Nothing New Under the Sun

Abstract

All is vanity, we learn early in Ecclesiastes. This is motivated by the mysterious aphorism that there is nothing new under the sun. But what does it mean to say that there is nothing new under the sun? One might interpret this as a statement of the Eternal Return of the past. Alternatively, one could understand it as a statement what we call the Eternal Withering of the past. Eternal Withering is the view that the present draws from the past but not all of the past repeats. We argue that Eternal Withering motivates the claim that all is vanity. We then show how this interpretation can help us explain the positive practical suggestions in Ecclesiastes.