Eternal return

In philosophy, eternal return (or eternal recurrence) is the concept stating that time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again, for eternity. In classical antiquity, the concept of eternal return was most prominently associated with Empedocles and with Stoicism, the school of philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium. The Stoics believed that the universe is periodically destroyed and reborn, and that each universe is exactly the same as the one before. This school of thought was fiercely criticized by Christian authors such as Augustine of Hippo, who saw it as a fundamental denial of the Christian ideas of sin, free will and salvation. The concept was revived in the 19th century by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Having briefly presented the idea as a thought experiment in The Gay Science, he explored it more thoroughly in his novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which the protagonist learns to overcome his horror of the thought of eternal return. It is not known whether Nietzsche believed in the literal truth of eternal return, or, if he did not, what he intended to demonstrate by it. Nietzsche's ideas were subsequently taken up and reinterpreted by other writers, such as Russian esotericist P. D. Ouspensky, who argued that it was possible to break the cycle of return.