Eternal Recurrence Time
The eternal return is a concept of Mesopotamian origin, according to which world history unfolds in cycles. After thousands of years ("Great Year"), a common sequence of events is repeated, identical to the previous, with elements reconstructed. The word used by the Greeks is palingenesis (), a notion near which means "new genesis", "born again" or "regeneration".
Summary |
According to the Mesopotamians
Babylonian astronomers had discovered that revolutions synodic planets, the annual revolutions of the Sun and Moon are sub-multiples of the same common period, the Great Year, after which the Sun, Moon and planets resume their initial position with respect to the fixed stars. They concluded that the life of the universe is periodic, it ever returns through the same phases, according to a perpetual rhythm. Is the idea of Eternal Return. The basic cycle is sharos that lasts 3600 years, the cycle of eclipses recurs in 223 lunar months in 28 years then 11 days, etc.. To Berosus , the Great Year spans 432,000 years. And the Great Year undergoes two cataclysms. The first is a cataclysm of fire (conflagration), the summer solstice of the universe, at the conjunction of planets in Cancer, the second is a cataclysm of water, then a flood, which occurs at the summer solstice Winter of the universe, at the conjunction of planets in Capricorn.
- "Berosus, translator of Belus (the interpreter of the god Bel, the priest of Marduk), attributes these revolutions to the stars, and in a way so if it fixes the time of the Deluge and Conflagration. "The world, he says, will fire when all the stars, who are now so diverse classes will meet in Cancer, and so place themselves in each other, a straight line could pass through all their centers. The flood will happen when all these constellations will be collected as well as Capricorn. The first signs governs the winter solstice, the other, the summer solstice. Their influence on both is great, since ' they determine the two main changes this year. " I also accept this double question, for he is a such an event, but I think I should add that the Stoics are involved in the conflagration of the world. That the universe is a soul or a body governed by nature, like trees and plants, all he has to operate or suffer, from his first to his last day, into its constitution, as a seed is enclosed all future development rights. "( Seneca , Natural Questions, III, 29).
According to Heraclitus and the Stoics
Heraclitus , like all the Ionian thinkers ( Thales , Anaximander ) believes "that the substance remaining, only changing his statements, that" nothing is created and nothing is destroyed "( Aristotle , Metaphysics , A, 3). He sees all things in a place of contradictions and it envisages the overcoming of these contradictions in harmony. He added the idea of period, Great Year , estimated at 10800 calendar years.
"Heraclitus believed that at one time the world caught fire and at another time it reconstitutes itself back from the fire, according to certain time periods in which, he said, it 's Lighter able and capable off. Later the Stoics shared the same idea "
- Simplicios, Heraclitus, fragment 10
The most famous defenders of eternal return in the West were the first Stoics , Zeno , Cleanthes , Chrysippus , before Diogenes of Babylon and Pantios .
Nietzsche
The eternal return in Nietzsche's thought is very far from the idea of resurrection present in some religions. The philosopher does not truly an opportunity to relive endlessly his own life, but this assumption is a kind of imperative, essential and ultimate question. Could be reduced roughly this concept in a few words: "Lead your life like you wish it could be repeated forever. "
Bibliography
Sources
- Berosus , Babyloniaca, trans. year. SM Burstein, Unden Publications, Malibu, 1978, 39 p.
- Stoicorum veterum fragmentation.
- Censorinus , day chart (238), trans. Latin.
Studies
- G. Callata, Annus Platonicus, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1997.
- Andre Bouche-Leclercq, The Greek astrology, Brussels, 1963.
- Jean-Baptiste Gourinat, "Eternal return and periodic time in Stoic Philosophy," Philosophical Review in France and abroad, 127 (2002), p. 213-227 ( ISSN 0035-3833 ).
- A. Long, "The Stoics were world-conflagration and everlasting recurrence," in R. Epp (ed.), Spindel Conference 1984: Recovering the Stoics = Southern Journal of Philosophy, 23 Supp. (1985).
References
- http://www.cairn.info/revue-philosophique-2002-2-page-213.htm
- L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, New York, 1947, vol. II, p. 203, 370, 418, 589, 710, 745, 895).
Loading ...