Willing Backwards

The explicit connection between Eternal Recurrence and Will to Power presented in Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the notion 'Willing Backwards'. Nietzsche introduces it as a special case of Will to Power, that transforms 'it was' into 'thus would I have it', as he describes it. Eventually, the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence is shown to be what effects this transformation, so the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence is, first and foremost, a special case of Will to Power in Nietzsche's System. Perhaps Nietzsche would agree that the art of improvisation entails Willing Backwards, insofar as essential to that art is making any unwanted development seem as if it had occurred exactly as intended. And, perhaps, he would agree that Willing Backwards can be effective therapy for certain types of psychological atrophy. But in the relevant passages, the specific target of Willing Backwards is what Nietzsche calls there 'the spirit of revenge', which he later characterizes as 'Ressentiment'. Whereas Willing Backwards attempts to transform 'it was' into 'thus would I have it', the spirit of revenge attempts to negate it, via punishment, the futility of which, according to Nietzsche, only compounds entanglement in the past. Hence, Willing Backwards serves as a critique of certain versions of Retributive Justice, a theme which he further develops in Genealogy of Morals. However, his more immediate concern is the problem of the profound and chronic influence that the spirit of revenge has had on human history. Notions like 'Original Sin', which construe human existence as a punishment, are at the root of a millennia-long stunting of human development, continuing even as the original theological influence wanes, and turning, according to his diagnosis, Nihilistic more recently. So, it is not out of wild aggrandizement that his title for the passage in which Nietzsche introduces Willing Backwards is 'Redemption'.