Loving Your Fate

​What if you were to learn that for eternity you had no choice but to live again and again and again the life you have lived, up until the present moment, precisely as you lived it the first time? Would your immediate response to this knowledge be joyfulness over being rewarded, or despair that you were being condemned? Doubtless religious commitments and beliefs that flow from these commitments are weighty here, for the standard Christian view is that earthy life is a transitional phase, with the trajectory typically conceived of as the soul moving from a corrupted earthly existence replete with hardship, up to a higher plain of peace and blessedness, with earthly life to be patiently endured and never repeated, and the afterlife to be everlasting. For a Buddhist, we are trapped in samsara, a cycle of death and rebirth, a cycle of suffering, until we achieve enlightenment, and then enter a blessed state of nirvana, free from suffering. For Friedrich Nietzsche, the noble individual does not endure this life in the expectation of a blessed life thereafter, doing so in the belief that what is to follow mortal life is an eternal existence vastly superior earthly life, nor does the noble individual desire the blessed state of nirvana, free from every suffering, but instead this individual embraces amor fati, which is love of one's fate, whatever that fate may be.

As Nietzsche proclaimed, "My formula for the greatness of a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different - not forward, not backward, not in all eternity" (Ecce Homo). What could Nietzsche's reason be for such a claim? How could one not desire at least some things to be different, no matter how privileged a life one enjoys? A thorough answer requires an in-depth analysis of all of Nietzsche's philosophy, but a substantial insight into Nietzsche's advocacy for amor fati is found in Thus Spake Zarathustra, wherein he states "Have you ever said yes to a single joy? O my friends, then you said Yes to all woe. All things are entangled, ensnared, enamored; if you wanted one thing twice, if ever you said, "You please me, happiness! Abide, moment!" then you wanted it all back."

For Nietzsche, it is not possible to isolate any one moment and alter only that moment or that event or that reaction, for everything is part of everything else in an ongoing process of becoming, and hence there are no stand-alone, discrete experiences available to be altered. Hence, joy is inseparable from suffering. You simply cannot have one without the other, and if you say yes to joy, you must likewise say yes to suffering. There is no other option available, and thus in embracing amor fati we acknowledge this necessity. As Nietzsche states, "what is necessary does not hurt me; amor fati is my inmost nature" (Ecce Homo). 

A full grasping of the importance of amor fati to Nietzsche's thinking requires understanding certain other key concepts in Nietzsche's thought, including the idea of the Ubermensch (the 'superman', the superior individual who overcomes human nature itself, and thus is 'self-overcoming', transcending the conventions that bind ordinary persons, and creates his own values), and the idea of eternal recurrence. Regarding Nietzsche's view on eternal recurrence, for Nietzsche, all things return eternally, for as he states in The Gay Science, "This life as you now live it, and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more, and there will be nothing new in it."

As states in Ecclesiastes, "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." For Nietzsche, life and time are cyclical, in that the same patterns will repeat themselves over and over. This being the case, what is the Ubermensch, the 'overman', to do? This individual does not curse his fate but embraces it, rejoice in it, and thus affirms his life. The lofty individual does not say, well, were I rich or were I beautiful, then and only then would I live my life over and over again, eternally, nor does this individual say, well, were it not for the misery I suffered in adolescence I would gladly live my life again, innumerable times. 

For Nietzsche, the superior individual does not look to other worldly powers or to a heavenly afterlife to redeem his or her existence, but embraces his own powers of redemption by deciding for himself and for herself that one's own life has meaning, and doing so requires accepting and affirming every aspect of one's life. One must achieve a synoptic view, seeing one's life as a whole, accepting that one's existence cannot be partitioned into distinct segments, with the good retained and the bad discarded, but that if one's life is to be affirmed, then the whole must be affirmed, and therefore one must be willing, if one is to affirm one's life, to say yes not just to all joys and ecstasies and other good things, but yes to all the pain and suffering and other bad things as well. 

Philosophers and others debate over the validity of Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence, and there is disagreement over whether Nietzsche understood eternal recurrence (or eternal return) as a literal truth of the world, or if he viewed the idea as more of a thought experiment. As a thought experiment, the idea is useful as a measure of how one actually views one's own life. What if, in Nietzsche's words, "a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more: and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sign and everything unutterable small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence..." (The Gay Science).  Would our reaction be one of horror or one of exultation? Of course one could feel neither, but indifference to one's own life is not state Nietzsche would offer much sympathy for, nor could his thinking much help. A horrified reaction to the possibility of eternal recurrence suggests that one's life in some fundamental or substantial way is unsatisfactory, perhaps deeply so, and whatever joy or even contentment one may experience is not worth the price of the suffering one endures.

For Nietzsche, amor fati means saying yes to one's life irrespective of the details and whether or not the scale of one's life is tipped in favor of suffering or of joy, and one must accept one's life precisely as it is and seek not to change one feature of that life. Then and only then has one embraced amor fati. Yet even in acknowledging Nietzsche's intent, as a thought experiment we might make use of eternal recurrence to measure the quality of our own lives, to thereby engage in a valuation of our lives, to judge whether we are living the sort of life that persuades us we can follow Nietzsche and embrace amor fati for ourselves, and if we cannot do so, inquire of ourselves what changes may be needed for us to declare amor fati.

If we are unable - because of our life circumstances or our life experiences - to embrace amor fati, we should not assume that the solution, should we desire to love our fate, is to increase the number of sensuous pleasures (or increase their intensity, their quality, and the like), or to decrease the frequency or the intensity of unpleasantness in our lives, to thereby tip the scales so that we may then say yes to amor fati. The conditions that make amor fati possible are wholly personal, and it may be the case that for a particular individual what is worthwhile in life is found in suffering and in hardship, the individual being persuaded that these qualities are essential to spiritual or to emotional growth, or the individual experiencing suffering and hardship as enriching if originating in service to others. 


Nietzsche proposes that the Ubermensch affirms life, says yes to life regardless of the circumstances of his life, regretting nothing, rejecting nothing, embracing everything, for only then can the Ubermensch self-overcome, shed conformity, engage in self-creation, and establish his own values. The one who can do so is the Ubermensch, the overman, one whose life is self-created, for as Nietzsche claimed, “We have only ourselves to answer for our existence; consequently we want to be the real helmsman of this existence and not permit our existence to be a thoughtless accident” (Untimely Meditations). Regardless of how appealing or disconcerting we might find the thought of eternal recurrence, it seems within everyone’s power to be at least receptive to Nietzsche’s thoughts on amor fati, and to consider, in assessing our own lives, whether we could embrace amor fati, and if not, work to identify what changes might be possible that if effected would result in our being persuaded that we are living the sort of life that were we obligated to repeat it, exactly as we have lived it, we would say yes, again and again.