ABSTRACT
According to Milan Kundera (1984), the ‘mad myth’ of eternal return has heinous implications for the history of humankind, irrespective of its truth value. If events, as Nietzsche posits, are condemned to occur again and again in perpetuity, then they are endowed with much greater significance than they are under the ‘traditional’ regime of linear, Western, Judaeo-Christian time. Whereas it is possible to come to terms with the horrors of, say, Auschwitz, Hiroshima or the Somme, knowing that they were once-and-for-all occurrences and thus never likely to be repeated, the prospect of the perpetual reappearance of such iniquities places an impossible burden upon contemporary decision takers, since their actions will inevitably come back to haunt them for ever and ever. Amen.
