Amor Fati: I Owe Nietzsche an Apology

My for­mu­la for great­ness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants noth­ing to be dif­fer­ent, not for­ward, not back­ward, not in all eter­ni­ty. Not mere­ly bear what is nec­es­sary, still less con­ceal it – all ide­al­ism is men­dac­i­ty in the face of what is nec­es­sary – but love it.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I’ve always vibed with Stoicism, a way of liv­ing espoused by the ear­ly Greek and Romans. The Stoics believed that eudai­mo­nia – a hap­py, well-lived life – could be found by liv­ing in accor­dance with nature and fol­low­ing the so-called four virtues: wis­dom, courage, mod­er­a­tion, and justice. 

One major tenet of Stoicism is amor fati, rough­ly trans­lat­ing to lov­ing one’s fate. This ancient phi­los­o­phy is mind­ful­ness in action. It asks us to try our best and detach from the out­comes. Rather than rumi­nat­ing on how we wish things were, it asks us to sur­ren­der to what is. It focus­es on the present moment and encour­ages us to release our attach­ment to that which already hap­pened. There is much wis­dom and com­fort in this.

Centuries lat­er, the con­cept of amor fati was laud­ed by 19^th cen­tu­ry German philoso­pher Friedrich Nietzsche. His bril­liant mind arose despite a trou­bled life. His father died when he was five. He lat­er con­tract­ed diph­the­ria and spent most of his adult life in crip­pling, unre­lent­ing pain. He lost his sight and then his san­i­ty, spend­ing the last 11 years of his life in a men­tal asy­lum (we know now both were caused by undi­ag­nosed syphilis). 

His sis­ter Elisabeth – an out­spo­ken fas­cist and proud sup­port­er of Adolf Hitler – main­tained ruth­less con­trol over Nietzsche’s lit­er­ary estate after his death and even posthu­mous­ly forged many of his writ­ings to come off as anti-Sematic. For years, Nietzsche’s name was linked to Hitler, despite his being an ardent foe of nation­al­ism and anti-Semitism. 

Despite a trau­mat­ic life, Nietzsche nev­er gave in to despair. Instead, he preached rad­i­cal accep­tance of reality. 

I was assigned an essay in my col­lege phi­los­o­phy class about the quote at the start of this piece. Firstly, I would like to pub­licly apol­o­gize for call­ing Nietzsche a fas­cist in said essay. He wasn’t. But to the quote, I remem­ber so whole­heart­ed­ly agree­ing with the first part. My for­mu­la for great­ness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants noth­ing to be dif­fer­ent, not for­ward, not back­ward, not in all eter­ni­ty. I was study­ing Buddhism at the time, and it res­onat­ed deeply to try to accept what is with­out wish­ing it were dif­fer­ent. Because every­thing is going to change any­way, we might as well lean into the moment. 

It was the sec­ond part of Nietzsche’s quote that I railed against. Not mere­ly bear what is nec­es­sary, still less con­ceal it—all ide­al­ism is men­dac­i­ty in the face of what is necessary—but love it. 

Love it? All of it? Genocide and menopause and Christian Nationalists and tax­es and pets dying and cli­mate change and pump­kin spice and sex traf­fick­ing and Elon Musk? I’m sup­posed to not just bear those things but love them? 

Forget it. The way I saw it, you couldn’t prac­tice the four virtues and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly love every moment. What wise, coura­geous, mod­er­ate, and just human loves all that bullshit? 

Now, a lit­tle old­er and (hope­ful­ly) a bit wis­er, I think per­haps he meant to love despite those things. That maybe those hate-filled things exist to help us learn evolve into bet­ter and more lov­ing humans. It is an act of coura­geous defi­ance to live with an open, lov­ing heart in a world filled with injury and disdain.

If eudai­mo­nia is indeed the goal, then love is cer­tain­ly the answer.