The Art of Living a Meaningless Existence: Ideas from Philosophy That Change the Way You Think

by Robert Pantano

For Nietzsche, when referring to amor fati, he is arguably talking generally about the loving of one’s life. Understanding the nuance in Nietzsche’s use of the term love is important—it suggests more than a stoic acceptance, and instead, it connotes an almost enthusiastic and total adoration. It is a sentiment against the tendency to regret, to assume one could have retained more control over the outcomes and conditions of one’s reality, to have done differently, to have known any better, to have found that an existence void of particular negatives would have ultimately netted more positives. And instead, it is a declaration of love and embrace of all of life exactly how it is, with all the good and the bad, the success and the failure, the satisfaction and the pain. Nietzsche described it in this way: 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 . . . but love it. Naturally and understandably, we tend to find ourselves doing the opposite, deluded by the mirage of hindsight and wishful thinking. It appears as if there were options to have done differently, for things to have gone differently, to have been better. We regret what happens and yearn for otherness. In a theoretical sense, this may be true; there were potential different options to choose from in the past and different potential ways for things to go in the f...