Daily Dialectic

In the Gay Science, Nietzsche declares amor fati as “his love henceforth”—that he “learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things” and consequently “be one of those who make things beautiful”. In promising to love his fate, Nietzsche returns to one of the central doctrines of the Stoics, to want nothing but what actually occurs in nature.

As a response to the fatefulness of existence, Nietzsche’s love of fate is both a conscious revival and a contestation of the Stoic idea. I argue Nietzsche betters his Stoic precursors, both because his partial and desirous attitude is more recognisably a species of passionate love and because his acknowledgement of the artificial character of the beautiful sits better with the modern intellectual conscience.