In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche unabashedly declares that his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra is more important than the works of Shakespeare and Dante combined. Obviously, dealing with an equivocal figure who is not afraid to make such bold claims requires a great deal of interpretation, discernment, and patience. Unfortunately, commentators typically fall into one of two traps; either they focus upon what is most shocking and often possesses the least intellectual merit in Nietzsche's writing, or they state Nietzsche's most profound ideas in a simplistic manner which makes them far too mundane and easily palatable.

In Life as Literature, Alexander Nehamas tries to make sense out of Nietzsche's writings, without glossing over all of the contradictions, stylistic variation, and startling arrogance with which any careful reader of Nietzsche will be well acquainted. Nehamas' central thesis is that many of Nietzsche's writings are better explained and hence make more sense when one reads them according to a unifying thesis to which Nehamas alludes in the title of his excellent book. His thesis is that Nietzsche viewed the world as a literary text which, like all literature, must be interpreted. How one interprets the text of the world will determine how one lives one's life. And how one lives one's life is, for Nietzsche (like Socrates before him), the most important question of all.

It is largely this view with which I will be concerned. I shall not concern myself with the question of to what extent any difficulties with the views presented in Life as Literature are problems that are truly indicative of the problems inherent in Nietzsche's writing. Rather, I shall only address those problems of Nietzsche's writing that I see presented by the interpretation provided in Life as Literature. I shall leave the question of how accurately Nehamas's interpretation reflects the thoughts of Nietzsche to the scholars.

The strength of Nehamas' book is that he shows how seemingly disparate thoughts in Nietzsche such as the will to power, the nature of the self, and eternal recurrence make more sense when united under the view that the world is a literary text which requires interpretation. Perhaps no idea in Nietzsche's writings is as difficult to understand and come to terms with as the peculiar idea of eternal recurrence.

In the first book of Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a demon appears to Zarathustra and tells him that in order to become an overman he must "turn every 'and thus it was' into 'and thus I willed it.'" The demon states that eternal recurrence is the most difficult and important decision in one's life because one must be "willing to have his life over again" without end. Zarathustra is so paralyzed by this realization that he lies catatonic for five days.

How are we to make sense of this strange passage? Most commentators fall into one of two camps in their interpretation of eternal recurrence. The first group argues that eternal recurrence is a cosmological hypothesis, a theory about the universe as a whole. On this view, time is cyclical and repeats itself again and again without beginning or end. The second group thinks that eternal recurrence is a kind of psychological test which must be passed in order for one to become an overman. To authentically become the "new man" capable of creating his own morality in a Godless world, one must say "yes" to the demon's offer to have every moment of one's life over again.

Nehamas' interpretation is far closer to the second interpretation. Rather than postulate that Nietzsche was arguing for some sort of bizarre cosmological hypothesis, Nehamas states that the idea of eternal recurrence is employed as a means of presenting a particular psychological view about the self. To understand what is meant by the talk of eternal recurrence, it is first necessary to grasp Nietzsche's more general view of the self, a view which is an unmistakable affront to common sense.

According to Nehamas, Nietzsche holds that the self is nothing more than the loose association, or sum total, of one's actions or effects upon the world. For Nietzsche, a so-called "thing in itself" is nonsensical; Nietzsche is here using this term not in the Kantian sense, which stipulates that there exists an aspect of reality about which we have no access, but rather to argue that there is no enduring subject behind the actions themselves. That is, according to Nietzsche there is never any "doer" behind the "deed." A thing is not a subject that has effects but rather simply a collection of interrelated facts. Conceived as such, Nietzsche's view about the self applies equally to other objects in the world. If one were to remove all the properties of a thing, then the "thing" would not remain.

Building upon this idea of the self, Nehamas presents Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence as a psychological theory about becoming optimally well-disposed to oneself. Thus conceived, eternal recurrence is a means whereby one justifies one's entire life. For Nietzsche, life is justified when we accept our present condition and all the heinous actions, feelings of despair and loneliness, losses, and atrocities that have been a part of our life. That is, though one did not will something when it originally occurred, one would not now have it any other way. Thus, Nehamas claims, eternal recurrence is a process wherein one actually creates redemption in one's life. A life is redeemed when it is fully or completely justified, and a life is fully justified when one has become so well-disposed toward herself that she would not change a single aspect of her past or present life, even if given the opportunity.

Of what does one's life consist? Given Nietzsche's view of the self discussed above, it comes as no surprise that one's life is simply the summation of every action that he has performed. This view about one's life is definitional, since for Nietzsche the self is simply an aggregate of actions. As has already been shown, for Nietzsche there is no self which remains when one strips away all of one's actions or properties. Rather, Nietzsche's point is precisely that one's actions are all that exist.

Answering "yes" to the demon in the parable of eternal recurrence consists of affirming every action one has ever performed. One must personally turn every "and thus it was" into "and thus I willed it." What is meant by this puzzling statement? Nietzsche is demanding that, when one is presented with the possibility of living one's life again, one change nothing that he has done in his life. In answering the demon, Zarathustra exclaims, "Was that life? Well then, once more!"

As was the case with his view of the self, Nietzsche's proposal again presents an affront to common sense, which holds that each of us regrets bad decisions. We wish we had been kinder, we wish we had known then what we know now, we wish we had spent more time doing one thing and not another. In short, we recognize that we have made mistakes. This is precisely what Nietzsche demands that his life-affirmers not concede. Nietzsche's life affirmers will admit neither that they have made mistakes, nor that they are somehow guilty. Instead, one must come to see that every action he has performed is absolutely essential to his personhood and to his life; he must love every thing that has ever happened to him, and every action that he has ever performed himself. As such, recurrence has the capacity for the greatest affirmation of this life, or its greatest denial.

One might respond that this amounts to the kind of dogmatism that Nietzsche was so adamantly trying to avoid. Surely we ought to do some things differently if we have the chance. Surely not to do them differently if given the opportunity would be foolish. However, Nietzsche cannot agree with this rejoinder because of his view of the self.

In order to ascertain whether Nietzsche's view about redemption is a view that ought to be endorsed, I must now examine one specific aspect of the self, that of Nietzsche's theory of the will to power and its effect upon the world. Nietzsche's theory of will to power holds that if a man were able to change but one of his previous actions, he would no longer be the same person at all. This is a far stronger view than is sometimes attributed to him by other scholars. It is not simply to say that if one had acted differently, then one would be better or worse off for having done so. Rather, for Nietzsche, changing any action that one has performed is tantamount to complete self-annihilation. It is to wish that one's own existence was that of someone else, someone completely different from oneself. To wish that one had not acted the way one did is to wish to have never existed at all.

But Nietzsche's doctrine of will to power is not entirely identical with his view of the self hitherto presented; in effect, it goes a step further. When we examine Nietzsche's notion of the will to power, we see that wishing one's actions had been different is not only tantamount to wishing for personal annihilation, but also entails that one wishes that the entire world were completely different as well. This is why those who would change nothing about their past are "life-affirmers" while those who wish that but one thing were different are referred to as "life-deniers."

According to the doctrine of the will to power, properties are nothing but a thing's effects on other things. Hence, to wish that our own properties were somehow different is to necessarily affect our surroundings differently. The objects our properties affected differently would then affect those objects with which they came into contact differently, and so on, ad infinitum. This is why for Nietzsche to wish that one thing had happened differently to oneself is to wish that the world were completely different, replaced by something totally alien.

Now it is perhaps clear why one of the preliminary objections to Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence will not present any serious challenge to the theory. For Nietzsche, wishing that one could partially change one's past presupposes that that one can distinguish the self from its features. This is the very idea that his theory of the self denies. In this respect, Nietzsche presents what is perhaps the most radical questioning of Aristotle's distinction between accidental and essential properties. Nietzsche's claim amounts to the complete denial of accidental properties. Every action one performs, even the most seemingly insignificant, is for Nietzsche essential to one's uniqueness as an individual. For Nietzsche, a merely partial acceptance of oneself is tantamount to the wish that one had never existed at all.

Given that Nietzsche heralded the death of God, one could also question his use of the rhetoric of redemption or justification. Might it simply be the case that, despite having pronounced God to be dead, Nietzsche still longs for that which God's death precludes? In fact, this objection misses Nietzsche's point about the need for a radically earthly, or non-divine, aspect of redemption. Nietzsche would likely admit that saying water cannot be had is not to show that we do not still need it. However, it seems likely that he would argue that it makes no sense to say that we need divine redemption since there never was, is, or could be any divine redemption.

This is how divine redemption differs from the example of water; water exists, even if one does not have access to it at a particular time. But for Nietzsche, the notion of divine redemption is simply an historical, and hence fictional, invention on the part of some very crafty priests. That is, divine redemption never has and never will exist. Nietzsche makes his proposal for psychological justification and redemption via eternal recurrence in light of the fact that God is dead, and hence in light of the fact that there is no afterlife. For Nietzsche, this world is the only world; if redemption is possible, it is only possible in this lifetime. To seek divine redemption is simply incoherent.

But one might ask why Nietzsche thinks that one needs redemption at all. This is certainly a challenge which Nietzsche can answer. For Nietzsche, our world is in need of redemption because it is full of people who incoherently wish that part of their life or world had been different. And, as has been shown, that wish is tantamount to wishing that one did not exist at all. This is the dreadful thought from which humankind needs to be saved. We need to be saved from wishing that we were not, from the resulting desire for a world other than the one that is known, which, when properly understood, we would never wish to have.

The reason that we would never wish to have this other world is that, not only would we as self-interested individuals not be a part of this other world, but neither would any of those memories that we cherish. For Nietzsche, to deny the need for redemption is a failure to recognize the incoherence of one's own views. What we need is not divine redemption, but rather redemption from a way of thinking which is ultimately self-destructive.

Once we have recognized that wishing one's past were somehow different necessarily entails the wish to be someone else and for one's world to be completely different, one is ready to begin the arduous process which Nietzsche claims is the only way to attain redemption. It has been shown that, for Nietzsche, redemption consists of changing every "and thus it was" into "and thus I willed it," wherein one acknowledges that if he had the chance to do anything in his past differently, he would not refuse because this would entail wishing that he was a completely different person. When he has done this, his life becomes unified and takes on a sense of style, an ambiguous term which Nietzsche uses in a precise way. In The Gay Science he writes:

One thing is needful-To "give style" to one's character-a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye.

In other words, a sense of style develops when we unify our own features. However, the precise sense of the definition which Nietzsche means to convey is not easy to discern.

It seems that by style Nietzsche probably meant a continual process of integrating one's traits, habits, and patterns of action with one another. Here the analogy between literature and life becomes useful. Just as a well-developed character in literature is one whose actions are each essential to the character's personhood and development, so too are each of the actions of an actual person essential to his character as well. That is, neither a superior literary character nor a superior person possesses any accidental properties.

Try to imagine that Alyosha in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov had not fled the monastery. In fact, try to imagine that a single action of Alyosha had been different. He would not have been the person we now identify as Dostoevsky's Alyosha; each of his actions are essential to his character, and if any part of his life had been different, then the artistic cohesiveness of Dostoevsky's masterpiece would have declined. Nietzsche's theory indicates that one's life takes on a sense of style when one reconciles one's many internal differences and contradictions. This endeavor involves creating a person who has fit his character into an artistic plan where every one of his strengths and weaknesses appears as art and reason, and even weaknesses delight the eye.

Style develops when one achieves the unification and reconciliation of one's past with one's present. At the instant we turn every "and thus it was," into "and thus I willed it," we have unified our existence in such a manner that our sense of style cannot help but come to the forefront.

It is at this point that one might object that Nietzsche's sense of redemption is inadequate because it is transient. If redemption is attained at the point at which one's entire past is unified with one's present, then one must reaffirm one's redemption in each action that one performs. That is, the future always presents a sense of danger for a man who has succeeded in unifying his character and acquiring a sense of style. Each new event poses to him the possibility that he might not be able to unify it with his character. Nietzsche's form of redemption might begin to look very precarious indeed.

I do not think that this objection presents any real problem for Nietzsche's theory, since to point out that the goal of redemption is precarious or difficult to achieve is not necessarily to say that the theory is mistaken. Furthermore, I do not see that it follows that because one can never say of her life that she has permanently succeeded in securing the final goal that Nietzsche's theory is somehow necessarily inadequate or wrong. Rather, I think that Nietzsche would see the precariousness of salvation as yet another indication that one who has acquired style is a truly remarkable and superior individual indeed, however precarious her salvation may be.

To possess style, a man must not only initially unify every aspect of his past with his present, but he must perpetually maintain this unity by finding a way to incorporate all of his actions in such a manner that they will be consistent with his unified character or style. For Nietzsche, that a person must face the possibility of losing his redemption if he cannot find a way to continue to unify every action with his past is only to stress how creative, disciplined and well-disposed toward himself a person who possesses style will have to be.

Another objection that Nietzsche's account of redemption must be able to answer appeals to the possibility of self-deception. That is, it may be the case that one may be perfectly willing to repeat all of one's life only because one does not see his life in its proper light. But I do not think that this presents Nietzsche's theory with a serious problem; rather, it forces him to acknowledge that there is a distinction between authentic and illusory redemption. That is, Nietzsche would likely reply that a mere feeling of unity, as opposed to actual unity, is simply self-delusion, a trap into which a truly superior person who possesses authentic style and unity would never fall.

Nietzsche was not troubled by the possibility that many would think that they had attained redemption through unity, when in fact they were failing to take account of those features of themselves that they would not be able to incorporate into their own formation of style. Nor was he unaware of the possibility; in The Gay Science he writes, "What would they behold if they could see to the bottom of themselves!" As was the case with the objection concerning the precariousness of salvation when confronted with the future, the objection concerning self-deception seems only to help strengthen Nietzsche's point about the difficulty of achieving redemption.

To obtain authentic redemption, a redemption where one is not deceiving oneself, one must be willing to undergo an ongoing process of painful self-examination. This process must of necessity be extremely daunting because it involves affirming all of the most terrible and heinous parts of one's past existence. Clearly, Nietzsche feels that only the philosophers of the future will be able to authentically complete this arduous and painful self-examination. He remarks in Zarathustra that "man is a rope over an abyss." Man as he currently exists cannot yet achieve authentic redemption, because man has not yet fulfilled his telos as a self-legislator who does not need God. His task is therefore to prepare the way for the one capable of saying "yes" to the demon.

Thus far, certain aspects of the theories of the will to power, self, and eternal recurrence have been presented, and several objections were shown to fail to thwart Nietzsche's attempt to present humankind with a new theory of redemption. However, I think that there are criticisms which can be made against Nietzsche's theory that, even if they did not enable one to reject Nietzsche's proposal outright, would still be valuable insofar as they force one to realize a crucial, if unstated, premise of Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence. This unstated premise is that eternal recurrence must demand that when one evaluates his past actions, one must endorse them as final ends, not simply because one wants to avoid wishing that he were someone else.

Nietzsche specifies that there are only two reactions to the offer of eternal recurrence which the demon presents to Zarathustra. If Zarathustra wants to accept any part of his life and world, then he must accept it all. Likewise, if he rejects any part of it, then he rejects his entire life and the entire world. For Nietzsche there is no middle ground.

I think that this is fundamentally incorrect; there is a possible "middle ground" that one could take, and it is significant because it calls into serious question Nietzsche's assumption that, by transforming one's past so that one comes to have willed all of it, one comes to be reconciled and hence favorably disposed toward all of one's previous actions. But why should anyone automatically become favorably disposed toward his past actions simply because he recognizes the necessity of them? Nietzsche assumes that one who is able to say "yes" to the demon which confronts Zarathustra will eventually develop style, and will thus become like a well-drawn character in a novel. But I do not see that it follows that, having attained redemption by agreeing to have all of one's life again, one can no longer suffer from guilt or feel hatred and contempt for one's own historical actions.

Consider someone who answered the demon in the affirmative, someone who decided to redeem his life by saying "yes" eternally to all that came before them. I think it is quite plausible that such a person might still reveal the following emotions:

Sure, I see the necessity of that particular deed for making me, in effect, myself. Without having done that, I would be a completely different person, another person entirely. But I'm not proud of what I did. Nor am I happy with whom I have become. I would not wish to not be, and hence I recognize the necessity of that deed. But damn it, even though I would do it again and again, I hate what I have done, and I hate myself for doing it.

From this vantage point, Nietzsche's theory of justification comes to look disturbingly similar to the case of someone who is holding another person at gun-point, telling the victim to do her will, or die. The victim may comply, not because he wants to, but rather because he cannot help but cling to his existence, however wretched it has become. That is, he does not want his existence to end.

The problem with which I am concerned here brings me back full circle to the problem of authenticity. Does a person who adopts a particular view toward his life in order to preserve or cling to his existence attain authentic salvation? Based on the gunpoint example considered above, the answer appears to be no. Both the man who accepts the demon's offer and the one who does the will of the gun-bearer may agree to will the most heinous of actions again and again. But surely this is not the splendid view of justification and redemption that prompted Nietzsche to declare that Zarathustra was the most important piece of literature ever created.

One way to salvage the theory of eternal recurrence so that it could not be portrayed by the skeptic in the vulgar yet plausible terms depicted above would be to say that one cannot agree to will all of one's previous actions simply because one realizes that if one were to change any previous actions, one would no longer exist. That is, if one is going to change what has already occurred into an "and thus I willed it" statement, one has to do it based solely on the merit of the actions themselves (the actions as final ends or the actions per se) and not because of one's fear about the self-altering consequences of one's choices concerning one's continued existence made in response to the demon.

If the theory of eternal recurrence is to have any plausibility or merit, clearly one must say "yes" to the demon for the sake of style per se, because of the inherent exhilaration that necessarily accompanies the process of giving shape to one's life, and not because the demon offers a way of avoiding the incoherence involved in wishing that one were someone else. One's actions are thus declared to be right or wrong in and of themselves, and not because of one's fears about the consequences these choices will entail for one's own continued existence.

I believe that the reasoning provided above is probably the same reasoning that led Arthur Danto to conclude in his analysis of eternal recurrence that "it does not matter that we pass away and return and pass away again. What matters is what we eternally do, the joy of overcoming, whatever our task may be, and the meaning we give to our lives. And all of this for the sake of the thing itself, not for any consequences: for it leads to what it has led to and always will."

Realizing that Nietzsche must have been talking about a theory of style for its own sake helps refute another objection, one seemingly more convincing than the previous one. According to this account there is a person who is willing to have a different world, one in which she did not exist. Her reasoning is as follows:

Why love this present world? Why not think it unworthy of one's love? Why not change one's most reprehensible action, taking the chance that there would be more happiness in the new world that would result from the decision to change but one thing about one's past? I want to change the world even though I will not be in the new one. I want the world to be a better place. I know that Nietzsche would tell me that I cannot possibly coherently wish for such a thing, that I cannot possibly realize what I would be doing if I were to change but one thing about the past. But I realize exactly what I am doing. I am giving up my life in hopes that the new world will be better.

The preceding speech, however persuasive for the admirable self-sacrificing intention it may express, falls victim to what I argued on behalf of above. That is, Nietzsche is presenting a theory of justification which demands that one seek style for the sake of its own inherent joyful qualities, and not for the sake of the avoidance of a view toward oneself which is tantamount to wishing that one were a completely different person. The person in the preceding account is not performing the kind of evaluation that Nietzsche's theory demands that she must.

It was shown before that agreeing to the offer of the demon simply because of one's basic desire to continue living one's life as one knows it (and not the life of another) is inconsistent with the criteria on behalf of which recurrence demands one evaluate. Whether or not one would want the same life and all of its actions over again, without regard to the effects that one's reply to the demon will have on the continued existence of one's self is the question which Nietzsche presents to his readers. Hence the speaker in the above account probably has not answered the demon authentically, in the way in which Nietzsche must have intended for her to do so.

This account of Nietzsche's theory of recurrence on behalf of which I have argued is entirely compatible with the analogy Nehamas claims Nietzsche sees between life and literature. In fact, I think that it strengthens his hypothesis. Nehamas rightly claims that the literary characters which are the most admired are precisely those who have unified their complex attributes into a cohesive and artistic character. That is, we treasure those characters about whom the question "Why did they do that?" has a better answer, one which involves unity of the self, than the simplistic rejoinder of "Why not?" Hence, unity of the self is the crucial feature of any literary character.

Just as characters in literature are to be constructed so that their every feature supports and is supported by every other feature, so, too, is this the goal of persons existing in the actual world.

Nietzsche's seemingly enigmatic statement in The Will to Power that "character is important independently of its moral quality" makes more sense in light of his theory of justification, which demands that one's answers to the demon are in no way based upon consideration of the consequences one's answer entails. It is not the effects that actions have on the world that make them noble or blameworthy. Rather actions are to be praised or blamed insofar as they are indicative of our identity as unified persons, as characters in the world who possess style. For Nietzsche, this is the true measure by which ethical inquiry must proceed.

This is why literary characters, like the people who are able to accept the demon's offer, are beyond good and evil. As a consequence, some of the most admirable and well-crafted characters in literature are utterly despicable moral monsters. No longer should the person who possesses style be evaluated based on the consequences of his actions. Rather, he has only to answer to himself, and not to the expectations of others. Insofar as he acts according to his unified character, he reaffirms his justification of life, and the past is reconciled with the present. He also thereby reconciles all that came before him, further developing his style.

This presentation of Nietzsche's view of justification and redemption via eternal recurrence attempted to show that those objections which seemed to pose a serious problem to Nietzsche's theory were overcome when we realized that Nietzsche's theory is presenting a theory of justification which demands that actions be evaluated as final ends which reflect, and are hence indicative of, one's unified character.

In order to show that Nietzsche's view has problems, one might have to provide an account that shows that any theory which considers actions as final ends without regard to the consequences of these actions is incoherent or has problems of another sort. Until this has been conclusively proven, however, Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence is more than capable of dealing with the objections I have offered. Nietzsche's prescription for those who are concerned about redeeming their lives is remarkably audacious. He asks that those with concerns similar to his own seek personal unity and style, the attributes which make the depiction of certain literary characters so admirable.

By accepting the offer of the demon to have life over, one redeems past actions and acquires a sense of style. Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence is the means by which he hopes the philosophers of the future will justify and redeem their lives. As such, the theory of eternal recurrence is a theory of justification which is intended to make the philosophers of the future like those courageous, unified, and stylish characters that are found in every great piece of literature.

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