“If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes at you”
What did existential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche mean by this aphorism — and how might we apply it in this absurd existence?
In answering the question at hand, it is important to have a wholistic comprehension of contextual relevance.
The quote is in following to an idea that Nietzsche suggested in his 1886 ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ that:
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster [himself].”
For Nietzsche, this means that if you go searching for truth, enlightenment, or understanding etcetera—with the aim of purging your existential plights, you risk uncovering certain truths that will ultimately bring into question your values and empiric nature; that is—your raison d’être [your reason to be].
Supplementary to this interpretation;
In his earlier ‘The Gay Science’ (1882) Nietzsche suggested that we could live in the best way by having ‘amor fati’ [love of fate].
In order to demonstrate what is necessary for amor fati, he posits the thought experiment of ‘Eternal Return’ (Eternal Recurrence).
In such we are to assume a reality in which all phenomena and happenstance are self fulfilling-ly repeated, ad infinitum.
He writes;
“What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once again and innumerable times again; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence”
He goes on;
“If this thought gained power over you, as you are it would transform and possibly crush you; the question in each and every thing, “Do you want this again and innumerable times again?” would lie on your actions as the heaviest weight!”
Nietzsche wasn’t the first to posit this idea, and by the time he had—it had ultimately became very niche in western philosophy and thinking.
it had already organically arose in many different cultures too, including eastern and Indian philosophy, Egyptian, Aztec, and many African schools too; you will likely more familiarly recognise it as ‘reincarnation’.
Nietzsche rejected this traditional idea of eternal return in the sense of reincarnation as he rejected anything other-worldly — firmly believing that this life is all there is, and that there is nothing beyond it.
In holding this existential belief, we formally renounce and relinquish any other-worldly hopes of a beyond.
This is part of amor fati, learning how and what it means to acceptedly live with one’s own mortality, and understanding the unintuitively arbitrary nature of reality and being.
What Nietzsche did believe, and what makes his ‘take’ on recurrence unique, is how he deals with it in an entirely worldly and grounded setting;
· his ‘theory’, if you will—has no soul to be passed on to another being (as in reincarnation).
· as mentioned, the theory is just that; a thought experiment to demonstrate what is necessary and provoke oneself to live and understand in line with amor fati.
· Nietzsche only ever asks us to imagine this possibility and to ask ourselves, ‘is this [existence] what you want? and so forth innumerable times, for infinity?’
So let’s bring this all together;
Following from the last point on Eternal Recurrence, that is what it means for the abyss to stare back at you.
Nietzsche supposes that the person which lives the best life will, not only accept, but embrace the prospect of a repetition, ad infinitum, of everything that ever has—or ever will be in their existence.
Only this archetypal being can sensibly look into the abyss with no fear of its crumbly edge, but how does one know if they are such a person?
Paradoxically, the only way to know—is to look to the abyss and see if your gaze finds its way back unto you.h
