The Albumen C: Eternal Return

In the last chapter we take up Deleuze’s enticing suggestion that there are actually two eternal returns, which correspond to two methods of interpretation, two moral attitudes, and two ethical tasks we detailed in “Albumen B.” Though Deleuze makes this suggestion, he does not explain how it works. So, we offer just such an explanation. This is yet another example of the underlying systematicity that is only uncovered through the Deleuze-Stoic encounter. After giving a short history of the Stoic doctrine of the cosmic conflagration, we address Nietzsche’s seemingly disingenuous claims of being the originator of eternal recurrence through two short stories by Jorge Luis Borges “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” and “Death and the Compass.” These stories articulate the difference between the two eternal returns: the cyclical return of chronos and the return as the straight line of aion. These two forms of the eternal return express the paradox of action that combines the ethical imperative to act and the impossibility of acting because of the Stoic insistence on fate. Following Deleuze’s lead, we close by considering the “crack-up” of the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s and what he calls “laughing Stoicism.