even if active forces return they will again become reactive, eternally reactive. The eternal return of reactive forces and furthermore the return of the becoming-reactive of forces. Zarathustra not only presents the thought of the eternal return as mysterious and secret but as nauseating and difficult to bear (cf. also VP IV 235, 246). The first exposition of the eternal return is followed by a strange vision of a shepherd ‘writhing, choking, convulsed, his face distorted’, a heavy black snake hanging out of his mouth (Z III ‘Of the Vision and the Riddle’ p. 180). Later, Zarathustra himself explains the vision: ‘The great disgust at man – it choked me and had crept into my throat… The man of whom you are weary, the little man recurs eternally… Alas man recurs eternally!… And eternal return, even for the smallest – that was my disgust at all existence! Ah, disgust! Disgust! Disgust!’ (Z III ‘The Convalescent’ pp. 235-6). The eternal return of the mean, small, reactive man not only makes the thought of the eternal return unbearable, it also makes the eternal return itself impossible; it puts contradiction into the eternal return. The snake is an animal of the eternal return; but, insofar as the eternal return is that of reactive forces, the snake uncoils, becomes a ‘heavy black snake’ and hangs out of the mouth which is preparing to speak. For how could the eternal return, the being of becoming, be affirmed of a becoming nihilistic? – In order to affirm the eternal return it is necessary to bite off and spit out the snake’s head. Then the shepherd is no longer either man or shepherd, ‘he was transformed, surrounded with light, he was laughing! Never yet on earth had any man laughed as he laughed’ (Z III ‘Of the Vision and the Riddle’ p. 180). Another becoming, another sensibility: the Overman”

Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 65

What is important is that this doctrine of the eternal return as the return of the same, the return of the reactive, is put in the mouth of Zarathustra. It is not straightforwardly asserted by Nietzsche (at least not here). Deleuze notes this and interprets it as Zarathustra’s first encounter with the idea, which is the eternal return seen from the point of view of reactive forces. A reactive view of the eternal return sees it as the return of reactive forces, as a nihilism, since the reactive posit the illusion of another world beyond this one in which all is redeemed. The doctrine of the eternal return denies that other world, and so all they are left with is this world. We might say, to see the eternal return as the return of the same, and to be disgusted by this, is precisely to confront one’s own nihilism. The challenge is to see the eternal return in a way that invites affirmation. The fact that Zarathustra understands it as the return of reactive forces does not mean this is how Nietzsche thought we should understand it.

Now, there are two qualifications to my defence of Deleuze’s reading. First, it’s been a long time since I read Zarathustra (I can’t remember if I even finished it). And when I did attempt it I was very young. Since I haven’t, at the moment, gone back and read the relevant sections in context it could be that Deleuze’s interpretation here is still way off the mark. Secondly, this passage from Zarathustra is far from the most devastating textual counter-example to Deleuze’s reading. For my money, a defence of Deleuze’s interpretation of the eternal return will have to reckon with “The Greatest Weight” section of The Gay Science in which Nietzsche has his demon describe the eternal return as follows:

“This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”

There seems to be less wiggle room here. We could again point out that it’s a demon who is speaking these words (and, as philosophers know, demons have a reputation for being deceptive). So it could be that this demon is intentionally falsely describing the eternal return in order to test one’s reactivity. But this reading still seems pretty flimsy to me, and as far as I know Deleuze does not address this passage from The Gay Science directly.

Aristotle, Critical Theory, Irad Kimhi

I’ve been putting off posting to this blog because I wasn’t sure how much thought I should put into each post. If I put in too much it could become a distraction, or else I never end up posting because the task is too daunting. Too little thought and I risk embarrassing myself. So I’m going to risk embarrassing myself.

This post is just a general summary of what I’ve been up to so far this term and things I’ve been thinking through. I’m working on my Aristotle research project, which is taking shape, and taking a seminar on Critical Theory. I also have an Irad Kimhi reading group starting up soon. (Sorry for the potentially misleading title; I’m not going to be thinking those three things together… yet).

Aristotle

The Aristotle project is becoming scary because I don’t have a conclusion yet. But I keep reminding myself that this is better than having a conclusion and forcing my research to confirm it. I’ve found that research like this requires having faith that once I work through everything something interesting will bubble up. It always has in the past, but for some reason those experiences don’t make new projects any easier.

As I touched on in my last post, my Aristotle project is largely focused on the Topics and a problem of disagreement that I’ve constructed in relation to it. Though I’m not an Aristotelian, the challenge is to construct a model of disagreement that coheres with Aristotle’s ontology and philosophy of language.

What this has led to is an evaluation Aristotle’s concept of signification. The basic chain of reasoning is this: genuine disagreement requires non-homonymy, and non-homonymy requires that two utterances of a word both signify the same thing. Establishing non-homonymy is also a condition of two interlocutors “thinking about the same thing.”^[1] So, there must be a connection between two utterances signifying the same thing and the two speakers “thinking about the same thing” when they make those utterances. So, figuring out the nature of Aristotelian signification and its relation to thought is foundational to constructing a coherent model of Aristotelian disagreement.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, considering this will give me more to write about), what exactly Aristotle means by signification is contentious. Terrence Irwin maintains it is, typically, a relation between words and essences.^[2] Christopher Shields maintains it is, typically, a relation between words and meanings.^[3] My gamble, then, is that by working through these contrasting interpretations of signification in Aristotle I’ll reach a point where I can show that either Irwin or Shields cannot account for the possibility of disagreement, and so the other’s conception of signification is likelier.

Or maybe both will be able to account for it. In that case I’ll need a contingency plan. Possibly develop two contrasting models of disagreement based on either conception.

On the surface it seems neither account works. If signification is a relation between words and essences, then it seems non-homonymy requires interlocutors having the same essence in mind when they utter a word. If that’s true, then disagreement about essences is impossible. The interlocutors would be talking past each other. Likewise, if signification is a relation between words and meanings (whatever “meaning” means), then thinking about the same thing would be thinking about the same meaning. But, again, that would seem to disallow for disagreements about essences insofar as an essence is what a term, e.g “human,” means.

I think both of those arguments are flawed, but showing where each fails and what the consequences are for the structure of disagreement is a task I’m still working on.

Critical Theory

This Critical Theory seminar is more in the spirit of Critical Theory than to the letter. We’re not reading anyone properly in the Frankfurt School and the focus is on history, time, and justice.

We started outside of philosophy, reading a selection of Berber Bevernage’s book History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence, in which he suggests that the “time consciousness” of victims of state sponsored violence during transitions from dictatorial regimes to democratic ones demands a rethinking of our conceptions of time, the past, and history.^[4] We read Jean Améry’s essay “Resentments” where he argues that maintaining his resentment against the Germans preserves the “moral truth” of the Holocaust.^[5] We then read a play: Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, which also deals with transitions from dictatorship to democracy and a woman who finds herself confronting a man who may or may not have been her torturer.^[6] And this week we read Nietzsche’s essay on “The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.”^[7]

I’d read the Nietzsche essay in undergrad and, at the time, was uninspired by it. And I’ll admit reading it again didn’t invigorate me much. Though I think this time around I got a better sense of its importance and the position Nietzsche is taking up.

Of the readings so far, Death and the Maiden provoked me the most. Which is odd, since I often don’t know what to do with fiction. Out of the play I began to develop a concept of what I’m calling torture epistemology. I want to write more about torture epistemology, but its development as a concept requires a fairly intense discussion of torture, rape, and gendered violence, so I want to take some time to think about how best to approach it. In general, what I find important about thinking torture in terms of epistemology is that it forms a concrete connection between knowledge and desire, and brings to light important ethical issues surrounding the conjunction of the two. I don’t know why I had to take this detour through fiction to establish the connection—the first line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics is “All men by nature desire to know,”—but for better or worse this is the path I took.

Another thing torture epistemology is helping me develop is an idea of a colloquial use of the term “epistemology.” People sometimes talk about their “philosophy” of, say, business or fitness or whatever, by which they mean their systematic approach to understanding it, or the principles underlying their practice. I think there can be a similar use of the term “epistemology.” If everyone has a desire to know, then everyone must have something like an epistemic threshold: how much evidence is enough to satisfy one’s desire in a given circumstance. Someone reading a murder mystery might have a very low threshold for epistemic satisfaction (e.g. reading the ending and finding out who the murderer is), though that satisfaction might still be disappointed if the ending isn’t coherent enough given the clues presented throughout the novel. On the other hand, a scientist attempting to demonstrate a hypothesis might have a very high threshold for epistemic satisfaction. And of course some philosophers have thresholds that are bafflingly high. How does torture epistemology fit into this? Well, without going too in-depth, it suggests that gendered (and perhaps even sexed) violence can affect one’s threshold for epistemic satisfaction in specific circumstances.

That’s all I want to say about torture epistemology right now. I still need to develop this, and hopefully not only using male authors. Though, unfortunately, the only further research directions I can think of right now are all writing by men. Nietzsche, in the uses of history essay and in other places, also posits this fundamental connection between knowledge and desire and rails against the facade of disinterested knowing. I also think Sade combines desire and epistemology in “Philosophy in the Bedroom,”; something about the pleasure of epistemic domination through using pain to produce involuntary movements in a body. I also suspect there might be a connection between my thinking here and John Stoltenberg’s essay “Rapist Ethics” in Refusing to be a Man. Lots of threads to follow, but so little time.

Other Stuff

That’s all for current projects. On the horizon I have a reading group starting later this month on Irad Kimhi’s fairly recent book Thinking and Being. I’ve dipped into the book a bit. It’s engrossing and complex. One of Kimhi’s unpublished works ended up getting me invested in the history of Analytic philosophy and logic in ways I didn’t think possible, so I’m looking forward to having a chance to work through his first real publication. I don’t want to say much about Kimhi now, since my understanding of his position is still a rough outline, but in general his project seems to involve a rejection of Frege’s force/content distinction and an attempt to construct a new way of thinking about assertoric force.

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1. It’s unclear whether Aristotle thinks non-homonymy is a necessary or sufficient condition (or both) of interlocutors thinking about the same thing. This might be a problem I’ll have to address later. ↩
2. Irwin, Terrence. “Aristotle’s Concept of Signification.” Language and Logos, edited by Malcolm Schofield and Martha Craven Nussbaum, Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 241–66. ↩
3. Shields, Christopher John. Order in Multiplicity: Homonymy in the Philosophy of Aristotle. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1999. ↩
4. Bevernage, Berber. History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence: Time and Justice. Routledge, 2012. ↩
5. Améry, Jean. “Resentments.” At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities, translated by Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosenfeld, Indiana University Press, 1980, pp. 62–81. ↩
6. Dorfman, Ariel. Death and the Maiden. Penguin Books, 1994. ↩
7. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life.” Untimely Meditations, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 57–123. ↩