Sunday, November 6, 2011

Nietzsche's Amor Fati and Becoming What One Is - Some surprising conclusions to my investigations!




Fatalistic themes recur throughout Ecce Homo. Explaining why he returned to Rome while writing Zarathustra, Nietzsche comments that “some fatality was at work” (EH III: Z-4).


He declares that “amor fati” is the mark of “greatness”: that one does not merely “bear what is necessary . . . but love[s] it” (EH II: 10). Later he remarks (not surprisingly) that “amor fati is my inmost nature” (EH III: CW-4).


The depth of Nietzsche’s fatalism regarding his own life becomes most apparent in a long passage from the second chapter of Ecce Homo. Nietzsche is here discussing his development as a philosopher, after noting that, “To become what one is, one must not have the faintest notion what one is” (EH II: 9).

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