'Eternal Return'- Nietzsche

Milan Kundera, in his book: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, opens his novel with: "The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experianced it, and that the recurrance itself recurs ad infinitum!"
Take a moment, my dear reader, to think upon this statement.





When i first read, this statement, i didn't know if i should call Nietzsche pessimistic, or realistic. The endless possibilities that this statement offers. One could argue that, based on this logic, all happiness, all sorrow, all anger, all danger; in other words, all experiances, never really 'end', so that another may take its place. Using this line of reason, Nietzsche could be suggesting that, as the action of living through one experiance ends, it is merely placed 'on hold', till the next time that it will recur; perhaps under a different circumstace, and for a different reason. However, it could be fair to say that, Nietzsche is saying we merely pick up where we left off.

At first glance, this does appear to be a very pessimistic out- look on life and experiance. However, that is where most will fail to notice the trick to this statement. If every experiance recurs, and the recurrance itself is a recurrance, then that means that if we pick up where we left off, when we're sad, or angry, or in despair; then the same has to go for when we're happy, over- joyed or ecstatic.
Thinking about this for a second, one then begs the question: If we're merely picking up where we left off, does that mean we're actually progressing towards any 'higher' state of 'happiness'; or descending into any 'lower' state of 'sorrow'?

I think, in order to answer this question, my dear reader, you must ask yourself what it is you believe. Is there a 'higher' or 'lower' form of happiness that we progress from, to? Is there a 'higher' form of 'sadness' or 'anger' or 'despair', that we descend from, into a 'lower' form of either of these three states of being?

If we follow this line of logic a little further then we find ourselves asking the question: Does this mean that, at one point or another, one may actually be capable of reaching 'pure' happiness, or 'pure' anger/ sorrow?

Many philosophers argue that it is in fact impossible for man to reach the highest form of happiness, because he will always be striving for further excellence, no matter how far up he climbs. However, wouldn't it be possible to argue that, in the case of sorrow, more specifically, one may reach that level? Could it not be the attainment of 'pure' sorrow that sees a person descend into madness, or an incurable psychological state, or, talking more extreme terms; couldn't it be the attainment of 'pure' sorrow that sees one descend to the state of attempting to committ suicide, and, in some unfortunate cases, actually following the action through?

Whatever the answers may be, typical of most things in life, we hit yet another question: Does this mean that we should live life and attempt to appreciate all experiances? Or, should we merely pass 'through' life, not really engaging with people and experiancing life and all it has to offer, since we will simply 'return' to similar states of being, through- out the course of our lives?

Once again, my dear reader, i will not provide an answer to these tricky questions. Partly because i have no answer for them myself. Oscar Wilde, in this instance, however, does come to mind. I don't not believe there could be a more appropriate time to remind you, dear reader, of what Wilde had to say, on the experiance of sorrow, in De Profundis. "To regret one's own experiances is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiances is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul".