Scientific Theory or Practical Doctrine?

Abstract

The doctrine of the eternal return contains an indeterminate multiplicity of ideas. Present only in the germ, what is ultimately desired is that these seeds should sprout and become the tree of life. This is Nietzsche’s allegory of the development of doctrine in the penultimate aphorism of the second book The Gay Science (106) — the preliminary draft of which is based on one of Zarathustra’s allegorical speeches.1 Life and doctrine may not be split apart. That makes all the difference for theory in the modern, strictly scientific sense of the term.