I recently came across fragment 55 in The Will to Power. It's too long to print here in full, but begins with:
Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones but by extreme positions of the opposite kind. Thus the belief in the absolute immorality of nature, in aim- and meaninglessness, is the psychologically necessary affect once the belief in God and an essentially moral order becomes untenable. Nihilism appears at that point, not that the displeasure at existence has become greater than before but because one has come to mistrust any "meaning" in suffering, indeed in existence One interpretation has collapsed; but because it was considered the interpretation it now seems as if there were no meaning at all in existence, as if everything were in vain.
That this "in vain" constitutes the character of present-day nihilism remains to be shown. The mistrust of our previous valuations grows until it becomes the question: "Are not all 'values' lures that draw out the comedy without bringing it closer to a solution?" Duration "in vain," ;without end or aim, is the most paralyzing idea, particularly when one understands that one is being fooled and yet lacks the power not to be fooled.
Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: "the eternal recurrence". (pg. 35 of the Kaufmann translation)
Here, Nietzsche is setting up the central problem in his philosophy, namely, how we can overcome nihilism. He explicitly points out that this problem arises out of the failure of the opposite extreme interpretation of existence, ie. that it follows some divine plan. Normally, we don't think of Nietzsche as a moderate figure who aims at a happy medium. And indeed, the idea of the eternal return doesn't seem lie between the extremes of perfect meaning and total meaningless, so much as to lie at both extremes at once. On the one hand, it's characterized as the greatest weight, the heaviest burden, to see the world as senselessness senselessly playing itself back eternally. On the other hand, if we affirm this return, we land at the opposite extreme where everything seems to mean just what we want it to. After all, what will return is exactly what we decide to do right now; it's entirely up to us to fill the content of this repetition that will recur eternally down to the last detail. In as sense, affirming ER places us in the position of God authoring their divine plan.
So it's somewhat surprising to find that the aphorism ends as follows:
Who will prove to be the strongest in the course of this [crisis of nihilism]? The most moderate; those who do not require any extreme articles of faith; those who not only concede but love a fair amount of accidents and nonsense; those who can think of man with a considerable reduction of his value without becoming small and weak on that account: those richest in health who are equal to most misfortunes and therefore not so afraid of misfortunes—human beings who are sure of their power and represent the attained strength of humanity with conscious pride.
How would such a human being even think of the eternal recurrence? (pg. 38-39)
This might be the only place where Nietzsche praises moderation. Those who will triumph over nihilism's diminishment of humanity are those who don't need to believe anything about the value of humanity in the first place in order to feel sure of themselves. In other words, these 'moderates' are the ones who can simultaneously believe both conflicting interpretations of ER and continue to thrive. I hadn't previously thought of eternal return as a doctrine of moderation, but in fact it shows us our greatness together with our pettiness, or perhaps more accurately, our greatness as our pettiness. And thinking through other aspects of ER, I've gradually come to see how the idea is always designed to merge opposites. Past and future. Moment and eternity. Model and copy. Self and world. The doctrine of ER is the middle path for each of these oppositions, not because it lies between them, but because it deconstructs the very line on which they seem to be opposed.
The way is middle because it's non-dual. Or as Nagarjuna might say:
Where there is no beginning or end,
How could there be a middle?
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