Cyclical History

Abstract

From Nietzsche’s view of the world as ‘a monster of energy’, ‘a sea of forces’ in relentless strife engendered by conflicting wills to power, spring all his ensuing aesthetics and doctrines of tragedy, of the divided psyche, of Rangordnung of master and slave moralities, of the Übermensch and, ultimately, of the notion which he comes to regard as the crowning glory of his entire philosophy, the idea of ewige Wiederkehr.

‘… the plexus of causes returneth in which I am intertwined, — it will again create me !’

— Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (57.2), p. 247.

… every phase returns, therefore in some sense every civilisation….

— Yeats, A Vision p. 206.