On Leibniz: Expanded Edition

6. Leibniz and Issues of Eternal Recurrence

117 1. Modes of Eternal Recurrence In the extensive philosophical literature that the Church Fathers devoted to the issue of “eternal recurrence,” three significant distinguishable ideas came to be conflated, namely: I. Eternal recommencement: the unending succession of destructions and re-creations of the world over an ongoing series of cosmic phrases or cycles of world annihilation and rebirth (palingenesis).1 II. Eternal recurrence: the unending reappearance of certain event-occurrence patterns as per Wagnerian leitmotivs or recurrently served menus (partial apokatastasis). III. Eternal repetition: the cyclic repetition at the cosmic level of exactly the same overall sequence of events, with cosmic history akin to a movie that is screened over and over again (total apokatastasis).2 We here propose to use the term eternal recurrence as an umbrella expression to cover variations of these forms of the teaching (recommencement, repetition , realignment, and replay).3 An early version of the eternal recurrence idea, which was pervasive in antiquity since Babylonian times, contemplated a vast cosmic conflagration (ekpyrosis) in which the world was destroyed (apokalypsis) only to be reborn anew, rearising like the mythic phoenix from its own ashes. And the corresponding idea of an all-comprehending cosmic cycle, over which the world becomes dissolved and then starts again, has figured on the agenda of philosophy since the dawn of the subject.4 Such a conception of palingenesis played  6 Leibniz and Issues of Eternal Recurrence 118 Leibniz and issues of eternal recurrence a key role in the physical theory of the Stoics who (somewhat dubiously) ascribed its origin to Heraclitus,5 who had indeed mooted a cyclic process of reciprocal transformation, X to Y and then Y back to X: “And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old; the former are shifted and become the latter, and the latter in turn are shifted and become the former. . . . The way up and the way down is one and the same . . . in the circumference of a circle the beginning and end are common.”6 But of course this sort of cyclicity does not entail all-inclusive repetition, and it would certainly be problematic to ascribe this idea to Heraclitus.7 The phoenix-reminiscent cosmic conflagration contemplated by the Stoics was thought by them to have a purifying and refining effect (katharsis), setting the stage for the sequential rebirth of a new, fresh, and as yet uncorrupted world.8 And building on this doctrine, they added the conception of an at least partial apokatastasis, now subject to the idea that some of the same events, episodes, and even items would be repeated in the various phases of cosmic history. In antiquity the theory of eternal return had two forms: an astronomical version of a reconstitution of the positions of the celestial bodies (stars and planets) in a complete recurrence of astronomical alignments and a historical version in relation to cycles in human affairs. Thus the term apokatastasis (restoration, reestablishment) was used by Aristotle in a general sense,9 while it came to be employed specifically to denote a return of the stars and planets to the same Zodiacal positions as in the former year.10 And with Chrysippus and the Stoics it came to be seen yet more demandingly in relation to the idea of a cosmic Great Year—a cycle when all heavenly bodies returned once more to their original position in the heavens—a signal for a cosmic conflagration (ekpyrosis) and the resumption of a new cosmic cycle.11 As the latter Stoics saw it, there was to be a complete, detailed repetition of everything, with world history enduring on a replay of world history in complete and exact detail. Thus even individuals such as Socrates or Plato will come to be realized again in the future of the cosmos.12 Accordingly, this mode of apokatastasis became a quasi-theological doctrine designed to ensure immorality, albeit in this mundane world. (It thereby anticipated—albeit quite differently—the Christian idea of rebirth [annagenesis] and resurrection of the body.)13 And the Stoics were not alone in endorsing total apokatastasis. For, as Leibniz and issues of eternal recurrence 119 Lucretius put it in his great Epicurean poem De rerum natura: “Cum respicias immensi temporis omne praeteritum spatium, tum motus materiai multimodis quam sint, facile hoc accredere possis, semina saepe in eodem, ut nunc sunt, ordine posta haec eadem, quibus e...