Friedrich Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence–In Practice

Friedrich Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence—In Practice. An Analysis (25 June 2026) by Lawrence Davidson

Part I — Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a brilliant, if idiosyncratic, German philosopher who managed to stay productive and relatively sane until the latter half of the 1880s. In general, his work argued for the rejection of both religious and societal conformity and promoted heroic individualism.  

Always sickly, he suffered an incapacitating nervous breakdown in early 1889, perhaps complicated by a worsening case of syphilis. After that, the mentally impaired Nietzsche, along with his philosophical works, came under the control of his anti-Semitic and pro-fascist sister, Elizabeth. As a consequence, Nietzsche’s work is unfairly tainted with a popular belief that it promotes racism and dictatorship. 

Seven years before his breakdown, in1882, Nietzsche published a work titled The Gay Science. The book has nothing to do with homosexuality. The word gay only acquired that association, at least in popular terms, in the late 1950s. In Nietzsche’s usage of gay refers to the joy associated with the art of poetry. His use of science refers to the technical skill needed to pursue this art. 

Along with a lot of poems, the book also introduces the theme of eternal recurrence, that is one’s life, including the mistakes and regrets, replaying itself endlessly. Nietzsche presents this notion in the form of a thought experiment: there you are sitting alone in your room (as the song goes) or as Nietzsche puts it, in “your loneliest loneliness” and, all of sudden, a demon approaches you. Actually, demons play a big role in 19th century thought experiments, as in the famous case of Maxwell’s Demon who defied the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In any case, Nietzsche’s demon wasn’t into science. 

Nietzsche’s demon was into amor fati, challenging you to love your fate in life with such passion that you would agree to its eternal recurrence. That is the proposition this demon offers you. Let’s face it, for the average individual life, in the 1880s or today, this is an invitation to a nasty form of reincarnation.

Curiously, Nietzsche does not deny this. The job of someone who claims to love life is to embrace the inevitable pain and master it by creating and living according to one’s own set of secular values (no religion, no hereafter). Eternal recurrence is modified a bit here, but we won’t hold Nietzsche to absolute consistency. This is what he calls a “revaluation of all values” so that there is a focus on life as it is really lived, blemishes and all. The mastering of this life with all its flaws, but on one’s own terms, is what, in Nietzsche’s eyes, makes someone a hero, or an ubermensch. Such a person would reply to the demon, “I never heard anything more divine” and embrace the offer of eternal recurrence.

This is Nietzsche’s attack on cultural traditions, religious beliefs of all kinds, of unexamined ideas of right and wrong. He will develop this theme over much of his later work.

Nietzsche himself was a loner and something of a nomad. He wrote most of his works while wandering between Switzerland and Italy. His style of life reflected alienation from his society. This made it easier for him to critique it so strongly. Also, in setting up the ubermensch as a model and dismissing as weakness the inability of the masses to achieve this status, Nietzsche rationalizes as heroic his own attempt, through his writing, to live by his own rules.

Part II — Education and Eternal Recurrence 

In practical terms, who could achieve the status of an ubermensch? Certainly not the “normal average” person. After all, human beings are social animals: whether the base for this is tribal, ethnic, religious, geographic (local setting), national, or just “home,” we tend to cluster. Cluster infers shared traits that reinforce community unity. We are most comfortable when we are members of a group and mainly adhere to the collective rules and values of our society. Those who reject the rules and values of their group are seen as outcasts (unless they are just obstinate teenagers), not heroes or “super men.” 

Nonetheless, we can historically identify those who insist on the implementation of a naive style of eternal recurrence, not only for themselves, but for the rest of us too! Typically, these are people who are locked into religious, racial, and/or political ideologies. They embrace ideological dictates to the point that there can be no substitute for following them repetitiously and forever. Of course, in practical terms recurrence cannot be eternal. But that does not keep fanatics from trying. We can even identify the mechanism they want to use to institutionalize recurrence. It is education. Here are a couple of examples of how they try to accomplish this:

—The Purpose of Education as Practiced By the Nazis

Bernhard Rust was the Nazi Minister of education from 1934 to 1945. He was a Nazi enthusiast whose single-minded goal was to “immerse German youth in Nazi ideology.” 

He was well-educated, holding a doctorate in German philology and philosophy. He served as a German officer in World War I, wounded in action, and received an Iron Cross for bravery. After the war, he founded a “citizen’s militia” dedicated to the rightwing overthrow of the Weimar Republic. He joined the Nazi Party in 1921.

Upon taking control of the “new Germany’s” educational system, he purged it of Jews and ordered all teachers and students, “regardless of membership in the party,” to greet each other with a Nazi salute. He instructed teachers that their job was to produce “ethnically aware Germans.” To this end, “Teachers will not be able to take positions immediately following their graduation but will receive special Nazi training.” This process “will bring them nearer to the people.”

Rust’s hero, Adolf Hitler, explained the goal of the German school system in the following way: “When an opponent declares I will not come over to your side. I calmly say, Your child belongs to us already. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.” Rust enthusiastically agreed. He declared “the whole function of education is to create Nazis.”

What the Nazis aimed for, without using this terminology, was eternal recurrence. Once Germans “know nothing else but this new community” there would be no change, not alternate future. 

—Purpose of Jewish Education as Practiced by Zionists

Generally, Israeli Jews and those in the diaspora who identify with Israel, associate the rallying cry “Am Yisrael Chai” (translated as “the people of Israel live!”) with the educational ends of both schooling in Israel and the yeshivas abroad. The motto is meant to “connect the Jewish people globally, reinforcing unity and shared identity.”

Here are some declarations of purpose when it comes to Jewish schools in the U.S.:

“May your school, teachers and community cultivate ways to deepen students’ understanding of Israel, love for Israel, wrestling with Israel and connection with Israel, its people, land, history and contemporary reality. Now, and forever.” Elliott Rabin, in “Israel Education Now” 6 November 2025.

“Jewish day schools and yeshivas are literal incubators for the idea of Am Yisrael Chai. All of us who teach, invest and lead in Jewish education are dedicated to people-building. … For me, you cannot separate Israel education from the “peoplehood education” that takes place daily in day schools in nearly every lesson or interaction. Raising our children to recognize that they are part of a larger story, complete with its own history, language(s), practices and traditions is at the core of day school education.” Paul Bernstein in “Israel Education Now” 6 November 2025.

In fact, this emphasis on solidarity, eternal love of the fatherland and people, and edited educational subject matter to accomplish these goals, are just about the only aspects of Israeli education that are showing high student achievement. In an interview with Ran Erez, the Chairman of Israel’s Teachers Association for the past 30 years [Haaretz 30 May 2026], the interviewer asked Mr. Erez “how do you feel about the state of [Israeli]  education? Are you okay with it?” He answered “yes.” The interviewer then pointed out “violence in schools is terrible, academic performance is terrible. How are you okay with this?” Here is how Erez replied, 

“I’ll tell you this: Look at the soldiers and reservists who are fighting. The education system is what makes soldiers willing to fight and even sacrifice their lives for the country.” 

The interviewer did not find this a very convincing reply, but that is because he was thinking of “secondary” goals such as improving test scores in math, science, English as a second language, etc. Mr. Erez’s criterion for educational success was much closer to the ethnic-nationalism discussed above. 

In this view, the survival of the Jewish people is tied to religious and historical belief. All other subjects (even those that support Israel as a technologically modern society) become “secondary.” To reiterate the exhortation that suggests a naive eternal recurrence, “you cannot separate Israel education from “peoplehood education. Now and forever.” Thus, once the Jews “know nothing else but this … community” there would be no substantive change, no alternate future. 

Part III — Conclusion 

That this comparison between Nazi and Zionist uses of education stands out so starkly is a disturbing fact. That they both had such good results at indoctrination, interrupted only by war and defeat in the Nazi case, but ongoing success in the Zionist case, should be a warning to us all. Education is never neutral. In practice it is never just a tool to mature the “rational mind.” Indeed, it can and has easily lent itself to enforcing the fantasies of the “ideological mind.” 

Both Nietzsche’s notion of eternal recurrence, and the attempts at historical permanence of the Nazis and the Zionists, are impossible fantasies. In order to accept the demon’s offer and act out the fantasy of eternal recurrence/permanence requires a radical distortion of reality. In Nietzsche’s case this happens when an individual rationalizes life’s injustices and tragedies in order to passionately embrace them as something they are not—potential sources of self-aggrandizement. Having done so makes it all the easier to adopt an ego-centered outlook [the old “I pulled myself up by the bootstraps”] that promotes—and this was not Nietzsche intent—indifference to or disdain for injustice and the tragedy of others.

The Nazis fantasy of a “thousand year reich” turned into a genocidal horror. “Deutschland über alles” was a product of reimagining the hardships of World War I and the interwar period and thereby transforming them into a license for self-glorification. Nazi education was all about this interpretation of events. This was then followed by the consequences of Nazi self-glorification: more war plus racial slaughter. The Israelis have followed a similar path. Zionist Jews have reimagined a long past of discrimination, segregation and frequent persecution as an endless justification to act out in any way they please. At the same time they have reimagined the Old Testament into a twenty five hundred year old real estate deed. Zionist education in and outside of Israel is all about these interpretations. This has bred a process of self-glorification that has transformed Israel into a military state with an imperial mission. The result is war plus racial slaughter. Considering the fact that the primary victims of Nazi slaughter were European Jews, there is something really disturbing about how closely the Israelis now replicate the behavior of their own historical persecutors—the Palestinians play the role of the historical Jewish victims. 

A perverted educational process recruited to promote the fantasy of eternal recurrence/permanence makes all this possible. It is through such an education that generation upon generation (that is the recurrence part) are supposed to learn how to make the fantasy real and keep it historically rolling forever. And, given enough control the system can indeed work for a while. However, and this is good fortune for the human race, “eternal” is beyond our grasp.