Eternal Recurrence and Groundhog Day (3/4)

This is Part 3 in a series examining Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence through film and literature. Expect spoilers.

Edge of Tomorrow was a good movie, but I felt like its charm began to wear off during the final act. A movie whose charm never wears off is the romantic comedy Groundhog Day (1993), in which Bill Murray’s character Phil finds himself repeating the same day over and over until he wins the love of Rita, played by Andie McDowell.

 

Much like Major Cage in Edge of Tomorrow, Phil learns to be a better person--not tougher, but kinder and happier. In his old, bitter life, he was a cynic, a life-denier, a negater of the hustle and bustle around him. In Freudian terms, he had a strong death drive urging him toward destructive and self-destructive behavior. This reaches its most morbid point when he repeatedly attempts suicide.

Again, Nietzsche’s ideas clump, for eternal recurrence is closely related to his concept of amor fati. This phrase literally means the love of fate, but it is also the love of all (previous post). For Nietzsche, everything is “anew, everything eternal, everything chained, entwined together, everything in love” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), so that to want the good in life, you must also want the bad. Once you can do that, you have something akin to what John Coltrane called a love supreme, only no god necessary.

Then you are an affirmer of life, as indeed Nietzsche tried to be. In The Gay Science, he states his New Year’s resolution:

 

Amor fati: may that be my love from now on! I want to wage no war against the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. May looking away be my only form of negation! And, all in all: I want to be at all times hereafter only an affirmer!

Reviewing Nietzsche recently, I was surprised at how many selections by translator R. J. Hollingdale in A Nietzsche Reader focus on joy. One of my favorites, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is fine enough in English but must be even better in the original German:

All joy wants the eternity of all things, wants honey, wants dregs, wants intoxicated midnight, wants graves, wants the consolation of graveside tears, wants gilded sunsets, what does joy not want!

In Groundhog Day, joy is precisely what Phil finds. After dreading what promises to be a dull eternity in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, he begins to help people, make friends, and have a little fun. He learns to play a mean piano, masters 19th-Century French poetry, and perfects the art of ice sculpture. After finally winning Rita’s heart, Phil’s recurrence proves--like Ebenezer Scrooge’s similar experience in A Christmas Carol--to have been temporary but life-changing, and he finally moves from February 2 to February 3, a gayer spirit with a new lust for life.

 

Previous posts in this series:
Eternal Recurrence and Nietzsche (1/4)
Eternal Recurrence and Edge of Tomorrow (2/4)

Amor Fati and the Birth of a Child

A curious thing happened when my son was born. I found I was now okay with everything that had ever happened to me--both bad and good. Doubts about decisions made, resentment over wrongs received, pain over past suffering, it all disappeared. In fact, if given the chance to do life, with all its bumps, over again, I would have chosen for it all to happen exactly the same way, for all of it led to the birth of my son.

Other choices, other events would have led to a different life, maybe one with more money, maybe a professionally more successful one--or maybe not--but in any case, a life that, from my vantage point in this life, I don’t want. I didn’t have any thoughts along those lines before my son came along, but once he did, I found this change had occurred within me.

At the time, despite having already long been an atheist, I saw something of the Christian idea of redemption in my experience, for the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is said to effect a pardon for sins past and future. The retroactive nature of what had happened was stunning.

It recently occurred to me, however, how the nature of my experience is even more precisely described by Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of amor fati. This Latin phrase literally means the love of fate and is used by Nietzsche to describe the love of everything, not just the good, that happens. Furthermore, you don’t just tolerate the bad, you love it, you love it all:

“Did you ever say Yes to one joy? O my friends, then you said Yes to all woe as well. All things are chained and entwined together, all things are in love; if ever you wanted one moment twice, if ever you said: ‘You please me, happiness, instant, moment!’ then you wanted everything to return! You wanted everything anew, everything eternal, everything chained, entwined together, everything in love, O that is how you loved the world . . . ” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

As the above passage makes clear, Nietzsche’s concept of amor fati is closely linked to that of eternal recurrence: the belief that everything that happens will happen again and again in exactly the same way for eternity. An analysis of eternal recurrence isn’t necessary here, we only need note that you want the good moments to come again, and that means affirming the not-so-good moments tangled with them.

Have I ever said yes to one joy? Yes. When my son was born. And there have been many moments with him since that are, as they say, worth the world, moments that I would love to have come twice, or thrice, or countless times for infinity. And that means wanting everything that led to those moments and everything that stems from them.

Constantly holding on to this love of all amidst the daily grind is not easy, probably not even possible, but despite it all, the world has granted me a wonderful blessing that makes it possible in the precious moments to assert and truly believe that I live in the best of all possible worlds.