Relation to oneself· Adversitydifficulty
Relation to the past
Faced with what has happened and cannot be changed, should we embrace it or rebel against it?
Accepting, even loving, what has been brings peace and reconciliation, but can look like consenting to the unacceptable; revolting keeps alive the sense that it should not have been, but can rivet us to a wound that will not heal. To take a position is to say how to live with the irreversible.
Amor fati
8To want nothing to be different, not forward, not backward: not merely to endure what has happened, but to love it as an integral part of one's life. Regret and resentment poison existence; consenting to fate sets us free.
Explore this position →Senecaexplicit
Since fate will come to pass regardless, the one thing in our power is to walk with it or be dragged behind it: the same course of things leads us, but our assent decides whether it is a yoke or freedom. Seneca thus pushes Stoicism past mere resignation: not to endure what happens but to will it, because has ordered it for the good of the whole. This turns necessity into an object of desire, and the second grief, that of struggling against the inevitable, is the only one we can spare ourselves.
Letters to Lucilius, CVII (ducunt volentem fata, quoting Cleanthes) · On the Happy Life, XV (to obey God is freedom)
Epictetusexplicit
Loving acceptance of what happens is a central prescription: to will that events be as they are, not as we would have them. This is the Stoic matrix of .
Enchiridion, §8 · Discourses, II.14
Marcus Aureliusexplicit
If the world is a single living being run through by one , no event is isolated or accidental: what befalls me was, from all eternity, woven together with me into the fabric of the whole (the , the cosmic sympathy of things with one another). Marcus goes beyond resignation: not to endure what happens but to love it, since to wish it otherwise would be to demand that the entire universe be otherwise. Revolt is then not so much forbidden as absurd, the part being unable to accuse the whole from which it issues: this is as the highest form of consent.
Meditations, IV, 23 · Meditations, V, 8 · Meditations, X, 5
Nietzscheexplicit
works as a test: if a demon told you that you will relive this very life, identically, infinitely, would you curse him, or would it be your greatest joy? To say yes to every instant is : not 's resignation, but the highest affirmation, to love the necessary so much that one wills its eternal return.
Ecce Homo, "Why I Am So Clever", §10 · The Gay Science, §276 and §341
Stoicismexplicit
Physics commands ethics: every event is a link in the rational chain of , ordered by . To rebel is therefore both futile and unreasonable, since one fights the very reason one shares in; the aligns his will with the course of things, not from passive resignation but because he recognises in it the work of the : the fates lead the willing and drag the unwilling.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations · Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 107
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Spinozainferable
Understanding that everything happens by lessens the power of sad passions over the mind: we grieve less over what we know to be inevitable. This serene acceptance of necessity prefigures , without revolt against what must be.
Ethics, V, prop. 6 (the mind suffers less from affects it refers to necessity)
Zhuangziexplicit
Whatever comes, disgrace as much as deformity, sickness as much as death, is welcomed as a deal of transformation to be embraced without revolt: a character who grows a hump examines it laughing, ready to see his arm turned into a rooster or his hip into a wheel. This acquiescence to one's lot meets the Stoic amor fati, but without the spring of a rational : one consents not to a willed order but lets oneself be carried by a course that has neither design nor cruelty.
Zhuangzi, ch. 6 (The Great Source as Teacher)
Epicurusinferable
The memory of past pleasures is a resource for happiness: the sage summons it to stay serene amid present pain, and gratitude for what has been tempers regret. This way of welcoming the past as a good to be savoured, rather than contesting it, leans toward a serene acceptance on the amor fati side.
Diogenes Laertius, Lives, X, 22 (Epicurus' farewell letter, joy of recollection amid pains) · Cicero, On Moral Ends, I (the memory of past goods)
Revolt
1To consent to everything that has happened is to risk blessing injustice and evil as well. Human dignity demands that we maintain our refusal: acknowledging what was without ever endorsing it, and drawing from this revolt the strength to act.
Explore this position →Camusexplicit
The slave who says no to his master refuses more than an order: by drawing the line he will no longer let be crossed, he asserts that something in him is worth defending, and worth it for all. Camus draws from this gesture a decisive argument: the rebel's no reveals a value exceeding the individual, so that carries us from the solitary acknowledgment of the absurd to a solidarity, as the cogito carried Descartes from doubt to certainty. The refusal of what humiliates, not consent to the given, thus becomes the principle of a worthy existence, and the immanent ground of a morality without God.
The Rebel (1951)
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Related problems to broaden toward other axes
- PrescriptiveExistentialMaking peace with what was
The past is what is no longer up to us par excellence: should we accept it fully, even to the point of willing that it was, or stay its prisoner through regret?
the pastScope of action - PrescriptiveMoralUndoing the irreparable
What is done cannot be undone: is forgiveness the only power that releases us from the irreversible, freeing us from the weight of what took place?
the irreversibleForgiveness - PrescriptiveExistential Thought experimentWould you live it again?
A demon offers you to relive your life, identical, endlessly: would you want it? The test reveals whether you truly inhabit your time, rather than hanging it on tomorrow or mourning it as yesterday.
the time of a lifeTemporal orientation - PrescriptiveExistentialThe weight of heritage
We are heirs: does fidelity to roots, to debts, to the dead make the depth of a life, or a chain that shuts the living inside a past that is over? For too much memory, too, can paralyze.
what we have receivedTemporal orientation - PrescriptiveExistentialRegret and nostalgia
One can live turned toward a lost past: regret for what was, nostalgia for a golden age. Is it honoring what made us, or deserting the present for a country that no longer exists?
one's own pastTemporal orientation
Lead me, Zeus, and you too, Destiny, wherever you have appointed me: I shall follow unflinching. And should I refuse, turned coward, I shall follow none the less.Cleanthes · Cleanthes, quoted in Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 107
I have taken great care not to deride human actions, nor to bewail them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.Spinoza · Political Treatise, I, 4
I rebel—therefore we exist.Camus · The Rebel (1951)
Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling.Seneca · Letters to Lucilius, CVII
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.Nietzsche · Ecce Homo, "Why I Am So Clever", §10
All that is in tune with you, O Universe, is in tune with me: nothing that comes in season for you is too early or too late for me.Marcus Aurelius · Meditations, IV, 23