i definately asked this already at least a year ago but i want to ask it again because the response didnt really satisfy my confusion.
what was nietzsche thoughts about amor fati?
also what can i read on it. i dont know what books he wrote that explain it. i listened to nietzsche in 60 minutes and got 0 out of that… dont remember a damn thing. something about a horse and a composer and nazis… sounds like a good movie plot. maybe that was the pianist
Nietzsche’s amor fati is a unique state of consciousness where one is aware of his connection to all preceding events, and the acknowledgment that if everthing hadn’t occured he would not exist. Also called the Dionysian faith, amor fati is when one is able to sublimate his dionysian passions thereby redeeming his every impulse with the necessary result that he gives meaning to his nature. In doing this, one’s connection to the past, present, and future becomes painfully obvious, and the neccesary realization that affirming one’s own life also affirms the totality of nature, past and present, follows.
Amor fati, is for Nietzsche the ultimate human joy, it’s the ability to justify(through affirmation) one’s existence without otherwordlies. Amor fati is reserved for only the most powerful, think how powerful it would be to love everything you have ever done or had done to you.(be free from guilt, ressentiment, ect) Such power, ofcourse, brings with it a very keen sense of joy.
“My formula for greatness of a human being is amore 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”
sounds like buddhism… mixed with photographic memory
Acceptance is the highest form of sanity.
nihilistic has a good grasp on this one… I would add that nietzsche was a fatalist… read twilight of the idols…
geocities.com/thenietzschech … .htm#error
-Imp
Fatalism? What next? Suicide?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism
from twilight: 3
The error of a false causality.— People have believed at all times that they knew what a cause is; but whence did we take our knowledge—or more precisely, our faith—that we had such knowledge? From the realm of the famous “inner facts,” of which not a single one has so far proved to be factual. We believed ourselves to be causal in the act of willing: we thought that here at least we caught causality in the act. Nor did one doubt that all the antecedents of an act, its causes, were to be sought in consciousness and would be found there once sought—as “motives”: else one would not have been free and responsible for it. Finally, who would have denied that a thought is caused? that the ego causes the thought? … Of these three “inward facts” which seem to guarantee causality, the first and most persuasive is that of the will as cause. The conception of a consciousness (“spirit”) as a cause, and later also that of the ego as cause (the “subject”), are only afterbirths: first the causality of the will was firmly accepted as given, as empirical … Meanwhile we have thought better of it. Today we no longer believe a word of all this. The “inner world” is full of phantoms and will-o’-the-wisps: the will is one of them. The will no longer moves anything, hence does not explain anything either—it merely accompanies events; it can also be absent. The so-called motive: another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, something alongside the deed that is more likely to cover up the antecedents of the deeds than to represent them. And as for the ego! That has become a fable, a fiction, a play on words: it has altogether ceased to think, feel, or will! … What follows from this? There are no mental causes at all! The whole of the allegedly empirical evidence for that has gone to the devil! That is what follows!— And what a fine abuse we had perpetrated with this “empirical evidence”; we created the world on this basis as a world of causes, a world of will, a world of spirits. The most ancient and enduring psychology was at work here and did not do anything else: all that happened was considered a doing, all doing the effect of a will; the world became to it a multiplicity of doers; a doer (a “subject”) was slipped under all that happened. It was out of himself that man projected his three "inner facts"—that in which he believed most firmly: the will, the spirit, the ego. He even took the concept of being from the concept of the ego; he posited “things” as being, in his image, in accordance with his concept of the ego as a cause. Is it any wonder that later he always found in things only that which he had put into them?— The thing itself, to say it once more, the concept of thing is a mere reflex of the faith in the ego as cause … And even your atom, my dear mechanists and physicists—how much error, how much rudimentary psychology is still residual in your atom!— Not to mention the “thing-in-itself,” the horrendum pudendum of the metaphysicians! The error of the spirit as cause mistaken for reality! And made the very measure of reality! And called God! —
4
The error of imaginary causes.— To begin with dreams: subsequently, a cause is slipped under a particular sensation, for example, one following a far-off cannon shot (often a whole little novel, in which the dreamer turns up as the protagonist). The sensation endures meanwhile in a kind of resonance: it waits, as it were, until the causal instinct [Ursachentrieb] permits it to step into the foreground—now no longer as a chance occurrence, but as “meaning.” The cannon shot appears in a causal mode, in an apparent reversal of time. What is really later, the motivation, is experienced first—often with a hundred details which pass like lightning and the shot follows … What has happened? The representations which were produced by a certain state have been misunderstood as its causes.— In fact, we do the same thing when awake. Most of our general feelings—every kind of inhibition, pressure, tension, and explosion in the play and counterplay of our organs, and particularly the state of the nervus sympaticus—excite our causal instinct: we want to have a reason for feeling this way or that—for feeling bad or for feeling good. We are never satisfied merely to state the fact that we feel this way or that: we admit this fact only—become conscious of it only—when we have furnished some kind of motivation.— Memory, which swings into action in such cases, unknown to us, brings up earlier states of the same kind, together with the causal interpretations associated with them—not their real causes. The faith, to be sure, that such representations, such accompanying conscious processes are the causes is also brought forth by memory. Thus originates a habitual acceptance of a particular causal interpretation, which, as a matter of fact, inhibits any investigation into the real cause and even precludes it.
-Imp
This is great.
Thanks for the link, Imp.
At times he seems imply a form of “retro causation” eg that you “select” your past or that you only see you “selected” cause after you get to a certain point. (not quite fatalism!!!)
Not that we have time machines but simply that the victor writes history and then history “becomes” their call.
If you look at the arrival biological cell(either bacteria or in a plant or animal) the first thing it is/ “did” to become a distinctive “cell” was build a controling semi permiable membrane around it’s biochemical “causes” thereby, in a sense, “over powering” them or putting them to work selectively for it.
So though it’s biologically “caused” it (though not conscious obviously!!) can then go beyond or well, at least, put its original cause to work for it.
I’m talking crap now and the fault is Dan~
(or I’m reading too much science!)
Great, insightful post Imp! =D> =D>
With regards,
aspacia 
I am learning.
thats more or less what i understood it to be. maybe i just dont agree with it. care to discuss?
i like the idea of loving fate in the sense that the intricacies are beautiful. the relationships between everything the lives the spaces in between. the only problem i find is in the ethics of loving violence, hate, prejudice etc. its an intriguing philosophy until its actually applied to everything and then it brings up paradoxes. im sure you could argue that like a lot of philosophy its not meant to be taken entirely literally but people tend to.
amor fati runs along the lines of “no regrets” which i find to be shallow and unforgiving. shallow in the sense that if you were to live that way you might not learn a god damn thing and unforgiving for obvious reasons. love of fate? it comes off to me more like love of yourself in an attempt to flawlessly interact with reality. it seems less like a love of the grand design of things which is what i initially interepreted it to mean and continuously try to draw out of it with little success i think because neitzsche is so easy to quote.
But human power is to the limit limited,
For in the power of outer causes we are
Infinitely surpassed;
So, the authority of Freedom we do not have—the things,
Beyond what we are, to use as tools.
But with us, when such happens against that which
To our advantage thinking claims,
We, with a soul’s evenness, will bear it,
Insofar as we will have become conscious
That we have completed our service
Having lived; for the power which we have
Is not able to perpetually extend itself…
Just the same, though able to shun
We are part of the total of Nature,
An order followed. Insofar as we
Clearly and distinctly see this, that part of us
Which is defined by sight, in other words
The sweeter part, will evenly acquiesce,
And in this yeilding drive to persist.
For insofar as we are seeing beings
We cannot hunger for anything but
What is necessary, nor so Freed, solely
To what is Real would we yield;
So, to the degree that we would see right,
Thus the drive of the sweeter part of us is with the
Total order of Nature convened.
–Spinoza, Ethics part IV, appendix xxxii
CAP. XXXII. Sed humana potentia admodum limitata est et a potentia causarum externarum infinite superatur; atque adeo potestatem absolutam non habemus, res, quae extra nos sunt, ad nostrum usum aptandi. Attamen ea quae nobis eveniunt contra id, quod nostrae utilitatis ratio postulat, aequo animo feremus, si conscii simus nos functos nostro officio fuisse, et potentiam, quam habemus, non potuisse se eo usque extendere, ut eadem vitare possemus, nosque partem totius naturae esse, cuius ordinem sequimur. Quod si clare et distincte intelligamus, pars illa nostri, quae intelligentia definitur, hoc est, pars melior nostri, in eo plane acquiescet et in ea acquiescentia perseverare conabitur. Nam quatenus intelligimus, nihil appetere nisi id quod necessarium est, nec absolute, nisi in veris acquiescere possumus; adeoque quatenus haec recte intelligimus, eatenus conatus melioris partis nostri cum ordine totius naturae convenit.