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Revisiting Nietzsche et la PhilosophieJoseph Ward

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ANGELAKIjournal of the theoretical humanitiesvolume 15 number 2 august 2010

In 1962, in his Nietzsche et la philosophie,Gilles Deleuze elaborated an interpretation ofNietzsches writings on eternal return which

provided this enigmatic thought with an appeal-

ing coherence and tractability: eternal return

described the return of the same as different;

instead of affirming a repetition of the identical

to which, according to Deleuze, Nietzsche stood

opposed in principle, and which was also to be

brought into question in Deleuzes own writings

on difference and identity,1 eternal return evoked

a process of transformation in which reactive

forces were eliminated: those forces which, in

coming to dominate the active forces to which

they ought to be subordinate, had reduced

Western culture to a state of decadence. This

interpretation seemed also to make sense of the

great store Nietzsche placed in the concept of

eternal return in terms of how it would come totransform the future of the West.

Deleuzes novel approach to Nietzsche pos-

sessed such an appeal for the books early readers

that there was an initial tendency to buy into this

interpretation of the eternal return, which seemed

to possess a curious logic all of its own, without

much testing of Deleuzes position against the

Nietzschean text. The most striking example of

this is that a few years later Jacques Derrida in

discussing Nietzsche echoes Deleuzes conceptionof eternal return, at the same time provocatively

associating repetition not with Deleuzian

difference but with his own differance,

without any explicit resort to Nietzsches text:

on the basis of this unfolding of the same as

differance, we see announced the sameness of

differance and repetition in the eternal return.2

In subsequent continental readings of

Nietzsche it is therefore unsurprising to find

that Deleuzes version of eternal return often

appears to be hovering in the background,

assumed to be valid without any fresh attempt

to engage with Nietzsches own exposition. In this

article I want to trace the way in which Deleuzes

formulations concerning eternal return are inti-

mately linked with a concept which is central tohis reading of Nietzsche, that offorce: the manner

in which Deleuze conceives of the interrelation of

forces in Nietzsche goes hand in hand with an

interpretation of eternal return as return of the

same as different, an interpretation which, I will

argue, is misguided. Finally I will explore

Deleuzes most directly textual argument for

this interpretation and compare it with an

alternative reading which has much to offer in

the exegesis of the relevant passages: that of

joseph ward

REVISITING NIETZSCHE

ET LA PHILOSOPHIE

gilles deleuze on forceand eternal return

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/10/020101^14 2010 Taylor & Francis and the Editors ofAngelakiDOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2010.521396

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Martin Heidegger. Besides tracing what it is in

Deleuzes account which has seemed and con-

tinues to seem so compelling to many readers of

Nietzsche, this process will also give us pointers

to viable routes on which to set out in the

interpretation of one of Nietzsches most myster-ious conceptions.

deleuze on force in nietzsche

Deleuzes reading of eternal return is bound up

intimately with his interpretation of the way

Nietzsche thinks about forces. One of Deleuzes

first and most decisive moves is to insist that for

Nietzsche all phenomena must be traced back to

and explained in terms of the forces which takepossession of them; this is what will give us their

sens, their sense, direction or meaning:

We will never find the sense (sens) of

something (of a human, a biological or even a

physical phenomenon) if we do not know the

force which appropriates the thing, which

exploits it, which takes possession of it or is

expressed in it.3

Deleuze pursues this line of thought by adding

that for Nietzsche all phenomena have a history,

which is as much as to say that they have been

appropriated by different forces at different

times, and bear the signs of these different

appropriations, so that phenomena are always

overlaid with multiple meanings. Deleuzes

analysis here draws heavily on a famous and

much-discussed section of On the Genealogy of

Morals in which Nietzsche discusses the various

uses and meanings which punishment has been

assigned in the history of Europe. Nietzsche sets

up an initial contrast between some kind of

origination of a thing, which gives it a certain

form and constitutes it as a phenomenon as such,

and its subsequent insertion into very different

systems of use which give it quite diverse

meanings and applications:

[ . . . ] there is a world of difference between

the reason for something coming into exis-

tence in the first place and the ultimate use to

which it is put, its actual application and

integration into a system of goals; [ . . . ]

anything which exists, once it has somehow

come into being, can be reinterpreted in the

service of new intentions, repossessed, repeat-

edly modified to a new use by a power superior

to it; [ . . . ] everything which happens in the

organic world is part of a process of over-

powering, mastering [. . .

] in turn, all over-powering and mastering is a reinterpretation,

a manipulation, in the course of which the

previous meaning and aim must necessa-

rily be obscured or completely effaced.

(GM II 12)4

Deleuze goes on to state that the phenomena

themselves are not neutral, since they are

themselves forces, and thus are more fitted to

certain applications than others.

This is an important point since for DeleuzeNietzschean genealogy is concerned not just

with tracing such histories but with an assessment

and evaluation of acts of appropriation, and this

last point provides the genealogist with a criterion

for deciding which interpretations of phenomena

are to be preferred and affirmed. In a key

example of this, philosophy only discovers its

essence (its appropriation by the force which

has the greatest affinity with it, and which

therefore enables it to express its full potential)when it has shaken off its initial association with a

force which is, according to Deleuze, foreign to it,

that of religion and the ascetic ideal (NP I 2).

This anticipates Deleuzes later claim that

decadence is what occurs where forces are

separated from what they can do, ce quil

peut, a claim which has its principal source in

another section of the Genealogy, the fable of the

lambs and the birds of prey from the first essay

(NP IV 2; GM I 13). But the legitimacy of

drawing together these points from two different

sections, and in fact two different essays in the

Genealogy, is challenged by the fact that it is

hard to see how this development of Deleuzes

thought applies to the passage from which the

original conception of force and phenomenon is

derived. For it is difficult to apprehend in what

sense punishment has what Deleuze calls an

essence (NP I 2), that is, a quality which gives

it a particular affinity with one of the forces

which take hold of it. There is in Nietzsches

account of punishment no privileging of one

interpretation or meaning of punishment above

force and eternal return

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any other, simply the observation that its mean-

ing is fluid and ever changing, and this point is

reinforced by the great list of uses of punishment,

devoid of any normative structure, with which

Nietzsche concludes section 13 of the

Genealogys second essay:

Punishment as a way of rendering harmless,

of preventing further damage; punishment as

compensation in any form to the victim for the

harm done [ . . . ]; punishment as the isolation

of something which disturbs equilibrium

[ . . . ]; punishment as a means of instilling

fear of those who determine and exact

punishment; [etc.]

So precisely what punishment seems to lack forNietzsche is an essence; one of Deleuzes

generalized principles proposed as a key for the

interpretation of Nietzsches philosophy immedi-

ately faces difficulties. Deleuzes tendency, as will

already be apparent, is to abstract general

principles from various non-contiguous passages

in the Genealogy and other published texts of

Nietzsches and to juxtapose them in order to

create a systematic account of force in Nietzsche.

Deleuze also refers to a certain number ofpassages from the Nachlass, in particular some

of those in which Nietzsche explores certain

conceptions of fundamental physics in very

abstract terms; Deleuze indiscriminately juxta-

poses these with passages in the Genealogy in

order to evolve his interpretation of force

in general in Nietzsche.5 Of course Nietzsche

himself was greatly interested in the connection

and correlation between such conceptions as

force at a physical, atomic level and the

operations of force in human history, but this

surely shouldnt license the straightforward

assimilation of descriptions of certain historical

phenomena with Nietzsches tentative thoughts

on fundamental physics. In order to demonstrate

how this creates difficulties one can pose certain

questions. For example, we may grant that many

phenomena have a history of different uses and

cannot be defined by any one of these; but do

all phenomena function like this, or only

organic phenomena, or only human cultural

phenomena such as punishment, or even only a

handful of such phenomena in human history?

Deleuzes approach tends to blur all such

distinctions, creating a nexus of forces which is

supposed to represent interaction within human

history just as successfully as it does physical

phenomena at the most basic level. It is Deleuzes

tendency to evoke this closed system of forces

which has far-reaching consequences for his

interpretation of Nietzsche in general and of the

eternal return in particular.

The Deleuzian account of force in Nietzsche

requires one other crucial component, a distinc-

tion between active and reactive forces

which will become for Deleuze the most

important way of distinguishing between forces

per se. Citing Spinoza, Deleuze introduces this

distinction by way of a discussion of the body, inwhich the forces which dominate (or should

dominate) are active and those which submit to

them (or should do so) are reactive:

In a body the superior or dominant forces are

known as active and the inferior or dominated

forces are known as reactive. Active and

reactive are precisely the original qualities

which express the relation of force with force.

(NP II 1)

Deleuze adds that reactive forces are nonetheless

forces. They do not cease to be forces simply by

virtue of obeying; rather, they have their own role

to play in an organic system: that of obedient

forces in the service of those which command

(NP II 2). The problem for Nietzsche, according

to Deleuze, is that there is a modern prejudice in

favour of reactive forces, such that in fact it is

often only the functioning of reactive forces

which is acknowledged, and that such forces are

then generalized so that, for example, life as a

whole is defined in terms of adaptation (NP II

2). In this way the reactive is privileged over the

active; the active in fact hardly recognized as such

at all. Yet it is imperative for the health of any

organism whether it be a state, a military force,

a human body that active forces take their

proper place as superior and commanding, and

reactive forces assume their proper subordinate

role. It is no objection to this characterization that

reactive forces sometimes triumph over active

forces and come to dominate in their turn (this is

overwhelmingly the story ofOn the Genealogy of

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Morals) since they remain essentially reactive

even when they do so (NP II 89). Forces cannot

be assessed either by simply quantitative means

nor according to any quality other than that

which expresses their relationship with one

another (NP II 3), so the distinction of activeand reactive becomes absolutely decisive in

determining and evaluating forces. This fills out

Deleuzes basic picture of how forces are to be

thought of in Nietzsche. I will not take direct

issue with these latter claims; certainly there are

at the least strains of thinking in Nietzsche which

support them, but crucial questions remain about

the extent to which these strains of thought come

to permeate Nietzsches thinking as a whole.

Instead, I will now move on to what happenswhen this conception of Nietzschean force is

carried over into the interpretation of the eternal

return.

the concomitants of genealogy assystem of forces: the eternal return

Deleuze first introduces eternal return in

Nietzsche et la philosophie by way of a

commentary on Nietzsches relationship toscience. Here, Deleuze comments astutely that

Nietzsches stance towards science is not deter-

mined solely by whether or not science will

support the eternal return, but is concerned more

generally with questions of how science conceives

of force and its implication in the modern

tendency to egalitarianism: [t]he scientific

mania for seeking balances, the utilitarianism

and egalitarianism proper to science (NP II 4).

Science tends to equalize out differences which

for Nietzsche cannot be so equalized, and thus

tends towards an adiaphoria (this is

Nietzsches own word). To diagnose this in

terms of forces amounts to saying that science

conceives of the world from the perspective of

reactive forces, since it is reactive forces which

aim at levelling out differences. Deleuze goes on

to suggest that whether science provides support

for the eternal return (as may appear to be the

case in mechanistic theory) or denies it (through

thermodynamic theory) makes no difference

since both kinds of science participate in this

adiaphoria and therefore conceive of the

eternal return in the wrong way. This leaves the

question of Nietzsches apparent interest in

physics and the way in which it might provide

some kind of proof of eternal return open and

ambiguous.

In fact Nietzsche is markedly inconsistent onthis point, since while it does not appear that he

was indifferent to what mechanistic theory might

make of eternal return, he does insist in at least

one place that if mechanistic theory required the

conception of a final state then it would be that

theory and not, by implication, the eternal return,

which would be refuted.6 Perhaps we have to be

satisfied here with saying that for Nietzsche it

would have been expedient for eternal return to

be shown to be a consequence of some physicaltheory, since we would then be compelled to

think the thought of eternal return, and its

selective consequences (which I will discuss

shortly) would therefore be accelerated; but the

status of this thought is in no way dependent on

any kind of physics: rather the other way round.

In one respect at least, however, Deleuze

misconstrues this independence. He insists that

both physical theory and mechanistic theory must

be rejected because they demand a final state:The two conceptions agree on one hypothesis,

that of a final or terminal state, a terminal state

of becoming (NP II 4). But one reason why

mechanistic theory seemed promising to

Nietzsche was that it is not clear that it does

require any kind of final state. Deleuze claims

that [t]he mechanist idea affirms the eternal

return but only by assuming that differences in

quantity balance or cancel each other out between

the initial and final states of a reversible system

(NP II 4). But why should we concede that there

should be any initial and final states in a

mechanistic system, rather than an ongoing

recurrence within which no single moment

could be singled out as initial or final, as the

break where repetition starts? On this score at

least mechanistic theory seems to satisfy

Nietzsches requirements.

Mechanistic theory does indeed seem to imply

an undifferentiated state, a state which, in

contradiction to Nietzsches apparent insistence

that forces cannot be equalized or levelled out, is

identical to a prior state. Yet in order for eternal


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return to hold sway in the way in which Nietzsche

conceives of it, this is precisely what we are

required to think: that while within a system of

forces no two forces are identical and none can be

said to be equivalent to any other, the system as a

whole does repeat, and that in a sense we must

therefore conceive of some kind of adiaphoria

between a moment and its recurrence. This is

what is strange and paradoxical about the

thought; but there seems little doubt that

Nietzsche does demand that we think of it

precisely in this way, as the return of the same:

Such an experimental life as I live anticipates

experimentally even the possibilities of the

most fundamental nihilism; but this does notmean that it must halt at a negation, a No, a

will to negation. It wants rather to cross over

to the opposite of this to a Dionysian

affirmation of the world as it is, without

subtraction, exception, or selection it wants

the eternal circulation: the same things, the

same logic and illogic of entanglements. The

highest state a philosopher can attain: to stand

in a Dionysian relationship to existence my

formula for this is amor fati. (WP 1041)

And yet we might also like to agree with Deleuze

when he says that the eternal return is not the

permanence of the same, the equilibrium state or

the resting place of the identical (NP II 4). It is

hard to think that Deleuze is completely wrong to

insist that we must not think of the return of a

fixed, predetermined state of being, because

according to Nietzsche it is only the eternal

return which confers the status of being on

becoming.7 Nevertheless, the above citation

surely tells against Deleuzes insistence that [i]t

is not the same or the one which comes back

in the eternal return but return itself is the one

which ought to belong to diversity and to that

which differs8 (NP II 4). Perhaps a more

consistent way of thinking about this apparent

tension or paradox in Nietzsches conception of

the eternal return is to say that the return of a

given moment never allows us to experience that

moment in terms of stability or being but only

ever in terms of becoming, because we have no

experiential access to its infinite previous and

future occurrences. The moment only acquires

being by way of an eternal return about which we

can theorize but that we can never experience as

such. The eternal return therefore is the return

of the same, but this same does not return to us.

And yet, as the above extract and nearly all of

Nietzsches comments on eternal return in the

published books make clear, Nietzsche wants us to

think of return as something to which the will has

a certain relation. Deleuze sweeps these difficul-

ties to one side by drawing a picture of eternal

return as the return of the same as different.

This first description of the eternal return in

relation to the question of science Deleuze calls its

premier aspect, as cosmological and physical

doctrine (NP II 5). In effect it functions as an

introduction to Deleuzes conception of theeternal return as the return of the same as

different, and as an independent argument to

show that the eternal return cannot imply the

return of the same as same, the return of the

identical: since according to Nietzsches own

physics no two forces are identical, that is, can

be considered equal to one another, how could we

reach a state where the entirety of forces exactly

reproduces a prior state? As I have suggested

above, I do not find this argument compelling,since it flies in the face of what Nietzsche himself

says about eternal return, and the texts which

elaborate the impossibility of equal forces in

Nietzsche are sketchy and tentative.9 (If the

paradoxes I have elaborated above seem unsus-

tainable, then we may have simply to conclude

that it is Nietzsches incompletely elaborated

physics which is inconsistent and contradictory.)

But Deleuze has other arguments to support his

contention, and the most important of theseemerges when he comes to what he calls the

second aspect of the eternal return: as ethical and

selective thought (NP II 14),10 where he makes a

famous claim: that the eternal return eliminates

reactive forces, so that only active forces return.

Deleuzes reasons for believing this are, as he

sees it, solidly based on certain texts, mostly from

the Nachlass, in which Nietzsche talks about the

eternal return as a selective doctrine, for

example:

My philosophy brings the triumphant idea of

which all other modes of thought will

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ultimately perish. It is the great cultivating

idea: the races that cannot bear it stand

condemned; those who find it the greatest

benefit are chosen to rule. (WP 1053)

According to Deleuze, the eternal return isselective in two ways: firstly by giving the will a

practical rule by which to live, [a] rule as

rigorous as the Kantian one (NP II 14). Deleuze

goes on to specify this rule in Nietzsches own

words, quoting from the collection of late notes

published in French as La Volonte de puissance:

If, in all that you will you begin by asking

yourself: is it certain that I will to do it an infinite

number of times? This should be your most solid

centre of gravity.11 But this selection is

inadequate in itself for the elimination of reactive

forces, so a second mode of selection is required.

This is the mode of selection which will eradicate

those reactive forces which go to the limit of

what they can do in their own way, and which

find a powerful motor in the nihilistic will.

Nietzsche claims that the eternal return is itself

the most extreme form of nihilism (WP 55),

and Deleuze interprets this to mean that [o]nly

the eternal return makes the nihilistic will whole

and complete. But in this completed form

nihilism no longer preserves reactive forces but

instead must, by virtue of its completion, turn

against itself and eliminate itself; this negation

active is, for Deleuze, the only way in which

reactive forces become active (NP II 14).

There is almost nothing in this account I

would disagree with: it seems to me to capture

perfectly, in Deleuzes terminology, the way in

which Nietzsche anticipates that the eternal

return will operate as a selective doctrine. But

I do not think it is then legitimate for Deleuze

to claim that because of this selection reactive

forces do not return (NP II 14; translation

modified).12 Deleuzes justification for this claim

is bound up with the whole of his conception of

Nietzschean force and genealogy.

The particular problem at this point in

Nietzsche et la philosophie is that Deleuze is

conflating two different notions of selection.

Leaving aside for the moment Deleuzes own

splitting of selection into two, as discussed above,

to my mind there are two possible ways in which

the eternal return might be thought to be

selective. Firstly, purely as a thought, as some-

thing which forces us to think about existence

in a particular way, and which thereby either

transforms us or destroys us; secondly, as a

universal, cosmological process which selectsthrough the very process of return. The former

would be something which happens within the

history of the universe, the latter something

which occurs only by virtue of the return of that

entire history. Now it is clear to me that

Nietzsche only ever thought of the eternal

return as selective in the first sense, and never

in the second. Every passage in which Nietzsche

intimates anything about how the eternal return

is selective, such as that quoted above (WP 1053),is discussing the effects which this thought will

have when it comes to pervade the consciousness

of European culture. I am in complete concur-

rence with both of Deleuzes notions of selection,

as both practical rule for the affirmative will and

completion of the nihilistic will, but only because

I think these are both aspects of selection in the

first sense, both descriptions of how the thought

of return selects. But Deleuze wants to make his

second kind of selection into something morethan this, as if it were the elimination of reactive

forces from the universe for all time, and he can

therefore claim that reactive forces do not return,

that The small, petty, reactive man will not

return (NP II 14) which also implies, of course,

that the eternal return is the return of the same

as different. But it seems to me that there are at

least two reasons why this cannot be so.

Firstly, if the eternal return actually assures us

that reactive forces will not return then

Nietzsches great thought, which he described as

the greatest weight,13 becomes something

blandly cheering and optimistic. Surely this is

not the sense of the passage in the Nachlass from

which Deleuze has already quoted: Let us think

this thought [the thought of nihilism] in its most

terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning

or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale

of nothingness: the eternal recurrence (WP 55).

It is precisely the thought that the petty, reactive

man does return which makes the thought so

terrible for Nietzsche and causes the disgust

which crawls into the throat of the shepherd in


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Thus Spoke Zarathustra.14 This disgust is over-

come when the shepherd bites the head off the

snake and spits it out, but it is surely not

overcome because he realizes that the reactive

man does not in fact return but because he learns

to affirm existence in spite of the fact thateverything petty and mean will return. Otherwise

eternal return simply would not be the heavy,

terrible thought that Nietzsche wants it to be.

Secondly, there is Nietzsches argument from

the infinity of past time, to which Deleuze has

already referred to demonstrate why there can be

no final or equilibrium state: past time being

infinite, becoming would have attained its final

state if it had one (II 5). But isnt it just as valid

to argue that if the eternal return was going toeliminate reactive forces from the universe then,

precisely on the basis of the infinity of past time,

this must already have happened? And given the

infinity of past time this would be so whether

one considered this elimination a gradual process

(a few more reactive forces eliminated each time

they return) or something that would happen as

soon as return takes place even once, which seems

closer to what Deleuze thinks. And, in fact, the

more one thinks about Deleuzes conception,the more it seems to unravel: for if this latter

is the case, then two things follow: the fact that

we do experience reactive forces must mean

that we would be in an originary phase prior to

return, even though Deleuze has insisted that

there can be no initial or original state; this

would flatly contradict the thesis of the infinity

of past time; secondly, the eternal of eternal

return would become meaningless: there would

just be one return in which reactive forces

were obliterated and active forces came to hold

sway.

But in fact the way Deleuze has conceived of

forces in the first place compels him to believe

that the selective character of the eternal return

means that reactive forces do not return, and it is

here that genealogy, active and reactive forces

and eternal return are bound up together in

Deleuzes reading of Nietzsche.

Before exploring this further, however, I will

make a brief digression to explore some of

Deleuzes comments on eternal return elsewhere

in his writings, which reveal the extent to which

Deleuze seems to feel that a great deal is at stake

in getting the interpretation of eternal return

right. This theme is very much to the fore in the

preface that Deleuze wrote for the English

translation of Nietzsche and Philosophy, and

I will discuss a little further Deleuzes claim here

that there are two moments in Thus Spoke

Zarathustra where Zarathustra rejects the wrong

conception of eternal return. But even outside of

Nietzsche and Philosophy this controversy

over the eternal return is often prominent when

Deleuze discusses Nietzsche. For example, in the

little essay Nietzsche originally published

in 1965 Deleuze insists that we must not make

of the eternal return a return of the same.15

There seems to be always an awareness onDeleuzes part that this erroneous interpretation

(which seems to me quite natural and in fact

correct) is going to precede him and take a lot

of shifting. And it is an index both of this

difficulty and of the centrality of Deleuzes take

on eternal return in his reading of Nietzsche that

elsewhere Deleuze becomes somewhat shrill

and even doctrinaire in discussing this matter.

This happens in the text which was the next to be

published by Deleuze following Nietzsche andPhilosophy: Difference and Repetition. Here,

in one of the texts concluding sections, we find

the now familiar polemic on eternal return, the

disclaimer of the idea that this return brings

back the same: Zarathustra [ . . . ] denies

that time is a circle; he knows that the eternal

return [ . . . ] does not cause the same and the

similar to return.16 A little further on Deleuze

works himself up into a real indignance concern-

ing the fact that eternal return could be sointerpreted:

How could the reader believe that Nietzsche,

who was the greatest critic of these categories,

implicated Everything, the Same, the

Identical, the Similar, the Equal, the I and

the Self in the eternal return? How could it be

believed that he understood the eternal return

as a cycle, when he opposed his hypothesis

to every cyclical hypothesis? (DR 372)

The tone here is of something close to exaspera-

tion. And Deleuzes desire to secure the right

interpretation of eternal return also results in a

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rather surprising decree concerning the legitimate

use of the Nachlass:

We cannot make use of the posthumous notes,

except in directions confirmed by Nietzsches

published works, since these notes arereserved material, as it were, put aside for

further elaboration. We know only that

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is unfinished [ . . . ]

(DR 371)

. . . and therefore stands in need of Deleuzes

completion of the thought of eternal return. This

prohibition sounds odd coming from Deleuze for

at least two reasons. Firstly, because he is of

course one of the great proponents of a mode

of interpretation which is conceived much less asa reconstruction of a great thinkers thought

than of a utilization of that thought in whatever

way is required and putting it to work; the above

decree seems much more in keeping with the

former conception. Secondly, this statement is

particularly unexpected when we consider that

almost the entirety of Deleuzes conception of

force in the second chapter of Nietzsche and

Philosophy is drawn from notes from the

Nachlass with no real attempt to demonstratethat this is done, in Deleuzes admittedly vague

phrase, in directions confirmed by Nietzsches

published works.

It could be hypothesized that Deleuze was

driven into such exasperation and such doctri-

naire positions by an initial reluctance in the

reception of Nietzsche and Philosophy to accept

Deleuzes new formulation of the eternal return.

That Deleuze felt the need to clarify himself

further in the first book of his to take the form

not of a monograph but of an original philoso-

phical discourse indicates the importance of this

take on eternal return, and perhaps even more of

the recruiting of Nietzsche for a conception

of difference and repetition that prefigures

Deleuzes own.17

Let us now return to Nietzsche and

Philosophy to see why this interpretation of

eternal return seems so compelling to Deleuze.

For he argues for it here not just because he has

his eye on novel ideas concerning difference and

repetition but because it is quite justifiable and

even natural on the basis of Deleuzes reading

of force in Nietzsche. Because Deleuze con-

ceives of a closed system of forces on the basis of

his reading of the Genealogy (and the universe as

a whole would be such a system on Deleuzes

view), the elimination of reactive forces from

such a system precludes their ever recurringwithin that system: for how would they ever get

back into it? There are no different levels at

which things can happen in Deleuzes picture,

so if we add a conclusion to the story of On the

Genealogy of Morals in which the eternal return

roots out reactive forces, which is in effect what

Deleuze does, then we are left with the perpetual

triumph of active forces. But if we concede

instead that the Genealogy deals with a particular

period of European history and is not a picture ofthe cosmos as a whole then there is no difficulty

in seeing that to posit a triumph of active forces

in Western culture, whether or not this is

something which Nietzsche prophesies, does not

constitute their elimination from the universe.

For there may be other cultures in which reactive

forces predominate, and there is no reason why

those cultures should not become powerful

enough to overwhelm contemporary Western

culture; and more importantly, as Nietzscherepeatedly stresses, there is no reason to suppose

that the existence of the human race is anything

other than transient: who knows what else might

spring up in its stead? In terms of eternal return,

it is even certain, according to Nietzsches

conception, that the universe must once again

assume the shape it once took prior to the

existence of the human race, only for that race to

arise again in precisely the same way, so that the

reactive man comes into being once more. Only

if one abstracts from the Genealogy a general,

cosmological picture of forces does it come to

appear that were the European culture of the late

nineteenth century to overcome its reactive traits

then the reactive per se could never return.

the dwarf, the animals and thehurdy-gurdy song: deleuze and

heidegger on getting the eternal

return wrongThere is one other argument Deleuze can marshal

against the notion of eternal return as the return


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of the same, and this, unlike Deleuzes other

arguments concerning eternal return, is very

definitely based on Nietzsches own text. In the

preface which Deleuze provided for the publica-

tion of the English translation of Nietzsche et la

philosophie he writes:

Every time we understand the eternal return

as the return of a particular arrangement

of things after all the other arrangements

have been realised, every time we interpret

the eternal return as the return of the

identical or the same, we replace Nietzsches

thought with childish hypotheses . . . On

two occasions in Zarathustra Nietzsche

explicitly denies that the eternal return

is a circle which makes the same return.(NP xi)

Deleuze does not specify here what these two

occasions are, but his remarks elsewhere in

Nietzsche and Philosophy (see, for example, the

conclusion to NP II 15) and also in the discussion

of eternal return in Difference and Repetition18

lead us to the only possible candidates in

Nietzsches text. The first of these comes when

the eternal return makes its first explicitappearance in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as

Zarathustra climbs the mountain accompanied

by his dwarf and reaches a gateway. Zarathustra

now introduces the eternal return for the first

time in the book:

Behold this gateway, dwarf! I went on:

it has two aspects. Two paths come

together here: no one has ever reached

their end.

This long lane behind us: it goes on for an

eternity. And that long lane ahead of us that

is another eternity.

They are in opposition to one another, these

paths; they abut on one another: and it is here

at this gateway that they come together. The

name of the gateway is written above it:

Moment.

But if one were to follow them further and

ever further and further: do you think, dwarf,

that these paths would be in eternal opposi-

tion? (TSZ III, On the Vision and the

Riddle 2)

To this the dwarf replies with apparent

complicity:

Everything straight lies, murmured the

dwarf disdainfully. All truth is crooked,

time itself is a circle.

But Zarathustra reacts violently to this

exposition:

Spirit of Gravity! I said angrily, do not

treat this too lightly! Or I shall leave you

squatting where you are, Lamefoot and

I have carried you high!

It is to be assumed that Deleuze takes this angry

response to show that we must not think of

eternal return as a circle which makes the same

return (see above).

The other passage to which we must conclude

that Deleuze is referring similarly takes the form

of the rejection of an exposition of the eternal

return which is found to be somehow inadequate

or defective:

O Zarathustra, said the animals then,

all things themselves dance for such as think

as we: they come and offer their hand andlaugh and flee and return.

Everything goes, everything returns; the

wheel of existence rolls for ever. Everything

dies, everything blossoms anew; the year of

existence runs on for ever.

Everything breaks, everything is joined

anew; the same house of existence builds itself

for ever. Everything departs, everything meets

again; the ring of existence is true to itself

for ever.

Existence begins in every instance;the ball There rolls around every Here.

The middle is everywhere. The path of

eternity is crooked. (TSZ III, The

Convalescent 2)

Once again Zarathustra derides this way of

describing the eternal return, although he reacts

this time, to his animals, with affection rather

than anger:

O you buffoons and barrel organs!

answered Zarathustra and smiled again; how

well you know what had to be fulfilled in seven

days . . .

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And you have already made a hurdy-

gurdy song of it? . . .

Once again, it appears that for Deleuze this

rejection of the hurdy-gurdy song (Leier-

Lied), a repetitive ditty, suggests that we mustnot think of the eternal return as something

which just goes round and round without

variation, that it must instead be conceived of

as the return of the same as different.

But how clear is it that the reason why these

descriptions are rejected is because they represent

return as return of the same? In the case of the

dwarf, what Zarathustra rails against is the fact

that the dwarf takes the idea of return too

lightly (mache dir es nicht zu leicht), not thathe has misconceived it as such. And when he goes

on to counter the dwarfs version by expounding

his own, nothing suggests that we should now be

thinking of return in terms of the return of the

same as different:

Behold this moment! I went on. From

this gateway Moment [Augenblick] a long,

eternal lane runs back: an eternity lies

behind us

Must not all things that can run havealready run along this lane? Must not all things

that can happen have already happened, been

done, run past? . . .

And this slow spider that creeps along in

the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and

I and you at this gateway whispering together,

whispering of eternal things must we not all

have been here before?

and must we not return and run down

that other lane out before us, down that long

terrible lane must we not return eternally?(TSZ III, Of the Vision and the Riddle 2)

And might it not also be that the problem with

the hurdy-gurdy song into which the animals

have transformed the eternal return is that it

makes the return too easy, too light and too

trivial, not as such that it represents a return of

the same? Then the issue would be instead that to

really think the eternal return it is just not

enough to say everything turns in a circle; and

specifically, one might only appreciate the full

significance of eternal return if one can really

conceive of what it means to exist within that

circle and to know that one exists within it.

This is how Heidegger interprets Nietzsche at

this point, and there can be no better way of

demonstrating that Zarathustras two objections

need not be interpreted along Deleuzes lines than

by quoting Heideggers impressive exegesisof these passages, which, in spite of what is

generally held to be the case concerning

Heideggers interpretation of Nietzsche, pays

much closer attention to the letter of

Nietzsches text than does Deleuze in this

instance. Firstly, when discussing the disagree-

ment with the dwarf in On the Vision and the

Riddle, Heidegger comments:

It seems as though Zarathustras secondquestion [must we not recur eternally?

quoted above as must we not return

eternally?] repeats exactly what was con-

tained in the dwarfs answer to the first

question: Everything moves in a circle.

It seems so. Yet the dwarf fails to reply to

the second question. The very question is

posed in such a superior fashion that

Zarathustra can no longer expect an answer

from the dwarf. The superiority consists in the

fact that certain conditions of understanding

have been brought into play, conditions the

dwarf cannot satisfy because he is a dwarf.

These new conditions derive from the realiza-

tion that the second question is based on the

Moment. But such questioning requires

that one adopt a stance of his own within

the Moment itself, that is, in time and its

temporality.19

And when Heidegger goes on to discuss the

erroneous description of eternal return given by

Zarathustras animals, the elucidation of what iswrong with the dwarfs account deepens and

intensifies; as must be assumed to be the case also

for Deleuze, Heidegger brings these two episodes

together, since he too believes that it must be

fundamentally the same thing which marks out

both what the dwarf says and what the animals

say as erroneous.

Perhaps the animals talk is only more

effervescent, more buoyant and playful than

yet at bottom identical with the talk of the

dwarf, to whom Zarathustra objects that he

makes things too easy for himself. . . They are


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barrel organs: they turn his words concerning

the eternal return of the same, words obtained

only after the hardest struggle, into a mere

ditty; they crank it out, knowing what is

essential about it as little as the dwarf does.

For the dwarf vanishes when things take aserious turn and all becomes foreboding, when

the shepherd has to bite off the head of the

black snake. The dwarf experiences nothing of

the fact that really to know the ring of rings

means precisely this: to overcome from the

outset and perpetually what is dark and horrid

in the teaching as it is expressed, namely the

fact that if everything recurs all decision and

every effort and will to make things better is a

matter of indifference; that if everything turns

in a circle nothing is worth the trouble; so thatthe result of the teaching is disgust and

ultimately the negation of life. In spite of

their marvelous talk about the Ring of Being,

Zarathustras animals too seem to dance over

and beyond what is essential. His animals too

seem to want to treat the matter as men do.

Like the dwarf they run away. Or they too

act as mere spectators, telling what results if

everything revolves. They perch before beings

and have a look at their eternal displace-

ment, then describe it in the most resplendent

images. They are not aware of what is going on

there, not aware of what must be thought in

the true thinking of being as a whole, namely,

that such thinking is a cry of distress, arising

from a calamity.20

Like Deleuze, Heidegger thinks that there is a

way of understanding eternal return which

trivializes it, makes the thought all too easy,

and that the purpose of the two passages cited is

to reject this simplification of return. We might

note that some of what Heidegger expounds as

being the content of this thought is in its turn

speculative and interpolative: for Nietzsche

certainly does not say in so many words that,

as Heidegger puts it, what is dark and horrid

in the teaching as it is expressed is the fact that

if everything recurs all decision and effort

and will to make things better is a matter of

indifference.21 But because this interpolation

is inserted into a close reading of Nietzsches

text, Heideggers interpretation of eternal return

in terms of will and the Moment, the

Augenblick, is far more persuasive than that

of Deleuze which, as I have suggested, runs

against the grain of Nietzsches own exposition

and creates a number of internal difficulties.22

I am not primarily concerned here with

determining precisely what one should make of

the eternal return.23 Even in Heideggers exposi-tion there remains something highly enigmatic,

mysterious and perhaps even unthinkable about

Nietzsches thought. Perhaps eternal return is the

kind of thought which one can only really think

of in the wrong way, as the dwarf and the animals

think it, from the outside. Perhaps it is not even

possible to consistently think the thought of

eternal return from within the Augenblick:

to do so would be to become embroiled in a kind

of living paradox since even if one was convincedthat the moment repeats one could never-

theless never experience the eternal return

as return, as this would alter the content of

what returns. What I am just as much concerned

with here is Deleuzes entire interpretation of

Nietzschean genealogy, and the fact that the

way Deleuze derives a self-consistent system of

forces from Nietzsches texts, in particular from

On the Genealogy of Morals (genealogy is for

Deleuze nothing other than the mapping of theseforces), results in an interpretation of the eternal

return which I think is untenable.

There are two different stories in Nietzsche,

and while they bear on one another in a number

of ways, in an important respect Nietzsche keeps

them quite separate from one another, operating

as they do at quite different levels. One story is

that of Western civilization, the story of our

culture, concerned with the particular moral,

epistemological and ontological presuppositions

that are to be derived from its history, and of

which it is uncertain to what extent we can free

ourselves. This is the story which is told in

On the Genealogy of Morals. And on the other

hand there is the story of the universe as a whole,

the story of repetition and return for which

Nietzsche argues, a story in which the whole

history of self-conscious beings appears as in

a certain sense a matter of indifference.

The primary way in which these two stories are

related is that the advent of a proper conception

of the latter will bring about a radical change

in the former. This gives Nietzsche an optimism

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for the future and might enable us to say, at most,

that reactive forces could be eliminated from our

culture, although I would prefer to be more

cautious and say that Nietzsche believes the idea

of eternal return will undo the particular malaise

of post-Christian civilization, the situation wherereactive forces predominate over active forces,

and the nihilism that results, so that a more

affirmative phase of human history will be

ushered in. What I cannot countenance is the

claim that the description of forces in the

Genealogy is the description of the only kinds

of relationship of forces that obtain in the universe

for Nietzsche, nor that anything which transforms

that relationship in the context of the Genealogy

would transform it once and for all in all contexts.Everything returns, including Christianity,

the petty man, decadence, the

nihilism of Western culture and

the self-overcoming of that nihi-

lism by means of the thought of

eternal return.

notes

1 Above all in Difference et Repetition.

2 Differance in Margins of Philosophy17.

3 Deleuze, Nietzsche et la philosophie, section 1,

subsection 2. Hereafter NP. In citations from

this text Roman numerals refer to the five

large sections into which the book is divided,

Arabic numerals to the subdivisions within these

sections.

4 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals. In cita-

tions from this text Roman numerals refer to the

three essays which comprise the main text, Arabicnumerals to the sections into which these are

subdivided.

5 For a good example of this procedure see

NP II 2.

6 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 1066.

Hereafter WP, with section number.

7 That everything recurs is, according to

Nietzsche, the closest approximation of a world

of becoming to a world of being (WP 617).

8 [d]ans leternel retour, ce nest pas le meme ou

lun qui reviennent, maisle retour est lui-meme lun

qui se dit seulement du divers et de ce qui diffe' re.

9 And derive entirely from the Nachlass;

see my discussion of this a little further on in

the text.

10 I have decapitalized the section heading in

Tomlinsons translation to better parallel the

original.

11 Si, dans tout ce que tu veux faire, tu com-

mences par demander: est-il sur que je veuille le

faire un nombre infini de fois, ce sera pour toi le

centre de gravite le plus solide.

12 les forces re actives ne reviennent pas.

13 Das gro sste Schwergewicht. Nietzsche,

The Gay Science, section 341.

14. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, part 3,

Of the vision and the Riddle, section 2.Hereafter TSZ. In further citations from this

text Roman numerals refer to the five main

sections into which the text is divided and

are followed by the titles of the subdivisions

and Arabic numerals for any further

subdivisions.

15 Deleuze, Pure Immanence 87.

16 Deleuze, Differenceand Repetition 371. Hereafter

DR.

17 Deleuzes avowed closeness to Nietzsche,

which probably motivates the rhetoric of his

appropriation of eternal return, is seen by at least

one commentator as weakening Deleuzes philoso-

phy by tying it to the failure of the Nietzschean

project: see Conway.

18 In Difference and Repetition Deleuze clearlylinks

his rejection of the wrong conception of eternal

return with the first of the passages I am about to

quote from Zarathustra: Zarathustra denies that

timeis a circle [. . .

] By contrast he holds that timeis a straight line in two opposing directions.

If a strangely decentred circle should form,

this will only be at the end of the straight line

[ . . . ] (371).

19 Heidegger 43^ 44.

20 Ibid. 54^55.

21 In fact there are grounds for believing the

opposite. When Nietzsche entitles the first

exposition of eternal return in The Gay Science

Das gro sste Schwergewicht, The greatest

weight, one of the possible translations of

the German Schwergewicht is emphasis


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or stress. If Nietzsche even partially has this

connotation in mind then it seems that what is

horrifying about the eternal return is not that it

makes every act of will a matter of indifference

but rather that it makes it so overwhelmingly

significant, since it will be repeated for all time.This is approximately the interpretation of the

eternal return proposed by Milan Kundera in

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, as conferring

a requisite weight and heaviness on being in

order to counter its tendency to lightness and

insignificance. But it will be recalled that Deleuze,

too, emphasizes the aspect of eternal return

which gives to the will a rule which prevents

it from any half-hearted willing: everything you

do must be willed for all time. Deleuze is right

to bring out this point, but Heideggers unwar-ranted interpolation here does not count against

the general thrust of his interpretation of the

passages in question; it is just that the cry of

distress may arise for different reasons and

the consequences of thinking oneself within the

eternal return may be different from those

Heidegger adduces.

22 The interpretation of eternal return given by

Pierre Klossowski in Nietzsche and the Vicious

Circle, which is highly complex but which revolves

principally around a kind of rupture in identitywhich the eternal return implies, also seems to

me consonant with these passages in Zarathustra

and with what Nietzsche says about eternal

return elsewhere; thus it provides an alternative

account to the Heideggerian one I have evoked

here. Nietzsche writes so little about the eternal

return that there must necessarily be quite a

number of interpretations of it which would

count as reasonable. But to reiterate: I just do not

think that Deleuzes reading is one of these

interpretations.

23 There is a trend in analytic readings of

Nietzsche from the past twenty years or so to

emphasize the aspect of eternal return as a test

for ones attitude to ones own life. See Nehamas;

Clarke; Loeb; and Janaway. For a moreexistential

readingof Nietzsche sharing this same basic orien-

tation, see Hatab. Such readings have much to

recommend them but this emphasis tends to

obscure an aspect of eternal return with which

Nietzsche became more and more preoccupied

and of which Deleuze reminds us: the possible his-

torical impact of this thought on Western culture

as a whole.

bibliography

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Cambridge: Cambridge UP,1990.

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London: Routledge,1997. 73^90.

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1968.

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A. Boyman.NewYork: Zone, 2001.

Derrida, J. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. A. Bass.

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Hatab, L. Nietzsches Life Sentence: Coming

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Heidegger, M. Nietzsche: Vol. II: The EternalRecurrence of the Same. Trans. D.F. Krell. New York:

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Loeb, P.S. Identity and Eternal Recurrence.A Companion to Nietzsche. Ed. K. Ansell-Pearson.

Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.171^88.

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and R.J. Hollingdale. NewYork: Vintage,1967.

Joseph Ward

UCD School of Philosophy

Newman Building

University College Dublin

Belfield, Dublin 4Ireland

E-mail: [email protected]


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