This chapter addresses why and how, if it is true that pessimism is a psychological condition as opposed to a philosophical belief, Nietzsche takes there to be a requirement to combat pessimism in ways other than the rational-dialectical manner prevalent among philosophers hitherto. The chapter first offers a conceptual analysis of the closely related but distinct notion(s) of ‘nihilism’, before then arguing how the notorious idea of ‘eternal recurrence’ is, contrary to some contemporary interpretations, specifically deployed by Nietzsche as a response to pessimism. The chapter ends by elucidating Nietzsche’s reversion to the view of The Birth of Tragedy that aesthetic experience is solely capable of facilitating life affirmation, and how aesthetic value is not only distinct but also in tension with moral value.

Meyer discusses the intensely debated topic of Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism and thinks that the key is Nietzsche’s study of Schopenhauer. For Meyer Nietzsche’s argument has to do with completing the project of naturalism that Schopenhauer thinks cannot be completed. Meyer thinks that Nietzsche’s naturalism in TSZ leads him to endorse the truth of cosmological eternal recurrence and that this truth entails for Nietzsche a kind of fatalism that leads us beyond a morality of good and evil and beyond the conception of agency that underlies this morality. Meyer thinks that Nietzsche constructed a narrative in which Zarathustra comes to abandon his non-naturalized conception of himself and his agency, thereby attaining a childlike state of innocence beyond good and evil.

The problem, according to Katsafanas, is the tendency to negate what presently exists in favor of an imagined future ideal. This tendency is dramatized in Zarathustra’s overwhelming urge to be rid of the rabble and the small human (ZII: “Rabble”; ZIII: “Convalescent”). At the same time, however, Nietzsche insists that life-affirmation should be unconditional, meaning that it should not depend on the possibility of removing objectionable elements from life. This is why Zarathustra needs the thought of life’s eternal recurrence. Since all such objectionable elements must eternally recur as the same, his attitude to this thought serves to reveal any conditionality in his claim to affirm life. Zarathustra must seek to affirm the eternal recurrence of life because only in this way will he be pursuing his higher values while at the same time affirming life as it is actually lived in the present moment.

Paul Loeb discusses the intensely debated topic of Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism and thinks that the crucial text is Nietzsche’s JS 109. For Loeb the argument has to do with removing anthropomorphic projective errors from our concept of nature. Loeb thinks that Nietzsche’s naturalism in TSZ leads him to endorse the truth of cosmological eternal recurrence and that this truth entails for Nietzsche a solution to the problem of radical flux and a means of curing the human feeling of impotence and spirit of revenge that is provoked by this radical flux. Loeb claims that Zarathustra gains a stronger sense of agency because his new understanding of the reality of circular time enables him to have a causal influence on the past – an influence which is embodied and displayed in the chronological narrative of TSZ.

Gabriel Zamosc argues that a proper understanding of TSZ will help to advance the contemporary transhumanist movement that often claims to be inspired by Nietzsche’s philosophy of the Übermensch. According to Zamosc, Zarathustra warns us against falsely or sickly transcendent versions of his superhuman ideal that are actually a veiled hatred of our unchangeable human-all-too-human past. Indeed, this is why he teaches eternal recurrence, in order to show us how to love this past as an embodiment of our creative will to power. The transhumanist movement must therefore incorporate this doctrine so as to secure a joyful version of itself that embraces our transitional destiny of forever remaining mere bridges to the superhuman.

According to Paul Franco, Nietzsche constructed TSZ as a political drama in which the protagonist overcomes his reluctance to rule and accepts his political responsibility. His reluctance to rule springs from his compassion for the suffering that his disciples will have to endure as a result of his teaching. And his political responsibility is to teach eternal recurrence as a cultivating philosophical idea that creates a new ruling class that will help bring about his goal of the Übermensch – a collective goal that will rescue modern Europe from its nihilistic democratic trajectory. In this essay, Franco explains how Nietzsche’s “great” politics presents a radical challenge to our usual assumptions about the need for a common political life and for politics in the mundane and institutional sense.

The problem, according to Janaway, is that the unchangeable past appears to overwhelm the future in such a way that it is impossible for us to create anything new. This is the meaning of that key moment in TSZ where Zarathustra is devastated by the pessimistic teaching that all is empty, all is the same, all has been (ZII: “The Soothsayer”). If he cannot creatively transform the present-day human into his envisioned future superhuman, Zarathustra loses his reason for living. But then he awakens his dormant thought of eternal recurrence and realizes that he can in fact create the past from the perspective of the present moment. Given the thought of eternal recurrence, the past is no longer closed and hence the future remains open too.