Eternal Recurrence and Individuation

Schopenhauer's ideal individual is a self-denying one, so the overcoming of Schopenhauer needs to address this image. Nietzsche's affirmation of Eternal Recurrence seems to accomplish that, for, it entails the affirmation of one's own past, thereby also serving as a doctrine of self-affirmation. However, this counter to Schopenhauer does not engage a more fundamental problem--the status of Individuation itself in Schopenhauer's System. Schopenhauer's classification of it as a 'Principle' seems inappropriate, because not only is it intrinsic to the explicit monistic Principle of the System, i. e. Will, it is ultimately merely illusory. So, an adequate overcoming of Schopenhauer would seem to entail according a positive significance to Individuation, which Nietzsche attempts in Birth of Tragedy. There, the Principle of Individuation is a mode of the Apollinian Principle, so the challenge to Nietzsche is to demonstrate the necessity of the Apollinian to his analogue of Schopenhauer's Will, i. e. to the Dionysian Principle. His main suggestion there--that the beautiful imagery of the Apollinian serves as a palliative to the suffering of the Individual--only demonstrates its necessity of the Apollinian to the Individual, not to Dionysus. A deeper suggestion--that Dionysus himself similarly requires such beautiful imagery as a palliative to his own suffering--still avoids the root of the problem. For, in characterizing the Dionysian, Nietzsche vacillates between treating it as a state of self-sufficient ecstasy and as one of pain and contradiction, so even if the latter condition does require palliation, in the absence of a derivation of that condition from the former condition, he does not show that Dionysus is in any need of Apollo. In other words, as is the case with Schopenhauer, as well as with most, if not all, of the Philosophical tradition, Nietzsche falls short of providing the Principle of Individuation with a Principle of Sufficient Reason. So, while Eternal Recurrence can be interpreted as, say, the Individuation of Dionysus, i. e. a circle is a determinate image, in presenting it, Nietzsche still does not explain why he, or Dionysus, or Zarathustra, needs such an image to begin with, and, to that extent, does not overcome Schopenhauer.