Eternity of the world

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The eternity of the world is a central problem in human thought. Whether the world has a beginning in time or has always existed in an eternal , unlimited universe is discussed in natural philosophy from antiquity to the 19th century. In addition to philosophy and religion , the question also plays a role in cosmology .

Immanuel Kant presented it in his Critique of Pure Reason as the first conflict in which reason can become entangled if it wants to go beyond the limits of experience in order to gain metaphysical knowledge.

In the Middle Ages , scholastics discussed the problem from a religious perspective that the world was God's creation . Here the relationship between faith and reason, theology and philosophy became problematic.

Origins

For the first philosophical systems in India , China and Greece , the question of the eternal world was a basic motive. In mythical cosmogonies and creation stories of the Egyptians , Babylonians and Persians it plays an equally important role as in the theogony of Hesiod , the early Germanic poetry and the great revelation religions .

philosophy

For classical Greek philosophy , the doctrine of the eternal world did not initially refer to the permanent form of the cosmos, but to the primordial matter from which new worlds emerged in a never-ending flow of becoming.

The early hylozoists such as Thales von Milet and Anaximander , the pre-Socratics Heraklit , Empedocles and Anaxagoras represented this view, as did the atomists Democritus and Leukippus .

It is most characteristically handed down in the words of Heraclitus, according to which this world was neither created by God nor by man : It "was and is and will always be an eternally living fire, flaring up according to measure and going out according to measure."

Plato

Plato (left), holding Timaeus , and Aristotle ; Detail from Raphael's The School of Athens (1510–1511), Stanza della Segnatura , Vatican

Plato's late work Timaeus revolves around central cosmological questions and - in Critias ' remarks - also deals with the mythical island kingdom of Atlantis . Before the actual speech of Timaeus, Critias gives a story by Solon . He heard from a priest about the regular destruction that resulted from the old traditions. "Many exterminations of people have already taken place and will continue to take place, the most extensive by fire and water, others, but lesser ones by countless other causes." Helios ' son Phaethon got into his father's car and burned the earth out of carelessness, until he "was struck by lightning himself". Although this sounds like a fable, "the real thing about it is the changed movement of the celestial bodies circling the earth and the destruction of everything that is on the earth by much fire, which occurs after certain long periods of time."

After this report, Socrates asked to speak to Timaeus, saying that he had just called on the gods. Whoever prepares to “talk about the universe” and the question of whether it has arisen or “has not arisen from eternity”, according to Timaeus, must have “lost his mind” if he did not do this, since assistance was needed, "Above all, to explain the whole thing according to your needs". In his speech based on the theory of ideas , Timaeus first differentiates between “always being, which does not allow becoming” and “always becoming, which never comes to being”. Everything that is becoming presupposes a cause , since nothing arises without it.

A possible demiurge would orientate himself to the eternal ideas, to the always being, so that the things he created would be “excellent”. If he looks at what has become as an archetype , the world that arises in this way would be imperfect. “From the whole world structure now or universe” it has to be examined in each case “whether it has always been and not first, entering into becoming, has started, or whether it arose and started from a beginning”.

Since the objects are perceptible to the senses, they must have arisen and thus belong to the process of becoming that is based on a cause: “So then that [the world] has been brought into being as such which arose after the archetype of what the Reason and knowledge can be grasped and constantly remains the same [idea]. "

The philosophical cosmology of Timaeus, by searching for knowledge behind appearances , became a propaedeutic for happiness and the knowledge of being. It is possible that Plato responded to Eudoxus ' discoveries with his emphasis on astronomical phenomena . Plato's work significantly influenced the development of ancient astronomy.

With his cosmology, the Timaeus should explain how a constantly moving world of the senses can be analyzed and described, although the world of ideas represents the actual reality. The Platonic concept of soul includes a kinetic aspect in that cosmic movements - for example of planets  - are associated with souls . Access to the natural sciences is facilitated because Plato upgraded the movements ontologically .

Ultimately, the goodness of God seems to be the cause of the existence of the cosmos, which is presented as a great living being made up of the body and soul. A good God wishes that everything would be as good as possible, order the movement found and add spirit and soul. So the demiurge's example is a perfect being who belongs to the realm of ideas. In creating the world, the demiurge follows the idea of ​​the living being that includes all others.

Plato created the world as a perfect sphere that moved in a circle around itself, penetrated and enveloped by the world soul. In this way the world, which is full of the Divine-Eternal, is ideal and material at the same time. So the cosmos visible to humans is not to be distinguished as the appearance of a god, but as a (become) “image” from the eternal “archetype”.

Aristotle

Aristotle saw the world as immortal and immortal

Aristotle was the first philosopher to understand the world as immortal, uncommon and without origins and to systematically portray the eternity of the world . In his only fragmentary text, Protreptikos , he formulated that “the entire sky” did not come into being and could not perish. There is only one eternal who has “neither a beginning nor an end”, so “that it has and includes infinite time in itself.”

In "De caelo" ( About the sky ), which is dated to an early period by research and is not a uniform work, Aristotle described the sky as immortal and immortal. He examined the stability of the universe and dealt with the teaching presented in the Timaeus of Plato. For him it was impossible for something that had become to be eternal or for something that had not become to perish, as Timaeus had claimed.

The eternity of the world, which for Aristotle showed itself above all in the stars , he derived from the doctrine of the eternity of movement : If movement had had a beginning, it was only through another movement that had already preceded the beginning. Something only becomes actual through another actuality , which in turn presupposes something until one arrives at a first moving one ( unmoved mover ), which in itself is pure actuality. On the other hand, there can be no end to the movement, since this would also have to be brought about by something else current - but this would outlast the previous movement. For Aristotle, the eternity of the world followed from all this. He did not understand it as timelessness , a condition that should play a role for currents of existentialism (such as Karl Jaspers ), but as limitless and immeasurable time.

meaning

Since the cosmological view of the world and Aristotle's theory of motion prove to be obsolete from today's point of view (before the progress of astronomical knowledge), it is not easy to present them impartially. So it makes sense to check which ideas he opposed. Basically, this was the entire cosmological tradition from Anaximander to Speusipp , which Aristotle regarded as equal and which - albeit with certain differentiations - shared the idea of ​​a beginning from which the world emerged. Aristotle's system, which resulted from a few basic assumptions and their consequences, had the concept of movement as its center, so that his cosmology and elementary theory can be characterized as kinetic .

Aristotelian cosmology was a fundamental part of Aristotelianism and was received in their own way by many later thinkers.

Philon

Philo believed in the beginning of the world, but assumed that the universe would endure forever. Like Augustine later , Plato's philosophy led him to reinterpret his religion. So he looked for philosophical aspects of the Old Testament and spent a large part of his life in its exegesis . He favored an allegorical approach, an instrument of interpretation developed by the Stoa , with which the hidden meaning behind the literal meaning of a text was determined.

Searching for the philosophical core of the Bible, he believed the contents so discovered to be the sources from which Greek philosophy nourished. Moses appears as the first philosopher who proclaimed the highest theology in "mythical" garb and who, through his pupil Pythagoras, became the teacher of the Greeks and thus Plato. Thus the personal God of Jewish monotheism merged with the transcendent one of Platonic metaphysics. As in the negative theology of Plotinus  , nothing positive can be known about God as being , true and good ; the positive statements made nevertheless come from the Bible and thus from divine revelation : God created the world with his will, as described in the first words of Genesis .

Early Christian Philosophy and Neoplatonism

For patristic and early Christian philosophy, the temporal creation of the world was a core tenet of orthodoxy that was usually dealt with in the Genesis Commentaries.

Above all Augustine represented the doctrine of the temporal creation of the world, which he asserted against Neoplatonism, justified it with the uniqueness of human fate and connected it with his conception of time and eternity. Until early scholasticism, the assumption that the world was created in time remained a dogma of Christian theology and philosophy, which in various schools entered into a strange connection with Plato's Timaeus in a specific way. Plato's writing was reinterpreted in Christian terms, in that matter was viewed as created by God.

Jewish and Arabic Philosophy

Most of the Arab and Jewish philosophers wanted to combine ideas from Neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism and set different accents. Farabi and Avicenna argued against a beginning of the world in time. God is indeed the cause of the world, but does not precede it in time. Ghazali criticized these positions u. a. with arguments such as those already presented by Johannes Philoponus , for example that a beginninglessness implies an actual infinity of preceding moments of time, which in principle is excluded. He assumed that the consensus of Islamic theologians required an acceptance of the nature of the world.

For Maimonides the eternity of the world could not be proven; even Aristotle did not consider it proven. In such cases one can follow probabilities and religious tradition. However, if it were possible to prove the eternity of the world, it would also easily be possible to reinterpret the Torah and other traditions in this sense. For Averroes, the Aristotelian reasoning sufficed as proof that the u. a. Ashʿaritic thesis is contradictory, that God wanted the world in eternity but created it in time, and that the Koran does not teach otherwise anywhere.

Lecturers at the Paris Artistic Faculty had probably known Latin translations of the relevant works by Avicenna and Averroes, Maimonides and Ghazali since around 1230. Some of them took positions that were particularly close to those of Aristotle and Averroes. These representatives are usually called Latin " Averroists ", following the formulation of a later work by Thomas Aquinas . In the course of the disputes over these receptions and positioning, reading and teaching bans arose several times in Paris , which also concerned the thesis of the eternity of the world (e.g. as the fifth of the doctrines condemned in 1270). Some lecturers, including Siger von Brabant, changed their positions on some of the disputed issues, including world eternity.

Latin scholasticism

In Latin scholasticism , when the writings of Jewish and Arab philosophers were accessible and with them the works of Aristotle became known, the controversy intensified. Proceeding from Augustine, it was believed that the concept of the creatureliness of the world included the beginning of time. This idea was most clearly found in Bonaventure , who combined this theory with a critique of Aristotelianism and a comprehensive philosophy of history .

Scholasticism not only enriched the “ancient question” of the beginning of the world with new arguments, but also gave it a new direction. None of the scholastics denied that with the beginning of the (material) world, time was also created. Compared to antiquity, the question now shifted to the epistemological level in the sense of the status of the initial assertion. In this way the medieval discussion can be compared with that later initiated by Kant ( → see Immanuel Kant ).

The epoch was marked by a change in the history of ideas, which was exemplified by the reception of Aristotle. In the preceding centuries a Christian philosophy had developed which had become fully effective in Augustine and, most recently, Anselm of Canterbury . It was based on an established synthesis of reason and faith in such a way that reason was subordinate to faith and philosophy to theology. Philosophy as the “handmaid of theology” was supposed to make Christian doctrine, the truth of which was not doubted, discursive.

The scholastic method consisted of finding truths in disputations according to syllogistic rules by asking authorities, including the Church, the Bible and Aristotle.

At first, however, Aristotelianism was still fought. Between 1150 and 1250, for example, bans were issued, writings were burned and scholars were excommunicated , while the doctrine introduced by Albertus Magnus and developed by Thomas Aquinas of reconciling conflicting principles and giving both Aristotle and the truth of faith their due place was a relaxation was recorded.

As Aristotle's philosophy gradually became known in the Christian West through the mediation of Arab philosophers , an interpretation of the world was encountered that resisted being subordinate to theology. Many contemporary thinkers feared that a “rational” truth could assert itself alongside the religious one. Bonaventure, a friend of Thomas Aquinas, described a dream of Saint Jerome , to be scourged at the Last Judgment because he had learned to appreciate the philosophy of Cicero .

Against this background, the question arose how one should understand the following sentence: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” Did one have to believe him or could his validity also be determined by argument? Duns Scotus formulated this problem, which is discussed in higher scholasticism : “All theologians agree in the final sentence that the non-being of the world preceded being [the world] in terms of duration. But they are in dispute about whether that can only be believed or can be explained by natural reason. "

Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno rejected the geocentric view of the world of the Peripatetics in his first publication, which fell in the time of the scholastic veneration of Aristotle, and supported the heliocentric Copernican astronomy. He deviated from Copernicus insofar as the sphere of the fixed stars did not represent the limit of space for him: like Nicholas of Kues , whom he admired , he believed that the earth was one celestial body among many others and that the universe was infinite. With his infinity as the effect of an infinite force , he connected the idea of ​​the eternity of the world.

The universe itself as the only being is indestructible for the pantheist Bruno and forms a great living unity that is filled with the world soul . It is not created because there is no other being, and it does not perish because there is nothing to change into.

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant investigated the truth of speculative cosmology, etching by Johann Leonhard Raab after an original by Döbler (1791)

With Immanuel Kant, an epochal turning point in metaphysics emerged. After he had assumed an incipient, limitlessly progressing cosmos in the pre-critical General Natural History and Theory of Heaven , published in 1755 , in the Critique of Pure Reason he juxtaposed opposing positions of the beginning of the world and world eternity in order to point out the problem of transcendental appearances .

In the Critique of Pure Reason , Kant went into detail about the fate and essence of reason in general and cosmology in particular. In the section on the Transcendental Dialectic of the work, he returned to the problem that his critique of reason had originally raised and presented it as the antinomies of pure reason : did the fate of human reason exist in it, beset by unavoidable questions which, however, exceeded its potential So if there was necessarily metaphysics to become, then it just as necessarily always produced the appearance of truth . It was necessary to see through these. The attempts of pure reason to recognize a truly existing world beyond appearances - speculative metaphysics - were doomed to failure.

While, according to the Kantian terminology, the thetics deals with the dogmatic teachings (contents), the antithetics of pure reason should deal with the conflict of rational knowledge. The dogmatic errors arise, as Kant emphasizes again and again, when reason wants to go beyond the limits of experience as "rational doctrines". These do not need to be confirmed or refuted in experience. They open up a “dialectical battlefield” on which the last attacker, who is no longer contradicted, like the “sprightly knight”, can be victorious and be sure to “carry the crown off.” This “playground” of dialectical appearances had been entered often enough that it was time to appear “as an impartial judge”, who put the dogmatic content aside as “mere delusion”, a “skeptical method” as inherent in transcendental philosophy and to be completely differentiated from skepticism be.

Kant did not simply wipe the question of the eternal world as a “speculative idea of ​​pure reason” off the table, but showed its limits as well as its possibilities: if reason tries to think about the world as a complete whole, it wants the fragments to be more human Building experience into a totality in order to make objective statements about it, it becomes entangled in antinomies and is subject to the logic of appearances .

The first meaning of the antinomy as "conflict of laws" is that reason is subject to two contrary laws. On the one hand, everything that is conditioned is reduced to something unconditional; on the other hand, every condition is viewed as conditioned. Beyond this meaning, antinomies (now in the plural) are two propositions that contradict each other, although they can (according to the two laws of reason) each be proven by strict arguments.

In order to clarify the problem of the first of the four “cosmological ideas” (of the eternity of the world), Kant formed a pair of opposites consisting of a thesis and an antithesis . The thesis describes the rationalist tradition , the antithesis the empirical tradition, two currents that seem irreconcilably opposed to each other.

  • Thesis: "The world has a beginning in time, and according to space is also enclosed within limits."
  • Antithesis: "The world has no beginning and no boundaries in space, but is infinite both in terms of time and space."

In order to prove the pseudo-character of the respective statements, Kant first “proves” each one and then explains why these proofs were incorrect. As he explains in the following comments, the flawedness is based in each case on incorrect, non-transcendental concepts of beginning and infinity .

The two sides stood for different claims: the doctrine of the beginning of the world consistently guaranteed the existence of morality and religion, while that of the eternity of the world corresponded to the (scientific) requirement of a natural existence founded in itself.

Since there were good reasons for the thesis as well as for the antithesis in the course of the evidence procedure skilfully staged by Kant, thus forming exhaustive alternatives and each side succeeding in refuting the opposing position, there seemed to be only two possibilities, one of which was true had to.

The “transcendental critique of reason” offered a third possibility for Kant: the unconditional can be thought, but not recognized. As regulative principles, the ideas relate to experience , not to objects that exist in themselves.

The fact that the question of the beginning of the world leads a shadowy existence in current philosophy goes back above all to Kant. However, this marginal position does not mean the end of the questioning, since a satisfactory answer has not yet been found. This may be related to the fact that the importance of the answer (before the question) has not really been determined.

19th century

Arthur Schopenhauer's Critique of the Kantian Philosophy

For Arthur Schopenhauer , an absolute beginning of the world was unthinkable. The assumption of a future limit of the world is also possible, but not a necessary thought of reason. Even the Hindus ( → see Hinduism ) would have tried to represent the infinity of the world through a "monstrous chronology" by describing the relative lengths of time assumed in the different ages. The always creative Brahma is reborn shortly after his death in order to do his work "from eternity to eternity".

Starting from the truth of Kant's antithesis, he assessed his method of antinomies as "mere mirror-fencing". Only the respective antitheses were based on forms of cognitive faculties, while the proofs and claims of the theses were based on the "weakness of the rational individual". Its imagination gets tired with an infinite regress , which it therefore arbitrarily limits. For this reason the proof for the thesis in all antinoms is sophistic . Moreover, Kant was only able to maintain the thesis with great effort and skill. If one wanted to accept his thesis of a beginning of the world, one could also apply it to time itself and prove that it - as time - began. This is absurd. Kant's sophism consists in the fact that, instead of speaking of the beginninglessness of a series of states, he suddenly superseded the infinity and only proved what nobody doubts anyway. Kant does not advance anything against the correct argument, which goes back to Aristotle, that a change backwards in time would necessarily presuppose an infinite series of changes. A beginning of this causal chain is impossible.

Ludwig Feuerbach

For Ludwig Feuerbach , in his influential work The Essence of Christianity , the eternity of the world meant nothing more than the "essence of matter" and the "creation of the world from nothing" only "the nothingness of the world." Let the end of a thing be with placed immediately at its beginning: “The beginning of the world is the beginning of its end. Easy come easy go. The will has called them into existence, the will calls them back into nothing. "

“The creation out of nothing” is, however, “the first miracle ” in terms of rank and not just in terms of time , from which all the following would have arisen by themselves, as has been proven by history . Whoever makes the world out of nothing - how shouldn't he “make wine out of water”? Since the miracle is now the work of the imagination, this also applies to creation as the original miracle . For this reason, the doctrine of creation out of nothing has been interpreted as supernatural and pagan philosophers have been appealed to , who have formed the world from an already existing matter through "divine reason" - but this principle is none other than that of subjectivity, which in Christianity had been raised to the "unlimited universal monarchy".

Nietzsche's thought of the eternal return

Friedrich Nietzsche's Zarathustra prophesies the Eternal Second Coming ; 1882 (photograph by Gustav Adolf Schultze )

Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of ​​the eternal return says that everything has already happened and is repeated infinitely often.

This central motif, corresponding to a cyclical understanding of time, can be found in many of his writings. Nietzsche sought with him a synthesis of the ancient cycle theory of Heraclitus and Pythagoras with the arrow of time in modern physics, in order to reconcile ancient and modern times and thus to get into the world and values ​​of the people.

Nietzsche also turns against egalitarian promises of salvation that result from teleological ideas of a future that is the same for all. Taking up the eschatological character of the term “ second coming”, Nietzsche's teaching, as Miguel Skirl puts it, can be understood as an anti-Christian parody of the second parousia . It is not exhausted in pure destruction by alluding to the absence of the Parousia (“ Sankt Neverleinstag ”) and meaning an Advent hic et nunc .

Zarathustra

The thought is proclaimed by Zarathustra , but appears in the first detail in the joyful science : “What if one day a demon told you that you have to live life countless times, every pain and every pleasure and every thought and sigh and everything unspeakably small and large. "" The eternal hourglass of existence "is turned around again and again - and you with it, dust from the dust!"

The Zarathustra takes in the work of Nietzsche literature and philosophy a special position because he, like Karl Löwith formulated whose whole philosophy contained in a "sophisticated system of parables". In it, the idea of ​​eternal return not only plays the central role - for Löwith it can be seen as a principle of revaluing all values , since it reverses nihilism .

The will to eternal return is part of a system of movement that leads from the moral "You should" to the liberated "I want", to the rebirth of "I am" as "the eternally returning existence in the midst of the natural world of all that is". Stages that are described at the beginning of the work as the three metamorphoses : "How the spirit becomes a camel, and the camel becomes a lion, and finally the lion becomes a child."

Zarathustra's “downfall” begins with the doctrine of the Second Coming and ends for the “convalescent”, the “teacher of the eternal second coming”, with overcoming it, which does not mean that it would have been obsolete for Nietzsche himself.

Before the drama of the eternal return of even the smallest, which Zarathustra perceives as disgusting, as “weariness with all existence”, there is hope in the face of the superman who can endure the return. Before it was possible, the doctrine of the Second Coming would be bearable “in a horrible way”.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche had already spoken of a simple return of things in his early work. Cosmological considerations surfaced for the first time in the posthumous writing of the Basel years, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks , in which he began to emancipate himself from Richard Wagner (philosophy replaces art) and Arthur Schopenhauer (Heraclitus takes his place) on. As a physicist, Heraclitus subordinated himself to Anaximander, who further developed Thales' theory of the origin of things from water and worked out the differences between warm and cold. Heraclitus, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of the central fire , to which the vapors of the sea rise and "serve the heavenly fire of the stars as nourishment". From the central position of the fire it follows that the cold was only interpreted as the "degree of warmth". Cosmologically, Heraclitus agreed with Anaximander according to Nietzsche, since both would have believed in a "periodically repeating end of the world and in an ever renewed emergence of another world from the all-devastating world fire". Both thinkers characterized the period "in which the world rushes towards that world fire and its dissolution into pure fire ... as a desire and need ..., the full entanglement in fire as satiety ..."

In a fragment from the year 1881 , which resembles the quote from the Happy Science , Nietzsche interprets the thought of the Second Coming cosmologically in the sense of infinity: The “world of forces” does not become weaker, “otherwise it would have become weak and perish in infinite time . ”She suffered“ no standstill: otherwise it would have been reached and the clock of existence would stand still. The world of forces therefore never comes into equilibrium, it never has a moment of rest, its force and its movement are the same for every time. Whatever state this world can reach, it must have reached it and not once, but countless times. "

Nietzsche also derives his central idea scientifically: The law of conservation of energy demands an eternal return. It expresses the victory of the scientific spirit over the religious, it is the most scientific of all hypotheses, a "new world conception". Instead of a finally imagined progress, she postulates the beginning and endless cycle of a self-sustaining force . The world is not an arbitrary creation of God, but at every moment beginning and end at the same time, has neither origin nor goal.

religion

Hinduism

The wheel of life as a symbol of the eternal cycle of samsara

Since the Upanishads , the Indian view of the world has been shaped by elements that - in variously modified forms - have survived to this day. This includes the belief in the beginning and endlessness of the world process.

According to the teaching of the Puranas , the world is surrounded by a shell consisting of layers of superposed elements. These world eggs , of which there are infinitely many and which rest next to each other in empty space, are inhabited by an infinite number of living beings, spirits and gods. The soul has existed since beginningless time and, depending on the committed good or bad deeds of its previous life according to the concept of karma , accepts the body that is due to it.

Most of the different directions of Hinduism assume that all substances in the world have emerged from the primordial matter ( Prakati ), whether this be a divine emanation or a world principle existing alongside God. This primordial matter was initially in the state of rest of the world, which had followed the downfall of a previous world.

The primordial matter consists of three different types of substances - light, mobile and dark - which are still balanced during the rest of the world. When the world revolution begins, God shakes the balance and the ingredients begin to mix. In a progressive compression process, all substances are created that make up the world egg. God enters this kingdom and lets the god Brahma , who is predestined because of his karma, emerge. On behalf of God, the demiurge establishes the world according to the eternal laws. Here he remembers the state of the earlier lost world. According to the respective karma, it enables the individual souls who slept during the rest of the world to incarnate in the different bodies and thus to take on the forms of gods, spirits, humans, animals and plants.

If the life of a Brahma comes to an end after a long series of world origins and extinctions, the world egg is destroyed and the undifferentiated primordial matter recedes. After a long pause of complete calm, a new world emerges from it. In the world created in this way, all living beings, between which there are only gradual, no essential differences, are subject to the eternal and painful cycle of samsara , which is vividly represented in the symbol of the wheel of life .

Buddhism

The Buddhism emphasizes the impermanence ( Anicca ) of phenomena in an eternal cycle of birth and death. For Buddha, the world does not consist of a unified whole, but of innumerable individual components, which are again ephemeral in character and combine to form fleeting phenomena. The individual factors are the infinitely many incarnations of the Dharma , the law of existence, which shows itself in a purposefully arranged cosmos as well as in the moral world order, which is based on the causal law of retribution of karma.

Buddha believed just as little in eternal material atoms, immortal souls or spirit monads as in an eternal primordial substance. In this way he avoided all speculations that believed to see something immortal behind the apparitions. For him, the seemingly eternal was the painful chain of causes and effects of samsara, which could at best be overcome through salvific insight in order to arrive at the eternal rest of nirvana .

Christianity

The doctrine of Creatio ex nihilo , the creation out of nothing, developed in early Christian theology in dealing with positions of Greek philosophy and certain Gnostic considerations. She asserted to them that the world as the work of the Creator God (adopted from Judaism ) was completely without preconditions, an idea that was connected with the divine attributes of omnipotence and absolute freedom .

Except for the eternal being of the only God himself, everything was called into existence by him and preserved in existence. In this way the world did not appear made possible or conditioned by anything else that was predetermined by God's creation. Creation has nothing to do with self-development or self-development of the divine being. The extra-divine reality is only there because God freely wanted it and would have to - without his continued will - instantly fall back into nothingness.

The Platonic model of the “demiurge” ( → see Plato ) also contained the element of “creating”; but this proceeded from the “disordered matter” ( chaos ) in the ordered cosmos.

Melissos ' argument that being can only arise from being and not from non-being was also rejected with the “Creatio ex nihilo”. By creating matter , God could not be, like him, eternal and secured him sovereignty in creation.

cosmology

Development stages of the universe (for illustration only, not to scale)

In physics, the question of the temporal finiteness, or infinity of the universe, is the subject of the cosmology department .

Isaac Newton developed Newton's law of gravitation with the publication of his Principia in 1687 . With his help he was able to explain Kepler's laws , which were 70 years older , and which make statements about the movements of planets and moons in the solar system. Newton related all events to an absolute space and an absolute time . In the Principia he described that "due to its nature and without relation to an external object, absolute space always remains the same and immobile". For the deeply religious Newton, the earth was replaced by a fictional world center, an idea with which he, as it were, withdrew the Copernican turn .

Since the stars attract each other through gravity, they cannot remain largely immobile. You'd crumble to one point in the long run. The observed distribution of the stars cannot always have existed. Newton saw the problem. As a solution, he assumed that there are an infinite number of stars in an infinitely large space. If these were distributed almost evenly over the infinite space, there would be no center into which they could fall.

Today the Friedmann-Lemaître universe is the predominantly accepted theory. It sees the beginning of the universe in the singularity of the Big Bang . This idea is supported by astronomical observations of the redshift . These measurements show that the Big Bang occurred around 13.7 billion years ago.

literature

  • About the eternity of the world (Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Boethius von Dacien). With an introduction by Rolf Schönberger. Translation and comments by Peter Nickl. Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2000
  • Miguel Skirl: Eternal Coming . In: Henning Ottmann : Nietzsche manual . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000, pp. 222-230
  • Karl Löwith: Nietzsche's philosophy of the eternal return of the same . Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1978. ISBN 3-7873-0711-7

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eternity of the World . In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy , Volume 2, p. 844
  2. ↑ Heraklit, cit. based on: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy, Eternity of the World , Volume 2, p. 844
  3. ↑ Plato, Timaeus , Plato, Complete Works in Two Volumes, Timaeus as translated by Friedrich Schleiermacher , Volume 2, Timaeus. Phaidon Verlag, Essen, p. 197
  4. ↑ a b Plato, Timaeus , Plato, Complete Works in Two Volumes, Timaeus as translated by Friedrich Schleiermacher, Volume 2, Timaeus. Phaidon Verlag, Essen, p. 201
  5. ↑ Michael Erler: The philosophy of antiquity . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy , Volume 2/2, Plato, § 6, The teaching of Plato. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2007, p. 454
  6. ↑ Michael Erler: The philosophy of antiquity . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy , Volume 2/2, Plato, § 6, The teaching of Plato. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2007, p. 455
  7. ↑ Aristotle, Protreptikos , quoted from Eberhard Orthbrandt: History of the great philosophers , Aristotle, criticism of Plato's declaration of the world. Verlag Wernder Dausien, Hanau, p. 166.
  8. ↑ The philosophy of antiquity . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy Volume 3, Older Academy, Aristoteles, Peripatos, § 13 The work of Aristotle, Da caelo. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2004, p. 248
  9. ↑ Johannes Hirschberger : History of Philosophy , Volume 1, p. 429.
  10. ↑ The philosophy of antiquity . In: Hellmut Flashar (ed.): Outline of the history of philosophy , Volume 3, Older Academy, Aristoteles, Peripatos, § 14, The teaching of Aristotle, natural philosophy and natural science. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2004, pp. 351–352
  11. ↑ Philon . In: Metzler-Philosophen-Lexikon . Metzler, Stuttgart 1995, p. 673
  12. ↑ Cf. e.g. Avicenna, Met. 9,1. An overview of the entire context is z. B. Ernst Behler: The eternity of the world . Problem-historical investigations into the controversies about the beginning of the world and world infinity in the Arab and Jewish philosophy of the Middle Ages. Paderborn 1965.
  13. ↑ Cf. still George F. Hourani: The Dialogue Between al Ghazâlî and the Philosophers on the Origin of the World , in: Muslim World 48 (1958), pp. 183–191, 308–314. On the entire context and in particular on earlier reception of the aforementioned line of argument in the Arab cultural area Herbert A. Davidson: Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy , New York: Oxford University Press 1987.
  14. ↑ Cf. Leader of the Indecisive, esp. II, 13-25, passim. On the subject in detail, also on traditions processed by Maimonides and with a bibliography of older literature: Kenneth Seeskin: Maimonides on the Origin of the World , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 0-521-84553-X .
  15. ↑ See for example Davidson 1987; Richard B. Davis: Modality and Eternity . Averroes on the Eternity of the World, in: Lyceum 6 (1994), pp. 21-40; Barry S. Kogan: Eternity and Origination . Averroes' Discourse on the Manner of the World's Existence. In: E. Marmura (Ed.): Islamic Theology and Philosophy: Studies in Honor of George Hourani . Albany 1984, pp. 203-235.
  16. ↑ A compact overview of the history and debates of the 12th to 14th centuries. Century gives z. B. Richard C. Dales: Medieval discussions of the eternity of the world , Brill, Leiden 1990.
  17. ↑ Historical Dictionary of Philosophy, Ewigkeit der Welt , Volume 2, p. 846
  18. ^ Rolf Schöneberger: The dispute about the eternity of the world . In: About the eternity of the world , texts by Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas and Boethius von Dacien. Klosterman Texte, Frankfurt 2000, p. XI.
  19. ^ Wilhelm Weischedel : The philosophical back stairs , Thomas von Aquin. Nymphenburger, Munich 2003, p. 110.
  20. ↑ Quoted from: Rolf Schöneberger: The dispute over the eternity of the world . In: About the eternity of the world , texts by Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas and Boethius von Dacien. Klosterman Texte, Frankfurt 2000, p. XII.
  21. ↑ Horst Poller: The philosophers and their core ideas , a historical overview. Olzog Verlag, Munich 2009, p. 192
  22. ↑ Otfried Höffe : Immanuel Kant , The Critique of Pure Reason, The Transcendental Dialectic. Beck, Munich 1988, pp. 134-136
  23. ↑ Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason , Second Section, The Transcendental Dialectic, The Antinomy of Pure Reason. Reclam, Stuttgart 1985, p. 463
  24. ↑ Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason , Second Section, The Transcendental Dialectic, The Antinomy of Pure Reason. Reclam, Stuttgart 1985, p. 466
  25. ↑ Otfried Höffe: Immanuel Kant , The Critique of Pure Reason, The Transcendental Dialectic. Beck, Munich 1988, p. 143
  26. ↑ Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason , Second Section, The Transcendental Dialectic, The Antinomy of Pure Reason. Reclam, Stuttgart 1985, pp. 468-469
  27. ↑ Historical Dictionary of Philosophy, Ewigkeit der Welt , Volume 2, p. 846
  28. ↑ Otfried Höffe: Immanuel Kant , The Critique of Pure Reason, The Transcendental Dialectic. Beck, Munich 1988, p. 147
  29. ^ Rolf Schöneberger: The dispute about the eternity of the world . In: About the eternity of the world , texts by Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas and Boethius von Dacien. Klosterman Texte, Frankfurt 2000. S. IX
  30. ↑ Arthur Schopenhauer : The world as will and conception I, Critique of the Kantian Philosophy. Complete Works, Volume 1. Suhrkamp, ​​Stuttgart 1986, p. 664
  31. ↑ Arthur Schopenhauer: The world as will and conception I, Critique of the Kantian Philosophy. Complete Works, Volume 1. Suhrkamp, ​​Stuttgart 1986, p. 662
  32. ↑ Arthur Schopenhauer: The world as will and conception I, Critique of the Kantian Philosophy. Complete Works, Volume 1. Suhrkamp, ​​Stuttgart 1986, p. 663
  33. ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach : The essence of Christianity , first part, the mystery of providence and creation out of nothing. Reclam, Ditzingen 1984, p. 170
  34. ↑ Ludwig Feuerbach: The essence of Christianity , first part, the mystery of providence and creation out of nothing. Reclam, Ditzingen 1984, p. 171
  35. ^ A b Henning Ottmann (Ed.): Nietzsche Handbook, Ewige Wiederkunft , Life - Work - Effect. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000, p. 222
  36. ↑ Miguel Skirl: Nietzsche Handbook , Ewige Wiederkunft, Life - Work - Effect, Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2000, Ed. Henning Ottmann, p. 223
  37. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Morgenröte, Idyllen aus Messina, The happy science, The happy science , fourth book, 341. In: Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari (ed.): Critical study edition, Vol. 3. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, p. 571
  38. ^ Karl Löwith : Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Eternal Return of the Same , Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1978, p. 64
  39. ↑ Karl Löwith: Nietzsche's philosophy of the eternal return of the same , Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1978, p. 40
  40. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus spoke Zarathustra I, From the three metamorphoses. In: Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari (Ed.): Critical Study Edition, Vol. 4. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1988, p. 29
  41. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus spoke Zarathustra III , The convalescent. In: Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari (Ed.): Critical Study Edition , Vol. 4. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, p. 275
  42. ↑ Miguel Skirl: Eternal Return . In: Henning Ottmann (ed.): Nietzsche manual . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000, p. 225
  43. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus spoke Zarathustra III , The convalescent. In: Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari (Ed.): Critical Study Edition , Vol. 4. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, p. 274
  44. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Postponed fragments, summer-autumn 1883 . In: Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari (Ed.): Critical Study Edition , Vol. 10. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1988, p. 482
  45. ↑ Friedrich Nietzsche: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks . In: Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari (Ed.): Critical Study Edition , Vol. 1. dtv, Munich / New York 1988, p. 828
  46. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Philosophy in the tragic age of the Greeks . In: Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari (Ed.): Critical Study Edition , Vol. 1. dtv, Munich / New York 1988, p. 829
  47. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Postponed fragments . In: Giorgio Colli, Mazzino Montinari (Ed.): Critical Study Edition , Vol. 9. dtv, Munich / New York 1988, p. 498
  48. ↑ Quoted from: Karl Löwith: Nietzsche's Philosophy of Eternal Return of the Same . Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1978, pp. 92–93
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  52. ↑ Helmuth von Glasenapp: The five world religions , The Buddhism. Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Munich 1996, pp. 91-92
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