Walking the Tightrope

Nietzsche began taking notes for Morgenrote II during that first summer at Sils-Maria. These notes often reflect the inspired happiness of a free spirit. The intimate gaiety welling up in him became the basis for the title of his next great philosophic work, after he had given up on the idea of a sequel to Daybreak . The foundation for his happiness, however, lies in a singular idea that came to him one day while hiking in August 1881. Weather permitting, Fritz hiked several hours a day in the clean mountain air. What came to Fritz as he walked by a boulder along Lake Silvaplana was the idea and experience of “ the eternal return of the same .” A couple of scattered aphorisms touch on the basics of this concept in The Gay Science and I will discuss it in a later post. For now, he chose to be mysterious with his friends about his revolutionary philosophical idea. But, it filled him with extraordinary motivation and joy. In the world of Nietzsche scholarship there is disagreement abou...