Nietzsche's Overcoming Schopenhauer

Nietzsche's affirmation of Eternal Recurrence is an overcoming of Schopenhauer's Philosophy, in two respects. The first, which he explicitly addresses, is Pessimism, the overcoming of which he does not accomplish by denying Schopenhauer's thesis that Life inevitably entails suffering, due to individuation. Nor does he accomplish it by either a Leibnizian-Hegelian response--that knowledge of the total picture brings happiness, or a Stoic one--detachment from the vicissitudes of circumstance brings happiness. Rather, Nietzsche distinguishes inarguable fact from free response, and, where Schopenhauer rejects Life, Nietzsche embraces it, suffering and all. Therein lies the second overcoming, namely, of Schopenhauer's Fatalism--by showing that Eternal Recurrence can be freely either affirmed or rejected, Nietzsche also demonstrates that Schopenhauer's Pessimistic attitude is one that the latter has freely adopted, which would seem to refute the Fatalist thesis. Schopenhauer's likely response is that every decision is actually a pre-determined product of immutable character, with the sense of 'freedom' merely illusory. Now, granting that Schopenhauer can explain how a System in which individuality also is illusory can accommodate any notion of 'character', Nietzsche agrees that the encounter with Eternal Recurrence is a matter of character. But, more precisely, it is a test of strength of character, which he passes, and Schopenhauer fails. In other words, his affirmation of Eternal Recurrence exposes both Pessimism and Fatalism as expressions of weakness, and, more generally, it reconfigures the traditional Free Will vs. Determinism debate as Stronger vs. Weaker.