Relation to oneself· Adversity
Amor fati
Axis: Relation to the past — Faced with what has happened and cannot be changed, should we embrace it or rebel against it?
To 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.
Movements 1
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
Philosophers 7
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
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)
Show inferred positions (2)
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)
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)