Eternal Recurrence and Self-Affirmation

Just as #342 of The Gay Science previews Thus Spoke Zarathustra, #341 introduces the central theme of the latter work--Eternal Recurrence--but with one significant difference.  While the later formulation is general, the original is personal, i. e. its content is one's own experiences, not a cycle of cosmic or historical events.  Thus, in the original, the affirmation of Eternal Recurrence is equivalent to Self-Affirmation, thereby resisting facile reduction to a theory of Circular Time.  It is also a reminder of a fundamental weakness in Schopenhauer's doctrine--the careless equivalence of personal Self-Denial and the denial of the universal Will-to-Live, an equivalence that is derived from his previous groundless extrapolation from personal experience to a concept of Life in general.  Accordingly, the Gay Science version of Eternal Recurrence opens a Psychological approach to the overcoming of Schopenhauer's influence, i. e. an exposure of the psychological roots of his doctrine.