ABSTRACT
For anyone who thinks that the radical rethinking of time and the temporal might turn to deconstructive strategies for assistance it must come as something of a shock to discover that deconstruction’s most celebrated practitioner denies the possibility of a post-metaphysical theory of time, and indeed claims that Time itself is a metaphysical concept.1 However, considering the extent to which the framework of Derrida’s work is anticipated by Nietzsche, it is something of a challenge to try to understand Nietzsche’s thought of eternal recurrence in the light of these strictures. Has Nietzsche managed to achieve by an indirect route what could not be brought about by a direct assault on the citadel? Nietzsche does not say all that much about Time per se, and yet his most fundamental concept-that of eternal recurrence-is an essentially temporal one.2 I shall argue that, despite the persistence of the link between the temporal and the ontological which is so clear in Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, Nietzsche does not, for all that, repeat the metaphysical motif of presence but subverts it instead. The account of the moment which Nietzsche offers us is fundamentally at odds with any such value as presence. I make the following more detailed claims:
1 Nietzsche offers us a brilliant example of how to displace a frame of reference from within. In this case it is that of the ordinary ‘metaphysical’ concept of time.
