amor fati

29 Dec 2021 11:12 - 16 Dec 2022 12:22
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    • alias: amor fati
    • Loving one's own fate. I just learned this term recently, and I don't remember from where. But I not only accept my imperfect ability to trace my own thoughts, I embrace it.
      • Indeed, it is probably not so much this tragedy in itself that has tempted us to delve so deeply into the personality of Joseph Knecht; rather, it was the tranquil, cheerful, not to say radiant manner in which he brought his destiny and his talents to fruition. Like every man of importance he had his daimonion and his amor fati; but in him amor fati manifests itself to us free of somberness and fanaticism.
    • 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.
    • It seems very noble. But something about this stance irks me. I'm an engineer and hacker, and that means one who celebrates and tries to embody the human ability to fix things, to create systems, to inhabit them and improve them, rather than accept the way things are. Not to mention politically on the left, which also implies a faith in human's ability to alter their conditions. And not to mention being Jewish, and complaining is one of our specialties.
    • And this noble attitude, like so much else, breaks when applied to the Holocaust and to ordinary evils of life.
      • if we must say yes to everything, without ‘picking and choosing’, but must shoulder whatever comes our way, how do we avoid what one contemporary philosopher and disciple of Nietzsche, Clément Rosset, has so aptly referred to as ‘the hangman’s argument’. This can be summarised as follows: there exist on Earth, since time immemorial, hangmen and torturers. They are indubitably part of the real; consequently, the doctrine of amor fati, which urges us to love whatever is the case, likewise must urge us to love torturers.
      • But that we must embrace what happens under whatever circumstances seems to me quite simply impossible. What meaning can the imperative of amor fati have confronted with the fact of Auschwitz? ... I have yet to encounter a materialist, ancient or modern, who was able to provide an answer to this question.
    • & Stoicism

      • Seems related to Stoicism , although kind of a different emotional register. Stoicism is all Reason and reasonableness, amor fati seems to suggest something more, a passionate embracing of life in hell. Nietzsche called it "a dionysian relationship to existence".
      • And if you look at what stoics say about amor fati, it's fucking terrible:
        • When we accept what happens to us, after understanding that certain things— particularly bad things—are outside our control, we are left with this: loving whatever happens to us and facing it with unfailing cheerfulness and strength. As bestselling author Robert Greene (48 Laws of Power, Mastery) has put it, we need to “accept the fact that all events occur for a reason, and that it is within your capacity to see this reason as positive.”
        • The first part of this seems perfectly fine, the facing things "with unfailing cheerfulness and strength" has a Buddhist resonance. Then it goes to hell with "all events occur for a reason". That's ... eternalist and theistic as all hell. Get thee behind me.
        • Yeah this really infuriates me for some reason. The real act of existential affirmation is to face things with cheerfulness despite the lack of reason and purpose in the universe. To accept, if not love, the arbitrary and unreasonable nature of actual existence.sus