Nietzsche: the eternal recurrence of the same and the spirit of vengeance

• Grant number: 18/09067-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2018
• End date: January 31, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Henry Martin Burnett Junior
• Grantee: Hugo José de Carvalho Vedovato
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 19/12953-9 - Maximum poiesis: an approach to Nietzschean eternal recurrence, BE.EP.MS

Abstract

The project analyses the thought of the eternal recurrence of the same, as presented by Friedrich W. Nietzsche, investigating its interpretation as a countermeasure to existencial resentment. Nietzsche tracks this feeling in the origin of that which is maybe the target of his most severe critique: western metaphysics - and, by proxy, also cradle of those which he considers, respectively, its twin institution and inescapable consequence: morality and nihilism. While a considerable part of the Nietzschean corpus aims to undermine the foundations of metaphysics and of morality, the thought of the eternal recurrence of the same arises as an experiment which proposes itself as an alternative to them (and also to the reactive strand of nihilism), presenting itself as an exam and attempt of surpassing the cause of this resentment: the impotence of the human type against the passage of time - an evidence of the impossibility of integrally imposing its will over existence. Beside the study of the development and extension of the eternal recurrence in the work of Nietzsche, and the assessment of the way through which it interconnects itself with the aforementioned problematic, this project also intends an evaluation (and, eventually, the taking of a stance) regarding the sustainability of the thought as a cosmological view, and whether or not the proof of such a sustainability is necessary for its functioning, both as admonishment against the - as Nietzsche puts them - delusions of omnipotence of the human before its existence, and as a possible elixir to soothe the agony that ensues the recognition of these delusions as such. (AU)