16

“Let that be my love”: Fate, Mediopassivity, and Redemption in Nietzsche’s Thought

Béatrice Han-Pile

There is no doubt that Nietzsche considered the theme of amor fati (love of fate) of essential importance: he referred to it in his later work as his “formula for greatness in a human being” (EH: 258), “the highest state a philosopher can attain” (WP 1041), or again his “inmost nature” (EH: 325). Amor fati is often mentioned by commentators in connection with the eternal return and implicitly taken as an illustration of the sort of existential attitude characteristic of someone who would respond positively to the challenge of the daimon and affirm his or her life as worth living over and over again (Magnus 1978: 145; Hatab 2005: 49; Reginster 2006: 229–30). It is occasionally touched upon in relation with various themes, such as self-creation (Leiter 2001: 284) or the call for a reevaluation of all values. Yet (surprisingly given its importance for Nietzsche), there is very little secondary literature specifically devoted to it. Perhaps this initial surprise will lessen if one considers that for all its importance, there is very little material on amor fati in Nietzsche’s work. All in all, I was able to identify only seven passages, four in the published work, one in the Will to Power, one in the Nachlass, and one in Nietzsche’s correspondence. And if one tries to help oneself out by looking for separate elucidations of love, one does not fare much better. While critical passages about neighborly love or the love of women are not rare, Nietzsche says little about more positive forms of love. In one of his latest fragments, he cryptically declares that “I have never desecrated the holy name of love” (1888, LN1 286) and Zarathustra praises the “bestowing love” of the “predator of all values” (Z: 100) and of the “friend,” but without expanding on the nature of such love.

As for fate, discussions in the secondary literature often focus on the issue of whether the doctrine of the eternal return commits Nietzsche to fatalism, with widely diverging conclusions (Hatab 2005: 127–33; Leiter 2001: 283–90; Reginster 2006: 209). In what follows, I shall restrict myself to examining Nietzsche’s thoughts on fate exclusively in connection with amor fati: I shall thus adopt the minimal construal of fate directly entailed by all the references to the latter in the published work, namely, “what is necessary” (GS: 223; EH: 258; EH: 325) or “everything that is necessary” (NCW: 680). Interestingly, this understanding of fate as all-encompassing necessity is very close to the one put forward by the Stoa, whom Nietzsche clearly had in mind when he claimed that amor fati involves more than “merely bearing what is necessary” (EH: 258)—thus Aetius reported that “the Stoa describe fate as a sequence of causes, that is an inescapable ordering and connection” (Long and Sedley 1987: 336). For the purposes of this paper, I shall leave aside such issues as the relation between this conception of fate as necessity and its more archaic and pathos-laden understanding in the Birth of Tragedy or the status of necessity in general as a category in Nietzsche’s work, to focus on the paradoxes and difficulties attached to having fate thus construed as the object of any love, let alone the highest possible form of love. In doing so, my aim will be fourfold: (a) to grasp both the structure of amor fati and the sort of love it involves, (b) to understand better the part played by the concept in Nietzsche’s later work, (c) to identify some of the ways in which amor fati might be attained by us and (d) to question the sustainability and limits of such an ideal.

Unless it is construed counterintuitively, as a blind force devoid of any intentionality which moves us in a purely causal way (a possibility which Nietzsche would certainly reject), love involves a valuation of its object. Loving something or someone entails understanding this object or person as valuable. The usual assumption is that such valuation must be positive, which enables us to distinguish between love and negative emotions such a dislike or hate, in which the object repels us. So to love something entails understanding it positively, as worth loving. Yet this observation poses two structural problems for amor fati. First, it points toward a potential contradiction between the nature of the attachment and the putative value of its object. As Nietzsche puts it, “one will see that the problem is that of the meaning of suffering” (WP §1052). Even on the minimal construal evoked above (as necessity), fate is bound to entail at least some suffering and unhappiness for each of us. We shall lose loved ones, or see them hurt. We shall be harmed ourselves. And even if our life was as devoid of suffering as possible, fate will inevitably lead us to aging and death, possibly in painful or degrading circumstances. In order to love fate, then, one would have to accept the paradoxical possibility of loving a repellent object (either a fully negative one or one which on the best construal involves some very significant negativity).

Secondly, there are two main ways in which we can value a loved object: in relation to our own needs, for example, because we deem its possession or enjoyment highly desirable or even indispensable to our well-being or happiness; or in relation to the object itself, because it appears to us as endowed with intrinsic value. In the first case, we perceive the object of our love as something that we should seek to acquire or, should we be fortunate enough to have it in our possession already, prevent the loss of. In the second, we try to preserve or protect the beloved object for its own sake, regardless of our own happiness. Yet both these options raise further doubts about the suitability of fate as an object of love. Regarding the first, on either construal (Greek moira or necessity), fate is seen as indifferent to our needs and desires and would only fulfill them (or not) accidentally. We are aware that we cannot possess it and have no control over it. Furthermore, it is not even the sort of object we can actively seek: we are already under its sway and if anything cannot be rid of it. So how could we conceive of it as an indispensable component of our happiness? And if we were to value fate per se rather than in relation to ourselves (the second option), then a different problem arises, which was originally identified by the Stoa as argos logos (idle reason). Perhaps its best-known version is given by Cicero: “if it is your fate to recover from this illness, you will recover whether you call for the physician or not. Likewise, if it is your fate not to recover, whether you call for the physician or not, you will not recover. One of the two is your fate, therefore it is pointless to call for the physician” (Cicero: 28–9). Along similar lines, by definition, fate or necessity will unfold whether we love it or not, and it is not clear what difference our love could make. If this is the case, then amor fati would seem a rather futile form of love. Plainly put, why bother?

Thus prospective lovers of fate are faced with two paradoxes: (a) amor fati involves an apparent contradiction between the nature of love and the partly negative value of its proposed object and in particular, requires us to love something which is difficult, if not impossible, to value in relations to our needs or desires; (b) should we value fate for itself, there would seem to be no point in our loving it: whether we do or not will make no difference either to fate or to what happens to us. Given these structural difficulties, how can we make sense of amor fati, let alone regard it as a desirable ideal? To seek a solution to this puzzle, it may help to turn to the traditional distinction between four forms of love: eros, agape, caritas, and philia. Of these, only the first three are relevant to amor fati as philia (in its Aristotelian version) entails an element of disinterestedness from the part of the lover and reciprocity on the part of the loved object, two conditions which love of fate cannot satisfy. And since caritas, at least according to Nygren, is an Augustinian synthesis of eros and agape designed to solve a specific doctrinal problem (viz., whether human love can by its own strength ascend to God), I shall focus on the last two. Very interestingly, the main difference between eros and agape, Greek and Christian forms of love, concerns the relation between loving and valuing. Both traditions agree that love is not blind and involves a valuation of its object, but they disagree on the source and nature of such valuation. In a nutshell, erotic love is motivated by the perceived value of its object: we love someone or something because we value them. By contrast, agapic love bestows value on its object, and this regardless of the value previously attributed to it: we value someone or something because we love them. Agapic love is Christian in origin and finds its first formulations in the New Testament and John’s and Paul’s letters. According to Nygren, it has four main features: (a) it is a divine form of love; (b) it is spontaneous in the sense of not being externally motivated—God’s undeserved (and undeservable, at least in the Lutherian tradition Nietzsche was familiar with) gift to man; (c) it is not motivated by the value of the object (Christ came for sinners and the righteous alike); and finally, (d) it creates value by transfiguring its object (the sinner becomes worthy by virtue of being loved by God).

It is difficult to know which (if any) of these two forms of love Nietzsche had in mind when he first coined the expression “amor fati”: ‘amor” is a fairly neutral choice of words, although interestingly, it is Luther’s own in his redescription of agapic love against Augustinian caritas. Furthermore, eros and agape are idealized types and it is unlikely that Nietzsche’s understanding of amor fati would fall squarely under either description. I have developed elsewhere an erotic reading of amor fati and offered reasons why I think that it cannot work.¹ In this chapter, I wish to focus on the possibilities afforded by an agapic reading. In the Gay Science, Nietzsche introduces the notion as follows:

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! (GS §276: 223, my italics)

This passage can be seen as laying out a quasi-Platonic strategy for overcoming the perceived negativity of fate and thus making amor fati possible. However, two elements plead in favor of a different interpretation: first, on an erotic construal, the second part of the statement is rather mysterious: it is presented as a consequence (“then”) of amor fati. The only interpretation that an erotic reading allows for is rather literal: having learned to see things as beautiful, I would be in a position to create beautiful things. But the expression “making things beautiful” (die Dinge schön machen) clearly refers to existing things, which rules out the idea of a physical poiesis whereby nice things would be produced. The alternative is to understand this making beautiful of things as an agapic transfiguration of their value brought about by our love for them. This central feature of agapic love, namely, its ability to transform the former value of its objects, is explicitly identified by Nietzsche as one of the characteristic of the Overman: “verily, a predator of all values must such a bestowing love become; . . . . May your bestowing love and your knowledge serve towards the meaning of the earth! . . . . And may the value of all things be fixed anew by you!” (Z: 101–2, Nietzsche’s italics). I shall try later to specify how this bestowal works in the case of amor fati; for the moment, let me point out the second aspect of GS 276 which favors an agapic reading of love.

It concerns the peculiar modality of the expression “let that be my love.” First, although it is, grammatically speaking, an imperative, it can also be read in a nonprescriptive way, as an expression of hope for the coming of agapic love rather than as an erotic call for action. Secondly, the sort of act it refers to (letting be) is neither fully active nor passive: it suggests that the love may come to and through the agent (who has to “let it” happen—perhaps, in this case, precisely by hoping for it), but that it cannot be fully caused by the agent. Although most Indo-European languages only allow for passive and active modes, ancient Greek had a third mode to refer to such cases where agency is ambiguous. The middle voice was meant to capture the modality of situations in which the agent is both active and passive, in such a way that s/he participates in the action but without being in control of it.² Gonda (1960: 53 sq) underlines this peculiar active/passive mode of the middle voice in relation to a particular example in ancient Greek, that of marrying someone. The active form (gameô) was standardly used by men and denotes an action in which the agent is fully in control, namely, the taking of a wife. This is grammatically reflected by the fact that the complement is in the accusative. The middle voice form (gameomai) was normally used by women: it denotes activity (the woman takes a husband) but also passivity (she gives herself over to him, a fact which is grammatically expressed by the complement being indirect and in the dative). Furthermore, the middle voice has an eventive dimension: it indicates that “the process of marriage befalls the subject” (59), in such a way that she participates in it without controlling it.

In my view, this mediopassive modality is typical of Nietzsche’s reinterpretation of agape as a human form of love. The letting be of agapic love displays precisely the two features pointed out by Gonda: first, it is both active and passive, requiring, perhaps, the development or cultivation of a particular receptivity to such love, but without any guarantee that the presence of such sensitivity will generate our love. Secondly, it has a marked eventive dimension (love happens to us, as expressed by the locution “to fall in love”). This mediopassive mode is often found in passages devoted both to amor fati and to the eternal return. For example, Nietzsche’s autobiographical observations in Ecce Homo recount how the revelation of the eternal return came to him on the background of the “yes-saying pathos par excellence” then “alive in me to the highest degree” (EH: 296; note that GS276 also refers to loving fate as being able to say yes to it, a point I shall comment upon later). The modality of this “being alive in me” of the “yes-saying pathos” is very similar to that of the “letting be” of amor fati: it suggests that Nietzsche’s attitude was instrumental to the yes-saying “pathos” being alive, perhaps in the sense that he was self-aware enough to perceive its existence in him and offered it propitious conditions without which it would have died; yet the expression makes it clear that both the pathos and its life were neither generated nor controlled by Nietzsche himself.

This agapic interpretation is further suggested by the two following passages:

Ten years—and nobody in Germany has felt bound in conscience to defend my name against the absurd silence under which it lies buried . . . . I myself have never suffered from all this; what is necessary does not hurt me; amor fati is my inmost nature. (EH: 325, Nietzsche’s italics)

What is most intimate in me teaches me that everything that is necessary, viewed from above and interpreted in the direction of a superior economy, is also useful per se—one needs not only bear it, but also love it. . . Amor fati: this is the bottom of my nature. (NCW: 680, Nietzsche’s italics).

Amor fati is now presented in the first person, and not as an ideal but as a realized state (“my inmost nature,” “the bottom of my nature”). Nietzsche does not offer any reasons to try to convince us of the desirability of loving fate, but a reflective description of how things appear to someone who is in such a state. This reflects his conviction that philosophy is a way of life rather than a theory about life: it has to be lived through to be genuinely understood. Significantly, the passage which explicitly links amor fati to the eternal return is introduced as follows: “philosophy, as I have hitherto understood and lived it. . . . Such a philosophy as I live . . . wants to cross over to a Dionysian affirmation of the world (etc.)” (WP §1041, my italics). It follows from this that the meaning of amor fati is not reducible to a pure conceptual content: it is inseparable from the first-person experiences that are both expressive of and governed by it.

This, however, makes the issue of genesis more acute. If amor fati cannot be rationally motivated or willed into existence, how will it come into being? Note that by virtue both of its irreducibility to a conceptual content and of the lack of rational justification for it, there cannot be any de jure answer to these questions, only empirical accounts such as the autobiographical observations made by Nietzsche about his own experience of amor fati. I shall now explore two possible ways that emerge from his writings. The first one is the eternal return, construed this time not as a thought experiment but as an imaginative and emotionally charged scenario meant to generate amor fati in a performative manner. The second, paradoxically, consists in the experience of suffering itself, understood under certain conditions. On this agapic reading, the eternal return should not be understood as a thought experiment meant to give us a standpoint from which we can rationally assess the value of our life and come to a decision, but as a poetic scenario that we are meant to enact imaginatively, in a way that reveals to us how we feel about our life in a single, potentially life-changing moment. This performative dimension of the eternal return is explicitly referred to by Nietzsche: “if this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are and perhaps crush you” (my italics). On such an interpretation, the eternal return has “disclosive force” (Hatab 2005: 99): the internalization of the scenario is per se an operator of existential change. In this respect, note that the possibility of a positive answer is introduced by a reference to the “experience of a tremendous moment” (my italics). In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche describes the revelatory power of such moments as follows: “with indescribable certainty and subtlety, something becomes visible, audible, something that shakes one to the last depths and throws one down.” (EH: 300) Notice also that the demon does not start by asking a bare-faced question such as “would you want to live your life all over again?” (such as Clark’s question: “would you want to marry me all over again?”). On the contrary, he presents us with a metaphorical and powerful description of what it might feel like for us to have this particular moment, “even this spider and this moonlight between the trees,” recur. And significantly, the possible “answers” outlined are neither “yes” nor “no” but specific attitudes (“gnashing our teeth,” being “crushed” or on the contrary becoming “well disposed to oneself and one’s life”). While these may be seen as expressive of a propositional content, they do not state it and it would be difficult to construe them as conclusions reached through hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Correlatively, the yes-saying mentioned by GS341 should not be construed as a constative speech act (in this case an assertion), but in a performative way: just as the “yes” of the marriage vow both expresses our love and actualizes our commitment, in the same way, saying “yes” to the eternal return is not judging our life worth living again and again and assenting to what is entailed by that judgment, but committing ourselves to living in the light of that experience. Yet there is an important asymmetry between the “yes” of the marriage vow and the “yes” to the eternal return. While the first is fully up to us, the second comes to us (or not) at the peak of our imaginative internalization of the eternal return. Nietzsche makes this clear in his description of his own experience: “one hears, one does not seek; one accepts, one does not ask who gives; like lightning, a thought flashes up, with necessity” (EH: 300). Once more, the mediopassive modality typical of agapic love is in force: we can decide to “play the game” and take the scenario seriously (rather than inquire about its validity conditions), and how intensely we internalize it does matter, but we do not control the process and its outcome is not up to us.

Yet even if the commitment to amor fati did arise in us, there would seem to be an inherent fragility to it. It may be entirely sincere at the time it is made, and yet fade away once the rather dramatic conditions of its genesis have disappeared. The thought may “gain possession of us” in the paradoxical instant of our performative commitment, but can it retain its hold on us durably? Perhaps, but perhaps not. However there is another, possibly more durable way: suffering itself. Nietzsche offers a very rich, first-person phenomenology of suffering, and his narratives are both the expression and the illustration of the transfiguration of the negative which is characteristic of agapic love. Consider the following passage:

Here it happened in a manner that I cannot admire sufficiently that, precisely at the right time, my father’s wicked heritage came to my aid—at bottom, predestination to an early death. Sickness detached me slowly: . . . It bestowed on me the necessity of lying still, of leisure, of waiting and being patient—but that meant, of thinking. (EH: 287, Nietzsche’s italics)

From an erotic standpoint, “predestination to an early death” would probably be one of the strongest possible objections to loving fate, and so would having the sort of sickness that may cause our death. Yet in Nietzsche’s narrative, both are perceived as blessings (“in a manner that I cannot admire sufficiently . . . it bestowed on me . . .”). How is this agapic reversal possible? Three things are worth noting from the outset: first, not any suffering will do. Only protracted and intense suffering, an “icing up in the middle of youth,” (GS: 32), that “long slow pain in which we are burned like green wood” (NCW: 680) may have a transfiguring effect. The reason is presumably that unless it is intense or long-lasting enough, the suffering will be discounted as an annoying but insignificant hindrance. And if it can be lessened, we are much more likely to seek any possible course of action (traditional or alternative medicines, surgery, etc.) that might bring about its decrease than to undergo an existential change. Our focus will be outward, not inward. By contrast, the need to “patiently resist a terrible, long pressure (. . . patiently, without submitting, but also without hope” (GS: 33) may open the possibility of loving fate for the sufferer. Secondly, should amor fati come to us, this would not mean the end of our pain: the sort of overcoming of suffering and of the self that Nietzsche describes does not involve moving to a painless state, an important point to which I shall come back. Finally, and importantly, note that just like that of agapic love, the modality of our relation to suffering is mediopassive: that we suffer is beyond our control, and there are limits to what we can do about it; yet crucially, we can to some extent influence the manner in which we exist our pain.

It is this ability to exist our pain in particular ways which opens up the possibility of fostering amor fati. This may sound paradoxical as it is by definition impossible to know in advance its shape or effects, and its advent is not within our control: so how can we prepare for it? Nietzsche’s autobiographical reflections suggest that in response to suffering we can develop three features which are propitious to amor fati because they thwart the alternative existential possibilities which constantly threaten the sufferer, namely, self-pity, resignation, and self-deception. The first two of these features are courage and moral strength. Amor fati is not the outcome of a quietist attitude to suffering: on the contrary, Nietzsche remarks on the “long war such as I then waged with myself against the pessimism of weariness with life” (HH II: 212–3). Another passage refers the “ultimate, most joyous . . . yes to life’ of amor fati to ‘courage, and as a condition of that, an excess of strength” (EH: 272). Along the same lines, an unpublished passage about amor fati mentions “courage, severity towards oneself, cleanliness towards oneself” (WP §1041). These qualities are needed to counteract the rise of self-pity or nihilistic resignation. To my knowledge, Nietzsche does not say much about the first (although he has a lot to say about pity for others, none of it positive), perhaps because he does not seem to have experienced its temptation himself. Yet self-pity would make amor fati impossible for three reasons: first, it implies that one feels “hard done by” or treated in an unjust and undeserved manner. This, in turn, entails assumptions about providence (in particular, the idea that one should be treated in proportion to one’s perceived merits) which Nietzsche finds both unwarranted and undesirable. Secondly, self-pity tends to divert our attention to favored alternative scenarios and thus to foster resentment toward the existing situation. Finally, it reveals deep existential limitations on the part of the sufferer, in particular the desire to protect oneself from pain at any cost without realizing that the most valuable things in human life can only come to us if we open ourselves up to the possibility of being hurt: “if you refuse to let your own suffering lie upon you even for an hour and if you constantly try to prevent and forestall any possible distress way ahead of time; if you experience suffering and displeasure as evil, hateful, worthy of annihilation, and as a defect of existence, then it is clear that besides your religion of pity you harbour . . . the religion of comfortableness. How little you know of human happiness” (GS: 269). Like the Last Men in Zarathustra, the self-pitier seeks to “move south” rather than risk hardship cultivating harsher lands. Yet it is only from such risks that higher human possibilities, including the “new kind of happiness” brought by amor fati, can arise.

Nietzsche is more explicit about resignation, which is presented as the antithesis of amor fati: “such an experimental philosophy as I live anticipates even the possibilities of the most fundamental nihilism: but this does not mean that it must halt at a negation, a No, a will to negation. It wants to cross over to the opposite of this . . .—my formula for this is amor fati” (WP §1041). For lack of space, I will not develop Nietzsche’s arguments against Christianity or Schopenhauer; of more interest here is the thought that one must not “halt” at a negation. This can be understood as an allusion to his interpretation of Schopenhauer’s position in the history of Western philosophy (he is supposed to have improved on the Christian world view by replacing the idea of a benevolent God with the will as doomed by its very structure to suffer endlessly). But it may also refer to a specific feature of Nietzsche’s own experience of suffering, namely, the “Russian fatalism” described in Ecce Homo. Russian fatalism is a response to certain situations where the courage and strength of the sufferer find themselves overwhelmed by pain and sickness: “one cannot get rid of anything, one cannot get over anything . . ., everything hurts. Men and things obtrude too closely; experiences strike one too deeply; memory becomes a festering wound” (EH: 230). Such situations are bound to arise in the course of a long illness: suffering and powerlessness foster a greater sensitivity and vulnerability both to events and to people; one is hurt by details that the healthy do not even notice. One’s memories of happier times, far from being comforting, become obsessive reminders of what was lost. The time comes when even the greatest courage and strength of mind must fail. In such times, the appropriate response is that of the “Russian soldier who, finding a campaign too strenuous, finally lies down in the snow. . . . . No longer to take anything, no longer to absorb anything—to cease reacting altogether” (ibid). Yet while this may look like a Schopenhauerian form of resignation (similar to the death by attrition sought by the ascetic), the function of such fatalism is the very opposite: “to preserve life under the most perilous conditions by reducing the metabolism” (ibid). Rather than being invaded and used up by negative reactions (“ressentiment, anger, pathological vulnerability, impotent lust for revenge”), it is best “not to react at all anymore” until one finds the courage and strength to measure oneself against one’s pain in a way that transfigures both the suffering and the sufferer. Although it is meant to be discarded (perhaps to be adopted yet again later) as soon as our vitality is “rich and proud” again, Russian fatalism is thus a moving (and perhaps unexpected) acknowledgment of human finitude from Nietzsche’s part. While, by definition, it prevents the sort of positive commitment of amor fati, it nevertheless fosters the right sort of attitude and can perhaps been seen as its precursor: “I displayed the ‘Russian fatalism’ I mentioned by tenaciously clinging for years to all but intolerable situations . . . . It was better than changing them, than feeling that they could be changed—than rebelling against them” (ibid).

The third feature that may encourage the birth of amor fati is the clarity of vision sometimes fostered in us by the need not to give up when faced with protracted suffering. This is rather paradoxical as pain is often said to cloud judgment. Yet should we display the courage and strength mentioned above, then suffering may prove itself to be the “ultimate liberator of the spirit (. . .) [that] forces us (. . .) to descend in our ultimate depths” (NCW: 680). In another passage, Nietzsche mentions the “supreme sobering up through pain” that is the means of “extricating [us] from the perilous world of fantasy” in which the healthy live (D: 69–70). As noted by moralists, suffering often strips human relations and events of their social trappings and reveals to us what matters most to us. “He who suffers intensely looks out at things with a terrible coldness: all those lying little charms which things are usually surrounded when the eye of the healthy regards them do not exist for him; indeed, he himself lies there before himself stripped of all colour and plumage” (ibid). Such clarity of mind is a defense against the mendaciousness of idealism or self-pity and thus may reinforce our courage in the face of suffering (by removing the temptation to dwell on alternatives). It is also per se a way to endure pain. For those who are strong enough, pain has a “spiritualising” effect: such individuals are able to overcome their native aversiveness to it by focusing on the increased lucidity that it may bring. Thus “the tremendous tension imparted to the intellect by its desire to oppose and counter pain makes him see everything he now beholds in a new light; and the unspeakable stimulus . . . is often sufficiently powerful to defy all temptation to self destruction” (ibid). Nietzsche lucidly points out that such awareness carries with it the danger of Faustian arrogance: “our pride towers as never before: it discovers an incomparable stimulus in opposing such a tyrant as pain is, and in answer to all the insinuations it makes to us that we should bear witness against life, in becoming precisely the advocate of life in the face of this tyrant” (D: 70). Yet for him such pride is preferable to resignation or self-pity in that it fosters a positive attitude toward this life: in this, it too can be seen as a precursor of amor fati, not because it conveys the right sort of understanding of fate, like Russian fatalism, but because of the commitment to life it denotes.

So how does one experience one’s life if one has come to love fate, be it through an instantaneous, performative commitment to the eternal return or the long, difficult experience of suffering? To try to describe the experience of amor fati, one needs to focus on its main feature, the agapic bestowal of value. For Nietzsche, such bestowal is the correlate of a transfiguration of the self: “man becomes the transfigurer of existence when he learns to transfigure himself” (WP §821). As we have seen, suffering is instrumental to such “learning” because (in the best of cases) it helps us to develop the qualities (courage, strength, lucidity) which will allow us to overcome its adverse effects. The extent of the agapic transfiguration of existence is in direct proportion to the transformation of the self: “the tragic man affirms even the harshest suffering: he is sufficiently strong, rich and capable of deifying to do so. The Christian denies even the happiest lot on earth: he is sufficiently weak, poor, disinherited to suffer from life in whatever form he meets it” (WP §1052). Very importantly, such affirmation is not the assertion of a propositional content—it is perhaps best described as a commitment to living our lives in the light of our “deifying” love. Nor does it operate by holding in front of us the prospect of a life without any disorder, irrationality, or pain: this would only replicate the dichotomous structure of ascetic ideals by contrasting implicitly our currently wretched condition with a happy ever-after under the sway of amor fati. Whatever it does, agapic transfiguration does not work by ignoring the darker, chaotic, and irrational sides of human existence (which is perhaps why courage is so important in the fostering of amor fati). It does not diminish our aversiveness to pain, nor dispel the painful character of our more difficult experiences; yet through an existential transformation that makes us stronger and “more profound,” it somehow enables us to love these experiences as fated, and this in spite of the suffering they cause us. This is not tantamount to recapturing them within the sort of eroticizing, providential narrative criticized in GS277. No justification or reasons are involved at all: we feel the pain that attaches to such experiences but find ourselves able to love them nevertheless, without holding them as objections to life. As Zarathustra says, “we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving” (Z: 68). Amor fati, like Angelus Silesius’ rose, has no why.

Yet amor fati is not only characterized by the ability to transfigure one’s own suffering; it is also a positive state. Nietzsche indicates that “a full and powerful soul not only copes with painful, even terrible losses, deprivations, . . .; it emerges from such hells with a greater fullness and powerfulness; and most essential of all, with a new increase in the blissfulness of love” (WP §352). How is such an “increase” experienced? Another passage indicates that from the “abysses” of suffering, one returns “newborn, more ticklish and malicious, with a more delicate taste for joy, . . . with merrier senses . . . more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than before” (GS: 37, my italics). The increased strength, sensitivity, and lucidity brought upon us by suffering do not disappear with the pain itself. They remain with us and transform our perception, not just of suffering, but of our whole life. We experience the “happiness which could only be invented by a man who was suffering continually” (GS: 110). We become more attentive and do not take anything for granted: the “smallest, tenderest, most fleeting moments life gives us” (HH II: 213) now stand out, and we delight in the little nuances and details we would not have noticed before. To those who “love life, it seems that butterflies and soap bubbles, and whatever is like them among men, know most about happiness” (Z: 68). We experience a constant sense of gratitude. Our demands on existence are much more modest; we know the “happiness of eyes that have seen the sea of existence become calm, and now they can never weary of the surface and of the many hues of this tender, shuddering skin of the sea” (GS: 110).

In this paper, I have tried to shed some light on the oft-mentioned but rarely discussed notion of amor fati. I have identified two central paradoxes (love of fate requires us to love a negative object, and we are supposed to achieve it knowing that our love will not make any difference to its object) and outlined two possible ways of understanding such love (erotic and agapic). I have developed the second in the light of the mediopassive modality used by Nietzsche in relation to amor fati, which, like the middle voice in ancient Greek, signals that love of fate is an existential attitude which requires our participation but which does not fully depend on us. On such an agapic construal, the modality of Nietzsche’s remarks on amor fati is descriptive; his comments about the value of suffering are not meant as arguments to convince us that fate is lovable and thus trigger a quasi-Platonic ascent of love, but as observations made from the perspective of someone who already experiences amor fati. Importantly, this agapic construal of amor fati solves both the above paradoxes: loving a negative object is not a problem since agapic love is not dependent on the previously apprehended value of its object: furthermore, such value is positively transformed by the love itself. Secondly, while our love may not make any difference to the unfolding of fate which was not already preincluded in the latter (our loving fate, if it happens, is part of that fate itself), it will make a substantial difference to us. Our perception of the events that befall us (and of ourselves) will be greatly transformed. As we saw, this existential transformation will in turn allow us a sort of happiness which neither resignation nor rebellion could ever bring us. We experience “an equilibrium and composure in the face of life and even a sense of gratitude towards it” (HH II: 212–3). Although this cannot count as a motivation for loving fate (since this would be subscribing to the erotic logic which, as we have seen, ultimately fails), it is enough to rebut the objection that such a love is pointless.

By way of conclusion, I now wish to discuss a number of objections. The first two concern, one way or another, the limitations of human agape, and the fourth its status as an ideal. To begin with, consider that in Luther’s version the transfigurative powers of divine love are infinite; there is nothing, past, present, or future, that God’s love cannot redeem. But is such a love humanly possible? I may think that I can genuinely transform my whole life: but how do I know that I am not self-deceived about the extent of my powers? Self-deception is a notoriously problematic topic in that it is equally hard to describe the phenomenon appropriately and to present a coherent account of the psychological factors that supposedly make it possible. In fact, the difficulty is such that some are inclined to deny its existence altogether (in which case, however, there would be no objection to answer here). Furthermore, the sort of description and explanation available varies considerably depending on how weak or strong the cases envisaged are: instances of weak self-deception are very close to wishful thinking in that they can be construed as requiring no self-deceptive intent and no violation of our normal epistemic standards. The subject, although he is motivated by a negative affect, has no intention to deceive himself and does not know that he is doing it.³ By contrast, strong cases are sometimes said to exhibit both an intention to deceive oneself (although it does not take the self-defeating form of a conscious choice) and a failure of reflective self-knowledge. Without entering into these debates, it seems possible to describe amor fati as a case of self-deception operating along the following steps (artificially separated for the sake of clarity): (1) faced with the experience of pain or suffering, which I see as a consequence of my fate, (2) I experience a negative affective response to the latter (such as anger, resentment, or hatred). This negative affect is in itself painful because it expresses an unpleasant truth about myself or my situation—hinting perhaps at my powerlessness in the face of my fate, my inability to cope with it, or at weaknesses in my character such as self-pity or cowardice. (3) In order to prevent this painful secondary affect and what it expresses from coming to reflective awareness, I deceive myself into believing that I love my fate. This instrumentally adopted belief allows me to think that I envision my pain in a positive light and that I am genuinely endowed with the sort of virtues which I wish to have (e.g., being a strong, generous and powerful individual who is capable of overcoming pain). (4) The whole process is made possible by the fact that neither my negative secondary affect nor my motivation to deceive myself is reflectively available to me at the time.

It would seem hard to deny that although it is not without difficulties, this model has some intuitive plausibility. Cast in the light of self-deceptive intent, the eroticizing narrative presented by GS277 could be seen precisely as the sort of rationale we might unwittingly use to persuade ourselves of our love for fate, and conversely that our fate is loveable at the scale of our whole life.⁴ However, it does not follow from the fact that self-deception is possible that it is necessary. To go back to the original objection, it is certainly the case that we would have to be mistaken or more likely self-deluded if amor fati required of us that we should literally transform our whole lives, including our past. As human finitude precludes us from doing this, loving our fate would turn out to be an impossible task and we could only convince ourselves to have achieved it through sustained illusion or self-deception. But as we saw, such a radical ability is not required by amor fati: what is at stake is an existential transformation of the self and of our relation to our present (rather than our past). So just as there is no principle ground to rule out self-deception, in the same way there is no a priori reason to deem such self-transfiguration impossible. In cases of genuine amor fati, there would be no need for self-deception because we would be transformed in such a way that step (2) would simply not present itself: the agapic transfiguration of our aversiveness to pain would prevent the secondary negative affect from forming, and without it there would be no motivation for the rest of the process to take place.

Given that self-deception is not a necessity, let us grant that amor fati is, at least in principle, possible. This, however, raises a second difficulty, which concerns its sustainability over the course of a human life. Even if one grants that it can be agapic (in the modified sense above) and that it needs not involve self-deception, the question remains of the extent to which it can hold sway on us. Nietzsche clearly thought that he did experience it, and this seems evidenced in some of his writings. Yet his moving remarks about Russian fatalism also make it clear that he did not think that he himself was able to sustain amor fati all his life. We saw that it requires us to develop certain qualities (such as courage, moral strength, and lucidity), which may appear in response to the various challenges that life throws at us, in particular suffering, and evolve in proportion to the intensity of our ordeals. Yet there is no guarantee that we shall find it in ourselves to be equal to all the sufferings that may come to us. We cannot rule out the prospect of being faced with an ordeal that we cannot love, not for want of trying, but simply because it is beyond our strength. Russian fatalism may aid us to a point but there may come a time when all that is left to us, all the strength we can muster, is the “courage to die” (EH: 230). The courage to die, yes, but perhaps not that of loving the approach of our own death. Ultimately, amor fati may, as in Luther’s description of agape (although for different reasons) turn out to be a “lost love (verlorene Liebe) . . . and the kindness thrown away.” Like all human loves, it may wither and die, no matter how hard we try to keep our commitment to it—a significant dysanalogy with divine agape. This, however, needs not be seen as an objection against amor fati. The key is to note that it could only count as such on the romantic assumption that the most appropriate kind of love for us is a love that would overcome all obstacles, vanquish death, and last forever after. Yet this is precisely the sort of mendacious idealism that Nietzsche repudiates. For all his talk of the Overman (or perhaps because of it . . .), and like all those who have suffered considerably in their lives (Pascal comes to mind), he is keenly aware of the limitations of the human condition. Seen in this light, the fact that amor fati may not last forever simply reflects the fact that it is the love of finite beings, and is not a reason to reject it because of unrealistic and undesirable requirements. It may or may not come to us; we may not be able to sustain it forever. But if and while we have it, it saves us from bitterness and resentment as well as from Schopenhauerian resignation. Its redemptive powers may not be infinite, but they are the best we can hope for.

The final objection concerns the status of amor fati as an ideal. The previous acknowledgment of its limits does not detract anything from its desirability; but is loving fate the right thing to do when it comes to morally challenging situations? In particular, what about the suffering of others? Especially that of the people who are dear to us? Is that something that we should love as fated? In this respect, two things are worth noting: first, just as the agapic loving of our own suffering is not an exercise in masochism (our aversiveness to pain does not disappear), in the same way the potential love of the suffering of others should not be interpreted as a sadistic relishing of their pain: in neither case would we derive any pleasure from the loving, and both present us with a very significant challenge. Secondly, there are reasons to think that Nietzsche envisaged amor fati in the first person, as a suitable response to what befalls us, not others.⁵ He did not say that we could (or should) love the fate of others. Nor does loving one’s fate logically entail loving the fate of other people: love is not necessarily transitive (although it can be so, at least up to a point, e.g., if our love for someone extends, in time, to individuals this person cherishes). Common experience shows that we can perfectly well love someone or something without loving all the circumstances that made them what they are, nor everything that will happen to them in the future. In fact, our very love is likely to make us deplore the events that harmed or may harm those we love, and no one would deem our attachment less true for that. So while loving my fate does entail my being strong enough to love even the pain that it brings me, it does not commit me to loving the suffering of others, even though there may sometimes be a direct causal link between the pain I feel and the suffering they endure (e.g., if I am deeply saddened because someone I love is seriously ill): I can try to love my fate, hard as that may be, without loving theirs, even though my fate is necessarily linked to theirs.

Yet the objection can be reformulated in a way that makes it relevant even to this first-person perspective. There may be occasions when our feelings of anger or powerlessness in the face of the suffering of those we love will oppress us to such a degree that it will simply seem impossible (and even indecent) to us to love a fate that put us in such a position. This connects to an objection which is often made in relation to the eternal return: to will the recurrence of all things entails willing the return of some of the most abhorrent events in human history, and this may be seen as morally unacceptable. What then? One possible reply is to emphasize once more the mediopassive mode specific to amor fati. Whereas willing the return of morally repellent events is fully within our power, whether we love fate is not. Because of this deep asymmetry between willing and loving, the issues of moral responsibility and choice do not arise in the same way: we are not accountable for our love in the way we are for a decision. Yet this mediopassive feature of amor fati cuts both ways: while we cannot start or stop loving at will, the previous analyses have shown that we still have a part to play in fostering amor fati. So the question can be rephrased: not should we love fate, since this is not up to us, but should we try to foster such love? I can think of two answers, one of which is Nietzschean in spirit and the other, not. The first consists in pointing out that should we prove strong or lucid enough to try to foster love for our anger or powerlessness, and should amor fati arise in us, then the agapic nature of such love would transfigure the formerly negative value of such feelings. The situation itself would be perceived in a totally new light. How it would be then experienced is impossible for us to determine so long as we have not undergone a similar existential transformation ourselves.⁶ Yet the important point is that arguing against the desirability of agapic love in the name of our existing conception of morality presupposes precisely the standpoint that would be invalidated by the transfiguration of values resulting from such a love. Our current moral repugnance is the very thing that amor fati would overcome and is thus no decisive objection to it. The other, non-Nietzschean, answer would consist in resisting this agapic logic and holding that it is not desirable in principle that certain things, such as powerlessness in the face of the suffering of the people that are dear to us, should come to be loved. One would then need to clarify the source and type of normativity entailed by this claim (what would ground such a principle? A robust conception of human nature? A substantive commitment to objective, universal values?) and it is not difficult to think of Nietzschean arguments against this sort of reply and endeavor. I cannot enter into this debate here but should one wish to uphold the objection, then one thing to note is that the very defeasibility of amor fati, the fact that there are empirical situations that may be beyond our power to love, may then come to be seen not simply as the unavoidable consequence of our human finitude but as a moral advantage. It may be construed not simply as expressive of the limits of our strength, but as a safeguard against the dangers of the potential excesses of love.

Notes and references

1 These have largely to do with what I have called the “motivational gap” between loving and willing. See B. Han-Pile, “Nietzsche and Amor Fati,” European Journal of Philosophy.

2 There is a large amount of secondary literature on the middle voice, and the one thing scholars seem to agree on is that it is a very elusive notion (cf. e.g., Andersen 2004: 10: “there are as many definitions of voice or diathesis as there are theoretical frameworks in the relevant literature,” S. Kemmer 1993: 1: “there is no generally accepted definition of the middle voice”). One of the reasons for this is that the Greek themselves did not elaborate on the matter. Andersen notes that the first grammar to use the three categories is a work attributed to Dionysios of Thrax. He focused on the opposition between active performance (energeia) and passive experience (pathos) and introduced mesothes as an intermediate category that applies to verbs that have a grammatical form which does not fit in either of the two previous ones (e.g., active verbs with a passive ending, such as deponents). Roman grammarians, in particular the Stoa (Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoic school) reappropriated this active/passive distinction by referring it to agency. Current grammar manuals of ancient Greek emphasize that the middle voice refers to actions that the subject performs on or for himself. See, for example, Smyth’s Greek Crammar (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956, §1713): “the middle voice shows that the action is performed with special reference to the subject: loumai (I wash myself).” Such actions often involve an ambiguous form of agency, neither fully active nor fully passive, as one is both the agent and the recipient of the action. Benvéniste (1966: 172 sq) and Gonda (1960: 30–67) picked up on this particular feature of the middle voice. According to the first, the middle voice does not so much indicate that the subject has an interest in the action as it points toward the fact that s/he is the medium in which something takes place. It indicates that the subject is part of a process (expressed by the verb) to which s/he participates but which is not reducible to such participation. To emphasize this dimension, he introduced the notion of internal diathesis (as opposed to the external diathesis of the active mode, in which the subject accomplishes an action which is under his control and carried out outside of him. For a useful account of the various conceptions of the middle voice, see Eberhard (2004), in particular: ‘The middle voice from a Linguistic Perspective’ and ‘Philosophical Perspectives on the Middle Voice’ (pp. 7–31).

3 See for example Mele’s self labeled ‘deflationary’ account (Mele 1997: 91 sq). A standard example is that of the anxious husband whose anxiety and desire to be reassured about his marriage cause him to disregard potential evidence of deceitful behavior from his wife and to over-interpret elements in her conduct that may assuage his worries. For a criticism of this interpretation of self-deception, see Poellner 2004: 54–7.

4 And so could, more polemically, Nietzsche’s reconstruction of his own life previously quoted in EH: 287.

5 Thus all the seven excerpts which mention amor fati do so in the first person. While one of them seems to envisage fate from a general perspective (WP §1041), the last two published passages (in The Case of Wagner and Nietzsche contra Wagner) strongly suggest that Nietzsche is talking about the love of his own fate, and the remaining quotes can be understood either way. On balance I have made the interpretive choice to emphasise the first person and am well aware of its theoretical costs, in particular the exacerbated tension with Nietzsche’s claim in WP §1041 that the whole world must be affirmed as it is; note, however, that the passage refers to an affirmation (not love) of the world which is connected to amor fati but not identified with it. It could also be suggested that this was an unpublished observation and that affirmation, contrary to love, is transitive in nature (e.g.: I cannot affirm a proposition as true and deny its implications). On the first person reading of amor fati, what “fate” picks out is existential (rather than metaphysical) necessity, for example the perceived ineluctability of what happens to me from a personal standpoint rather than the interconnectedness of all things, which by contrast is emphasised by the eternal return. Still, for those who wish to reject this first person focus, then note that the Nietzschean rebuttal of the ethical objection suggested on p. 230 would apply in either case.

6 One may find examples in the writings of Christian mystics: under the sway of agapic love, powerlessness is welcomed as a reminder of our dependency on God. Anger is transformed into gratitude. Examples of such agapic transfigurations are not rare: see Saint John of the Cross: “oh that it may be perfectly understood how the soul cannot attain to the thicket and wisdom of the richness of God, which are of many kinds, save by entering in to the thicket of many kinds of suffering, and by setting thereupon its consolation and desire.” (in Katz 1983: 49); see also Meister Eckhart: “if my suffering is in God and God is suffering with me, how then can suffering be sorrow to me” (in Sells 1994: 176) and Teresa of Avila (1957: 113): “yet at the same time this pain is so sweet, and the soul is so conscious of its value, that it now desires this suffering more than all the gifts that it used to receive.” While the resulting values may not be what Nietzsche has in mind, the sort of transfiguration performed is exactly what is entailed by the structure of amor fati. On the relation between Nietzsche and Christian mystics, see Roberts 1998, chapter 6.

References

List of abbreviations

a) For Nietzsche’s works

b) For Schopenhauer’s works

Other works

Andersen, P. K. (2004), Empirical Studies in Diathesis. Münster: Nodus Publikationen.

Benvéniste, E. (1956), Problèmes de Linguistique Générale I. Paris: Gallimard.

Cicero, De Fato, http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/fato.shtml.

Eberhard, P. (1982), Middle Voice in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics. Tübingen: Paul Mohr Verlag.

Frede, D. (2003), “Stoic Determinism,” in B. Inwood (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Stoicism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 179–206.

Gonda (1960), “Reflections on the Indo-European Medium.” Lingua 9/4: 233–52.

Hatab, L (2005), Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with the Eternal Recurrence. London: Routledge.

Katz, S. (1983), Mysticism and Religious Traditions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Leiter, B. (2001), “The Paradox of Fatalism and Self Creation in Nietzsche,” in B. Leiter and J. Richardson (eds), Nietzsche (Oxford Readings in Philosophy). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Long, A. and Sedley, D. (1987), The Hellenistic Philosophers, volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Magnus, B. (1978), Nietzsche’s Existential Imperative. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Mele, A. (1997), “Real Self-Deception.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20: 91–102.

Nehamas, A. (1985), Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Poellner, P. (2004), “Self-Deception, Consciousness and Value,” in D. Zahavi (ed.), Hidden Resources, special issue of the Journal for Consciousness Studies, pp. 10–11, 44–65.

Reginster, B. (2006), The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Roberts, T. (1998), Contesting Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Sells, M. (1994), Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Stambaugh, J. (1994), The Other Nietzsche. New York: SUNY Press.

Teresa of Avila, (2004), The Life of Saint Teresa by Herself. New York: Penguin.