Epiphenomenalism and Eternal Recurrence

Schopenhauer's system is sometimes called Epiphenomenalism--according to which the objects of Consciousness are no more than representations of latent processes, with the significant implication that Individual Consciousness lacks causal efficacy.  In other words, what is illusory is not Individuality per se, but Individual Free Will.  Nietzsche inherits Schopenhauer's Epiphenomenalism, the implications of which for Morality are what he is examining at the outset of the Gay Science.  However, instead of straightforwardly accepting Schopenhauer's Fatalism, he recognizes that the very awareness of such Fatalism introduces an Ironic element.  But, that Irony remains inefficacious until the central Moment of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, when Zarathustra further discovers the Freedom to choose between the affirmation or the denial of Eternal Recurrence, the later of which is Schopenhauer's choice.  In the process, he specifically recognizes the irrelevance to that Freedom itself of the thesis that the outcome eternally recurs, just as Kant discovers a Practical Freedom that is irreducible to Theory.  Thus, at the heart of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a repudiation of Epiphenomenalism, but not one that Nietzsche explicitly addresses.  Thus, the extent of the transformation that Zarathustra experiences is unclear, i. e. whether Will to Power signifies a moment of real empowerment, or simply a change of Moralist fiction.