Marcuse, "Philosophical Interlude"

[Dave Monroe]

Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud 
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1966 [1955]).

Nietzsche envisages the eternal return of the finite exactly as it is--in 
its full concreteness and finiteness.  This is the total affirmation of the 
life instincts ....  The eternal return is teh will and vision of an erotic 
attitude toward being for which necessity and fulfillment coincide.  (123)

Eternity, long since the ultimate consolation of an alienated existence, had 
been made into an instrument of repression by its relegation to a 
transcendental world--unreal reward for real suffering.  Here, eternitry is 
reclaimed for the fair earth .... (123)

Death is; it is conquered only if it is followed by the real rebirth of 
everything that was before death here on earth--not as mere repetition but 
as willed and wanted re-creation.  The eternla return thus includes the 
return of suffering, but suffering as a means for more gratification, for 
the aggrandizement of joy.  The horror of pain derives from the "instinct of 
weakness," from the fact that pain overwhelms and becomes final and fatal.  
Suffering can be affirmed if man's "power is sufficiently strong" to make 
pain a stimulus for affirmation--a link in the chain of joy.  (123)

Nietzsche's philosophy contains enough elements of teh terrible past: his 
celebration of pain and power perpetuates features of teh morality which he 
strives to overcome.  However, the image of a new reality principle breaks 
the repressive context and anticipates the liberation from teh archaic 
heritage.  "The earth has all too long been a madhouse!"  For Nietzsche, teh 
liberation depends on teh reversal of teh sense of guilt; manbkind must come 
to associate teh bad conscience not with the affirmation but with the denial 
of the life instincts, not with the rebellion but with the acceptance of 
repressive ideals.  (123-4)
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