From: lambdac-AT-globalserve.net
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 02:20:09 -0500
Subject: Re. Doing Harm to Stupidity (3)


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ONLY THAT WHICH IS ETERNAL RETURNS - FOR THAT IS ITS BEING

In response to LC's statement-
"only the politics of joy has a title to recur, the rest must
inevitably sink, like all that is German."

B. Rattner wrote-

> If this implies that Eternal Recurrance is selective it flies in the face of
> "...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."
> (GS, 341) and "...the ideal of the most high-spirited, alive, and
> world-affirming human being who has not only come to terms and learned to
> get along with whatever was and is, but who wants to have *what was and
>is* repeated into all eternity, shouting insatiably *da capo*..." (BGE,
> 56)

Not from where we stand, it does not.  The return of all things, small
or great, is not the return of all forces, active and reactive, as if
small were reactive and great active (the micrological small is not to
be equated with the smallness of the petty).  This spider, this
moonlight, this moment and self, are not forces, but complexes of
forces, affects.  And the object of the eternal return is not a passive
selection - but a selection by thought and action, "do only that whose
return you can _effectively_ welcome, so that you can _effectively_
desire to start back from zero", da capo.  Most human beings go through
life filled with regrets - and that itself will rule out the very
possibility of the recurrence of 'their' affects.  But a warrior or a
man of knowledge has no time for regrets, since - to employ Castaneda's
words - one shall have to 'remember the totality of oneself' before that
last battle.  You must affirm and double-affirm - so that even the
'laziness, stupidity, baseness, cowardice or spitefulness that would
will its own eternal return would no longer be the same laziness,
stupidity etc' (Deleuze).  The ER does not prescribe an impersonal
(universal) content or form for one's actions, only that one be sure
that their return should be welcomed an infinite series of times- and
thus act accordingly (the task is "so to live that you must wish to live
again", "eternity is at stake!").  We have written before, in response
to similar objections from Mr. Rhodes-

"one should keep in mind the ultimate implications of the ER  seized as
return of the other, not as return of the same: if one is to welcome the
return of the active affects, rather than be depressed by the prospect
of an unending repetition of the same tiring reactions, one should learn
that the key to preventing one's unacted reactions from recurring lies
precisely in becoming responsible for them, in activating them.  That
alone is the condition for innocence: selecting one's reactions out from
recurrence.  So, one man's evil may be another's salvation without that
having to imply any equalization whatsoever of values: as qualities of
force, reactive still remains such, whether activated or not, and active
retains its difference. "

And consider this - if all returned, IF THERE WERE A UNIFORM CYCLE TO
EXISTENCE, A UNIFORM CIRCLE OF RECURRENCE, if even the complexes where
active forces are made impotent would forever return, then surely one
would _not_ have to will them in any of Nietzsche's senses of willing. 
It would be a dead world.  This caving-in is precisely the basis of the
worst and most reactionary, mystical and banal, interpretations of the
ER - as a wheel for the indefinite repetition of the same, a circle much
closer to Hegel's concept of the Idea or Schopenhauer's version of the
World as Representation of the Will.  As such, the thought of the
repetition of reactive affects could never be new, only a terrifying one
- and it was early on that Nietzsche saw it as the very basis of
sickness, including his own: the thought of the pettyness of Man, but
also the smallness of its Form, and its fragility and unimportance in
the cosmic dance ("An eternal recurrence even of the pettiest! - that
_was_ my disgust with existence!").  And indeed, it is not Man which
will recur, but a metamorphosis of the overhuman, inhuman and subhuman
affects which the human serves as vehicle for, that may or may not
succeed.  

Bernard's response continues-

>Deleuze has been refuted and 
>admirably so in my understanding by Laurence Lampert in his "Nietzsche's
>Teaching - An Interpretation of TSZ" (pub.Yale U. Press 1986) p.218:     
>	"Gilles Deleuze has argued that Z's thought
>of e.r.[eternal return] is "selective", that Z engages in merely apparent
>collusion with his animals on the matter of a cycle of the same things,
>and that "the small, petty, reactive man will not recur".[Deleuze,N and
>Phil.,70]    But if the thought were selective in this way, if it did not
>will the whole through willing the e.r. of the same things, the small man
>would hardly be a problem for Z. He almost chokes on the thought of the
>small man precisely because willing e.r. is not selective in this way but
>requires taking responsibility for the small. Z thus fulfills a prayer
>uttered by N seven years earlier:"May sane reason preserve us from the
>belief that mankind will at any future time attain to a final ideal order
>of things, and that happiness will then shine down upon it with
>unwavering ray like the sun of the tropics: with such a belief Z has
>nothing to do, he is no utopian."[R. Wagner in B, 11][n116 p344. 
>Following N's express instruction I have "without hesitation put down the
>word 'Z' where the text has the word 'Wagner' "(EH,Books:Birth,4)] 

We doubt that Deleuze's legitimate interpretation of Nietzsche could
ever be refuted.  How can you refute joy - and joy in reading Nietzsche
with such fresh eyes?  But now note carefully the contrasenses in which
Lampert falls - it is because one comes to the point of being
responsible for one's reactions that indeed one's actions become
selective and innocent, and the ER works as a selective principle.  No
double affirmation without negation.  Zarathustra only takes one to the
point of negation of all existing values, the values of reactive life
and the negation of reactive life itself, solely preparing the way for
the double affirmation and the creation of new values.  But the
realization of the pointlessness of reactive life (life reduced to
survival) does not imply that life itself is empty repetition, nor that
it cannot be willed _differently_.

Without the thought of selection, the concept of the ER becomes a banal
mystical notion.  As a selective principle however, it is hardly a
utopian notion of a 'final ideal order', since repetition which is
selective is repetition of the Different (large and small), and not of
the Same (petty or Great).  Lampert's views are neither new nor
original.  Deleuze may incisively wonder whether such views are
legitimate at all.  But let us not spare words, they are not only
illegitimate, they are retrograde.  The buffoons and the barrel-organs
are those who sing that hurdy-gurdy song.  After all, there are plenty
of direct indications of Nietzsche's esoteric thought on this matter
(only the active affects susceptible of affirmation will return, only
the being of becoming has reality), with regard to the riddles which he
and Z pose: how do you intend, for example, to conciliate the orthodox
(ie Schopenhauerian) view of the 'Nietzschean' ER, with Nietzsche's
words "It is not the existence of ANY DIFFERENCE AT ALL, rather than
perfect repetitiveness, in the surrounding world, enough to impugn the
idea of a uniform circle of existence?".  Or, can you conciliate
Lampert's views with Nietzsche's - "the eternal recurrence makes
everything break open", reactive life is "fleeting life", and "only he
who considers his existence worthy of being eternally repeated will be
left"? These are two simple questions you might want to consider.

As we said before - "The ER is not a vision of the world.  It is either
the world and its life, or it is nothing".

Lambda C

"I do not teach _resignation to necessity_"

NB- Deleuze is not the only one who saw this injustice being done to
N.'s thought re. the concept of the ER. K. Jaspers wrote equally
cheerful words on the subject of the ER.  You might want to check this
out (Book Two of his "Nietzsche") - as the 'postmoderm discourse' is
just another name for the return of classical prejudices with respect to
this problem.

PS- Deleuze on the ER as selective thought-

"But in what sense is the eternal return selective?  Firstly because, as
a thought, it gives the will a practical rule (VP IV 229, 231/WP 1053,
1056 "The great selective thought").  The eternal return gives the will
a rule as rigorous as the Kantian one.  We have noted that the eternal
return, as a physical doctrine, was the new formulation of the
speculative synthesis.  As an ethical thought the eternal return is the
new formulation of the practical synthesis: whatever you will, will it
in such a way that you also will its eternal return.  "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" (VP IV 242). One thing in the world disheartens Nietzsche:
the little compensations, the little pleasures, the little joys and
everything that one is granted once, only once.  Everything that can be
done again the next day only on the condition that it be said the day
before: tomorrow I will give it up- the whole ceremonial of the
obsessed.  And we are like those old women who permit themselves an
excess only once, we act and think like them. "Oh, that you would put
from you all half willing, and decide upon lethargy as you do upon
action.  Oh that you understood my saying: 'Always do what you will- but
first be such as can will!'"  Laziness, stupidity, baseness, cowardice
or spitefulness that would will its own eternal return would no longer
be the same laziness, stupidity etc.  How does the eternal return
perform the selection here?  It is the thought of the eternal return
that selects.  It makes willing something whole.  The thought of the
eternal return eliminates from willing everything which falls outside
the eternal return, it makes willing a creation, it brings about the
equation 'willing = creation' ". (Nietzsche & Philosophy, G. Deleuze, p.
68-69)


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