Nietzsche's Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo
Author(s): Brian Domino
Source: Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Autumn 2012), pp. 283-303
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jnietstud.43.2.0283
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Nietzsche’s Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo
Brian Domino
Abstract: In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche flaunts his credentials to convince his readers
to take him seriously. At the same time, he needs to counteract the human herd
instinct. In the works of 1888, Nietzsche diagnoses humanity as approaching the
enervated state of the last men. Nietzsche knows that he is similarly afflicted, so
he must do what he can to avoid spreading an infected teaching while trying to
improve his readers’ health. At the end of “Why I Am So Clever,” he mentions
amor fati. By the time his readers reach this section, Nietzsche has made it clear
that he has failed to live up to the ideal of amor fati. This failure forces them
to question whether he has failed because it’s a poor teaching or whether the
teaching is a healthy one despite his failings. In either case, Nietzsche succeeds
in getting his readers to focus on the teaching, not the teacher.
E
cce Homo aims to prepare its readers for the coming reevaluation of all
values to be inaugurated by The Antichrist(ian). Nietzsche explicitly tells
his friends and publisher this, and he is relatively clear about it in Ecce Homo
itself.1 From the opening line “Seeing that before long I must confront humanity
with the most difficult demand ever made of it,” the reader knows Ecce Homo is
a propaedeutic. Again in letters and in Ecce Homo itself, Nietzsche describes the
preparation as consisting of an explanation of who exactly he is.2 The opening
line continues: “[I]t seems indispensable to me to say who I am.”3 If humanity
is going to abandon its values for a set of new tablets, we need to know who
this bifurcator of history is and why we ought to believe him. So Nietzsche
flaunts his credentials to convince his readers to take him seriously. In the four
sections of Ecce Homo, Nietzsche demonstrates that he is so wise and clever,
that he writes such good books, and—in case he hasn’t convinced the reader so
far—that he is a destiny. After reading Nietzsche’s apology, readers should be
able to decide whether to continue following “the crucified” (EH “Destiny” 9)
or to jump ship and side with Nietzsche.
This judicial relationship between author and reader is problematized by
Nietzsche’s discovery of the disease of decadence.4 This disease, which seemingly afflicts all late moderns (TI “Skirmishes” 39), including Nietzsche himself, inverts the afflicted’s sense of the salubrious and the toxic. This i­ nversion
Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2, 2012.
Copyright © 2012 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
283
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284 Brian Domino
s­ymptomatically resembles the reversal that occurs in addiction, where the
addict wrongly believes that the addictive substance or behavior greatly improves
her life. Nietzsche tries to assuage his readers about his status, n­ oting that he
has experienced both enervating decadence and supreme health (EH “Wise” 2).
Unfortunately, merely having experienced both does not entail that Nietzsche
can correctly distinguish the two. Usually experiencing both sickness and health
puts you in a position to know when you’re sick and when you’re not. As a
decadent, Nietzsche resembles an addict who declares that she feels healthy
(EH P:3). We cannot reliably infer anything about her or Nietzsche’s health
merely on the basis of their self-appraisals. That he undergoes a peak philosophical experience during “an uninterrupted three-day migraine, accompanied by
laborious vomiting of phlegm” (EH “Wise” 1) is reason enough to question his
ability to discern healthy states from sick ones. Nietzsche himself seems a bit
confused on this score. He first praises the “dialectician's clarity” (“DialektikerKlarheit”) occasioned by his physical sickness but then asks his readers to
remember that he understands “dialect as a symptom of decadence” (“Dialektik
als Décadence-Symptom”) (EH “Wise” 1). Thus, if Nietzsche were to instruct
his readers, he could never be certain whether the advice came from Nietzsche
the hale philosopher or Nietzsche the weak decadent.
Of equal concern to Nietzsche is his readers’ health. They are unlikely to
be strong enough for the revaluation for which he wishes to enlist them. If his
readers are decadents, which they almost assuredly are, they will continue to
think Christianity healthier than Nietzsche’s alternative, thereby stymieing
the revaluation. If his readers are healthy, they will adopt his teachings provided that Nietzsche is also healthy (or at least wrote only when healthy). If
he is sick, he will infect a healthy population much as Socrates unknowingly
did (EH “BT” 1; TI “Socrates” 11). In an effort to avoid repeating this world
historic catastrophe, Nietzsche claims that he’s not a prophet, the founder of a
religion, or more generally the sort of person anyone ought to follow (EH P:2,
EH “Destiny” 1). Thus while writing Ecce Homo, Nietzsche needs to hope
for the best situation (i.e., that he is healthy but his readers are decadent)
while working to prevent the epidemiological nightmare that would ensue if
the worst were true (i.e., Nietzsche is decadent; his readers weren’t until he
infected them).
Given Nietzsche’s self-assessment as the authority on decadence and as a
psychologist of unparalleled acumen, it would be surprising if he did not take
steps to prevent himself from contributing to the spread of decadence if he
could.5 Given more time, I would argue that he employs various strategies in
Ecce Homo to guide the reader safely through his approach to convalescence.6
Here I focus on one particular strategy, which Nietzsche uses in connection
with amor fati. I begin by distinguishing amor fati from eternal recurrence
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Nietzsche’s Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo 285
because interpreters often conflate these two teachings. I argue that Nietzsche’s
chronic failure to love his own fate in Ecce Homo is strategic. Specifically, his
self-reported inability to love his own fate forces readers to determine whether
amor fati is an idea worth adopting on its own terms rather than on the basis
of its pedigree.7 This helps to quarantine Nietzsche from his readers so that
he does not inadvertently worsen them, as Socrates did his auditors and, via
Christianity, most Europeans.
Disentangling Amor Fati from Eternal Recurrence
Nietzsche’s signature teachings include eternal recurrence (or the eternal return
of the same) and amor fati. Nietzsche says little about either in his own voice
in works he intended for publication. Indeed, I have already written amor fati
more times than Nietzsche did in those works. While he may have written “eternal recurrence” more times than I have so far, he does not tell us much about
it. Among the few helpful passages is one from Ecce Homo where he glosses
“eternal recurrence” as “the unconditional and infinitely repeated circular course
of all things” (EH “BT” 3). Given such meager assistance, scholars have been
forced to fill the doctrinal lacunae themselves. And fill they have; few aspects
of Nietzsche’s thought have been so thoroughly commented on as eternal recurrence. As I have nothing to add to that literature, I focus on the much less studied
teaching of amor fati.8 Many discussions of eternal recurrence and amor fati
focus on Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Eternal recurrence is Zarathustra’s signature
teaching (EH “Z” 1), so it is not surprising that scholars concentrate on the
eponymous book. Nonetheless, Thus Spoke Zarathustra sheds no light on amor
fati because that phrase never occurs there. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is, of course,
highly impressionistic, and I doubt that I could demonstrate conclusively that
amor fati does not appear there conceptually.9 Nonetheless, because one can
find almost whatever one desires in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I hew closely to
the literal appearances of the term amor fati.10
At the level of the names of the teachings, the two are not obviously related.
“Amor fati” denotes an emotion or at least a psychological response; whereas
“eternal recurrence,” understood as a cosmological claim, does nothing of the
sort. Conversely, the notion of circularity or repetition is not obvious in fati.
In terms of these distinctions, the most widely accepted understanding of the
relationship between eternal recurrence and amor fati is that amor fati names the
correct attitude to have toward eternal recurrence. I discuss that interpretation
shortly. First, I want to discuss perhaps the second most popular interpretation,
namely that amor fati and eternal recurrence are at least roughly synonymous.
I argue that both interpretations are incorrect.
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286 Brian Domino
Amor Fati as Eternal Recurrence
Some commentators explicitly equate the two doctrines. For example, C. Heike
Schotten speaks of “Nietzsche’s reformulation of eternal recurrence into
amor fati.”11 Roberto Alejandro is equally explicit: “Eternal recurrence is, in
Nietzsche’s well-known phrase, amor fati.”12 Bernd Magnus accepts both of
the now dominant interpretations: “The expression ‘amor fati’. . . is, of course,
a handy synonym for eternal recurrence and the attitude Nietzsche recommends.”13 Leslie Paul Thiele follows suit: “To embrace one’s fate, indeed, to
desire its repetition eternally, is the greatest affirmation of life and love of self.”14
Only slightly less explicit is Françoise Lionnet. Commenting on the passage in
Ecce Homo where Nietzsche defines his kind of redemption as converting “every
‘it was’ into a ‘thus I willed it’” (EH “Z” 8), Lionnet writes that “this form of
redemption is the basic theme of amor fati, or eternal return.”15 Some scholars
import amor fati into Thus Spoke Zarathustra. For example, Al Lingis refers to
“Zarathustra’s teaching of amor fati.”16 Since amor fati is not present in Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, presumably Lingis sees the teachings as interchangeable.
Similarly, Rose Pfeffer brings up amor fati while discussing Zarathustra and has
Zarathustra espouse amor fati, as does Hugh Silverman.17 Ultimately, though,
the two are not identical: “Amor fati becomes the foundation of Nietzsche's new
ethics and finds its fullest expression in the teaching of the eternal recurrence,”
but how they differ is unclear.18
Some commentators hover around equating the two. Max R. Layton, for
example, writes that “fundamentally, amor fati and the doctrine of eternal recurrence are attitudes towards existence” and “the concepts of amor fati, eternal
recurrence, and tragedy define the word ‘Dionysus.’”19 Others seem unsure
whether the two are the same. Nel Grillaert sometimes talks about amor fati and
eternal recurrence as if they were the same, and sometimes he separates the two
but gives no description of the difference.20
Commentators who equate the two teachings generally do not offer evidence
in support of this equation. Layton and Ridley are the only two of whom I am
aware who offer textual evidence to support equating amor fati with eternal
recurrence. Layton offers two arguments for considering amor fati, eternal recurrence, and tragedy as “interlocking ideas.”21 The first is that “all except amor
fati are defined on the same page.” Textual proximity would be hermeneutically
relevant in the interpretation of most philosophers. In the case of Nietzsche with
his infamous flitting from topic to topic, it is less than convincing to argue that
three ideas are tightly connected because two are defined on the same page
(specifically, EH “BT” 3). On that same page, Nietzsche defines the tragic
philosopher and Dionysian philosophy, both of which seem more helpful in
defining “Dionysus” than an absent phrase. Layton goes on to claim that “taken
together, they are the first test of strength of the overman, or more precisely,
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Nietzsche’s Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo 287
they are the foundation of the overman’s mental make-up.” I discuss a version
of this hypothesis in the next section. For now, I note that if amor fati can be
connected to the Übermensch, it is not because the Übermensch “conceives of
reality as it is” (EH “Destiny” 5). Nietzsche never offers any proof that our lives
are fated, at least not in connection with amor fati, so it is difficult to see how
amor fati describes the world as it is.
Ridley asserts that “in Ecce Homo Nietzsche hails himself as the thinker of
eternal recurrence,” a claim that suggests he thinks that eternal recurrence and
amor fati are identical in Nietzsche’s mind (Ridley himself thinks that eternal
recurrence should be jettisoned because it “undermines and cheapens” amor
fati).22 Yet, a careful reading of Ecce Homo shows that Nietzsche keeps eternal
recurrence at arm’s length. It is attributed to Zarathustra (EH “Z” 6) and possibly to his forerunner, Heraclitus (EH “BT” 3). Even when on the verge of
taking credit for eternal recurrence in the famous account of his hiking vision,
Nietzsche uses the passive voice. The idea of eternal recurrence “came to”
(“kam”) Nietzsche, “Zarathustra came into being [entstand],” and Zarathustra
as a type “overtook” (“ü b e r f i e l”) Nietzsche (all in EH “Z” 1). He won’t even
take amanuensical credit but says “it was penned” (“er ist . . . hingeworfen”).
The closest Nietzsche comes to taking ownership of eternal recurrence is his
bizarre account of the history of the idea in him that parallels stories of divine
insemination (EH “Z” 1).23 Ridley then quotes the definition of amor fati in
“Why I Am So Clever” in Ecce Homo and the same passage that Layton cites.
We’ve already seen the problems with the latter piece of evidence, and I address
the problems with using EH “Clever” 10 below.
So much for my argument via negativa. I now want to turn to Nietzsche’s
texts to show that amor fati is not just rebranded eternal recurrence.24 I note
several differences between the two teachings. First, amor fati does not apply
to everything but only to what is necessary. Then I note several differences
between the two concerning love, memory, and the perspective implied by
each teaching.
Nietzsche uses the phrase amor fati in only four passages in books he intended
to be published (i.e., excluding The Will to Power and other works in the
Nachlass). To place all the evidence on the table, here are those four passages
in chronological order:
I want to learn to see more and more as beautiful what is necessary in things;
then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my
love henceforth! (GS 276)
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 mendaciousness in the face
of what is necessary—but love it. (EH “Clever” 10)
[W]hat is necessary does not hurt me; amor fati is my inmost nature. (EH CW 4)
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288 Brian Domino
As my inmost nature teaches me, whatever is necessary—as seen from the heights
and in the sense of a great economy—is also the useful par excellence: one should
not only bear it, one should also love it. Amor fati: that is my inmost nature.
(NCW “Epilogue” 1)
In each excerpt, Nietzsche limits the application of amor fati to the necessary.
Each passage implies that not everything is necessary, but none do so unambiguously. Those who interpret the two teachings as (roughly) identical would note
that each passage is logically compatible with everything being necessary, as
would be the case if everything repeated eternally.
Reading “what is necessary” as everything entails that these four passages
enjoin us to see everything as beautiful (GS 276), to love everything (EH “Clever”
10 and NCW “Epilogue” 1), and to believe that nothing can hurt us (EH CW 4).
These implications do not fit with Nietzsche’s oeuvre. Nonetheless, some scholars accept the erotic consequence. For example, Irving Singer glosses amor fati
as “cosmic love.”25 Michel Haar similarly says that “amor fati is nothing but
the echo of the love—both jubilant and rational—that Being has for itself.”26
Others, like Magnus, balk at universal love since it would include loving the
extermination camps.27 To the best of my knowledge, no one pursues the equation with unwavering consistency and attributes to Nietzsche the teachings of
universal beauty and invincibility. This is understandable since one would be
hard pressed to find a passage in his works that does not contradict at least one
of these injunctions, much less to locate support for them. Barring an acceptable
interpretative principle that would exclude the unwanted consequences while
retaining the two ostensible injunctions to universal love, amor fati and eternal
recurrence must differ nontrivially on this basis alone. Nonetheless, further
distinctions can be made.
Another difficulty with equating the two teachings is that eternal recurrence
does not produce love. It is often noted that if everything repeats, including the
inauspicious night when one first learned of eternal recurrence from the demon,
the proper response is indifference. If you cannot remember previous iterations,
then eternal recurrence changes nothing. For all we know, and for all it matters,
our current lives are repetitions. Amor fati does not similarly rely on memory,
nor does it require that we adopt a supra-self perspective.28
If we consider eternal recurrence as a psychological test, we must be thinking
of the oft-quoted passage from The Gay Science. That passage does not suggest
love as a possible response. The closest it comes is this portion of the section:
“How well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to long
for nothing more ardently than for this last eternal sanctioning and sealing?”
Even if we extend the meaning of “love” to include “ardently” the objects of
love differ dramatically. Amor fati enjoins us to love our fate, while our ardent
longing aims not at our lives but at the teaching of eternal recurrence understood
as a “sanctioning and sealing.” Lastly, as a psychological claim, it is false to say
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Nietzsche’s Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo 289
the more one loves an event, the more one wishes it could be repeated. I do not
claim that a crisp line can be drawn, but it seems unlikely that anyone would
want even the best moments of her life repeated infinitely. Part of what makes
the events valuable is their singularity or at least rareness. To have them occur
more often would make them mundane. If we do not want our best experiences
repeated infinitely, it seems that we would not want our entire lives to be so
repeated. At best we might be indifferent to the repetition of the quotidian events
and perhaps might want the bad events repeated until they had lost their sting,
but that certainly is not what Nietzsche had in mind.
Amor fati as the Best “Response” to Eternal Recurrence
The most common way to connect the two teachings is to say that amor fati names
the appropriate or lauded response to eternal recurrence. As Maudemarie Clark
puts it, amor fati is “the attitude of one who affirms eternal recurrence.”29 I neither
wish to nor need to be precise about the relationship between eternal recurrence
and amor fati. It is perfectly acceptable to me that Julian Young describes amor
fati as “willing” eternal recurrence, “desiring” eternal recurrence, “embracing”
it, and “the faith that allows one to will the eternal recurrence.”30 On this view
eternal recurrence explains the mechanism by which our lives are predetermined
or fated. This is a helpful connection to make because amor fati does not explain
why we ought to believe that our lives are fated or even in what sense they are
fated. Different interpreters put slightly different spins on the exact connection
between eternal recurrence and amor fati. Michael Casey, for example, says that
eternal recurrence makes worldly becoming not only necessary but also meaningless. On his account amor fati means that “man love his fate even though it
is meaningless.”31 André Van der Braak writes that “in order to realize such an
attitude of amor fati, the will itself . . . must be liberated from revenge. It must
be able to passionately embrace the horrifying thought of eternal recurrence.”32
Thiele asserts that “amor fati is the disposition of the overman.”33
Thiele is not alone in describing those who can withstand the thought of eternal
recurrence and love their fates as Übermenschen, and it seems reasonable to think
that if anyone can do this, the Übermenschen could. Yet, if amor fati describes the
attitude of those who can withstand the thought of eternal recurrence, and if one kind
of such people are Übermenschen, it is strange that Nietzsche does not use the term
amor fati in Zarathustra. Both eternal recurrence and amor fati are introduced in
book 4 of The Gay Science, which Nietzsche saw to the publisher only four months
before beginning work on Zarathustra. So both were very much on his mind. Since
both Nietzsche and Zarathustra mention the Übermensch, we would expect at least
one of them to make the eternal recurrence-amor fati -Übermensch connection, but
neither do. Moreover, there is a sharp bifurcation between Zarathustra and eternal
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290 Brian Domino
recurrence, on the one hand, and Nietzsche and amor fati, on the other. As I have
noted, Nietzsche distances himself from eternal recurrence in The Gay Science
and Ecce Homo, while he takes ownership of amor fati in both books, calling it his
“inmost nature” (EH CW 4), his formula (EH “Clever” 10), and his love (GS 276).
Thus, if amor fati does name an attitude toward eternal recurrence, it isn’t that of the
Übermenschen. In what follows, I argue that amor fati does not name an attitude
toward eternal recurrence.
To say that amor fati names the proper or best response to eternal recurrence
suggests that they ought to be separate kinds of things. Specifically, it implies
that eternal recurrence should be a descriptive account of the world and amor fati
should describe a psychological or ethical state. Although many commentators,
and indeed Nietzsche himself, have tried to provide scientific evidence for the
truth of eternal recurrence, no one has succeeded. This failure is conspicuous
in his published works, where Nietzsche offers no evidence to support eternal recurrence.34 As we have seen, eternal recurrence as a cosmological claim
is incompatible with amor fati, first, because eternal recurrence makes everything necessary, while the amor fati passages suggest that not everything
is necessary, and, second, because amor fati requires memory (i.e., you can’t
love what you’ve forgotten) while eternal recurrence requires a complete disjunction between iterations of the same life (i.e., there’s no déjà vu in eternal
recurrence). Because of these and other problems, most scholars today agree
that eternal recurrence is not a descriptive claim.35 Instead, eternal recurrence
is a psychological or moral test or perhaps a quasi imperative.36 If it is a test,
whether moral or diagnostic, it must include a means of evaluating the results.
The best textual evidence for this view comes from The Gay Science: “‘Do
you desire this once more and innumerable times more?’ would lie upon your
actions as the greatest weight” (GS 341). In contrast, amor fati does not offer
prescriptive ethical advice. If anything, amor fati would offer solace, not regret
or fear of eternal repetition. The demon then describes outcomes to hearing this,
both of which are psychological. There is no need for amor fati as the proper
response to eternal recurrence because eternal recurrence already contains one.
My argument has thus far been more conceptual than textual. This is partly
because most commentators do not provide support for their assertion that amor
fati names a particular attitude toward eternal recurrence. Among those who do
offer textual evidence, a passage from Beyond Good and Evil and one from Ecce
Homo are the most commonly cited. I discuss each in turn.
Da Capo!
Two recent commentaries on Beyond Good and Evil claim that section 56 links
eternal recurrence and amor fati.37 In this passage, Nietzsche suggests that if
one thinks through pessimism from a vantage point beyond good and evil, one
might stumble across “the opposite ideal: the ideal of the most high-spirited,
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Nietzsche’s Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo 291
alive, and world-affirming human being who has not only come to terms and
learned to get along with whatever was and is, but who wants to have what was
and is repeated into all eternity, shouting insatiably da capo—not only to himself
but to the whole play and spectacle” (BGE 56). Nietzsche goes on to state that
this individual makes this “whole play and spectacle” necessary. It is difficult to
know how to separate the eternal recurrence portion from the amor fati portion,
if indeed both are present. Perhaps eternal recurrence is the “da capo” while
shouting it insatiably is amor fati. Yet this bifurcation shortchanges both eternal
recurrence and amor fati. Eternal recurrence as a going back, as a cosmological
repetition, is untenable, as already shown. As a test, “da capo” (without emotional
inflection, as might be found in a score) is an eviscerated version of the demon’s
greatest weight. Eternal recurrence is presented here as a psychological stance,
not a test. The passage does not assert that events will reoccur, just that the sort
of person Nietzsche describes would want them to. We have already seen that
this view leaves amor fati without a role. Either way, the “fati” half of amor fati
is lost in the purely psychological half of this interpretation.
These problems aside, one curious feature of BGE 56 is its silence about the
future. The individual adopting Nietzsche’s recommended perspective seems
to be at the end of his life. The passage talks about this individual’s relationship to “whatever is and was” but not will be. The cry of “da capo”—even if
Nietzsche did not mean da capo al fine—is a retrogressive movement. At most,
this individual’s desire for the repetition of the past and present is future directed.
In contrast, Nietzsche generally presents amor fati as future directed. Most
obviously, his New Year’s resolution in The Gay Science is future directed. In
Nietzsche contra Wagner it is also presented as a normative teaching to guide
future behavior. In the passage in Ecce Homo to which we now turn, the future
is explicitly mentioned in the “definition” of amor fati: “[O]ne wants nothing
to be different, not forward [. . .]” (EH “Clever” 10). In sum, BGE 56 provides
more textual evidence that Nietzsche means eternal recurrence psychologically
and not cosmologically and yet still does not connect eternal recurrence with
amor fati. Indeed, amor fati is inconsistent with this passage.
Not in All Eternity
Of the four amor fati passages, the one that comes closest to connecting amor
fati with eternal recurrence is this oft-cited one from Ecce Homo: “[A]mor
fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in
all eternity [in alle Ewigkeit nicht]” (EH “Clever” 10). This definition ostensibly connects amor fati and eternal recurrence in two ways. First, Nietzsche
seems to understand fate in a more encompassing way than it is traditionally
understood. When we say that Oedipus was fated, we don’t mean anything
more than that no matter what he did, he would kill Laius and sleep with
Jocasta. We do not mean that every feature of his life was destined to occur.
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292 Brian Domino
In contrast, Nietzsche here seems to be invoking the same sense of fate used
by the demon in The Gay Science to describe eternal recurrence.
Second, there is the use of “eternity,” which doubtless invokes “eternal” in
Nietzsche’s readers’ minds. This similarity is more easily addressed than the
first. Obviously, Nietzsche is not committed to understanding “eternity” as designating circular and endlessly repetitious. As in English, in German, “eternity”
can be used hyperbolically to mean a long time. This understanding fits the text
as well as the more loaded understanding of eternity. It is also supported in the
very next sentence: “Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all
idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it” (EH
“Clever” 10). If every aspect of one’s life were fated (as would be the case with
eternal recurrence), then there would be no need for the qualification “what is.”
Rather than assume that Nietzsche was as careful when dealing with modals as
philosophers are today, I want to examine Clark’s reconstruction of this passage.
Clark has one of the most sophisticated and nuanced interpretations of eternal
recurrence with which I am familiar. She asserts that to interpret it as implying a
universal sense of fate is incorrect because such an interpretation is “completely
incompatible with Nietzsche’s emphasis on change and creation.”38 It’s unclear
why living an entirely fated life would be bereft of change. To be entirely fated is
not to be a still life. It is true that sub specie dei, there would not be any change,
but that perspective is not one Nietzsche finds viable. What perhaps she means is
that lacking free will, I cannot make changes to my life in the fullest sense. She
undoubtedly means something similar by “creation” as well. Although interpretations along these lines doubtless led to the existential reading of Nietzsche, it
is not one that I find true to the texts. In any event, as I am willing to accept that
the straightforward reading of “fate” in this passage is incorrect, I move on to
her conclusion: “It therefore seems reasonable to interpret amor fati as the attitude of one who affirms eternal recurrence.”39 Knowing that this is quite a leap,
she explains that “not wanting anything different in the past means accepting
the past in the sense of affirming its eternal recurrence.”40 Again, this need not
follow. I might not want anything in my past changed because any such change
would have unknown consequences. More simply, being content with the way
in which my life has unfolded is not the same as wishing its infinite repetition.
As is now clear, we need to examine what Nietzsche means by necessity in
connection with amor fati.
The Psychology of the Necessary
Nietzsche presents amor fati as a practical teaching. In The Gay Science he reports
that amor fati is his New Year’s resolution. In Ecce Homo, it is his means of coping
with being ignored by his contemporaries (EH CW 4). Severing amor fati from
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Nietzsche’s Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo 293
eternal recurrence brings with it a pragmatic difficulty. If we understand eternal
recurrence as an ethical injunction, it is easy to apply to our lives because it applies
to everything. In contrast, to apply amor fati requires a means of differentiating
the necessary from the accidental.41 If we cannot figure this out, either amor fati
is ultimately incoherent or it can’t be rendered from eternal recurrence. Nietzsche
suggests that at a suitable height the necessary-accidental distinction will be clear
(NCW “Epilogue” 1), but it’s difficult to see how this guidance is helpful. From a
suprahuman distance, one can imagine understanding world events as both determined machinations and random eruptions. Take, for example, the genealogy of
morality presented in the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche
implicitly lauds his own ability to see across a vast temporal horizon (GM I:8),
but he is not clear as to whether the emergence of the priests was necessary. He
describes their development out of the nobles as “easily” done and “particularly
likely” (GM I:7), descriptions that dance along the razor’s edge between necessity and contingency. Moreover, the continued wrangling over the question of
free will indicates that humans are inept at making the distinction in a way that
is widely accepted at any altitude.42 Couple this with Nietzsche’s general disdain
for metaphysics, and it seems likely that in the four passages containing the term
amor fati, he is not using the phrase “what is necessary” in the metaphysical sense.
In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche shifts the topos of the free will question
from metaphysics to the psyche, asserting that “psychology is now again the
path to the fundamental problems” (BGE 23). The question is no longer the
perhaps unanswerable “Is this event necessary?” but rather “What beliefs do I
hold that lead me to think of this event as necessary?” He diagnoses the desire
for “freedom of the will” as a manifestation of the desire to “bear the entire and
ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself” (BGE 21). Nietzsche then
proceeds to discuss the other half of the problem:
[T]he “unfreedom of the will” is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite
standpoints, but always in a profoundly personal manner: some will not give up
their “responsibility,” their belief in themselves, the personal right to their merits at any price [. . .]. Others, on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for
anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to
lay the blame for themselves somewhere else. (BGE 21)
These two diagnoses can be applied to an individual’s response to the teaching
of amor fati. Those who reject it might do so because it robs them of merit for
what they believe to be their actions. Conversely, others wish to embrace amor
fati precisely to avoid responsibility. Neither reaction manifests a love of fate.
Amor fati, then, is not only a teaching to be followed but also a psychological
test to be conducted. Each of us must ask ourselves “why do I not love my fate?”
before launching headlong into a campaign to force ourselves to do so.
Separating the necessary from the contingent is not a matter only of examining
our ideals related to responsibility or metaphysical freedom but also to a host of
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294 Brian Domino
other issues—from the idolization and idealization of genius to ressentiment—that
Nietzsche collects under the rubric of idealism in Ecce Homo.43 To love your
fate involves examining those ideals you hold that suggest that your life could be
better than it is. These are the ideals that prevent you from loving your actual life
and that convince you to redirect your love to another, nonexistent life. To love
your fate means, in part, to shut the door on possibility, to reject the imaginings
of the toxic ideals as merely so much fantasy that could not come to pass and so
should not be mourned or desired.
Why Does Nietzsche Fail to Love His Fate in Ecce Homo?
Given his exuberance toward amor fati, one would expect Ecce Homo to depict
its application to Nietzsche’s own life along with the life-affirming consequences
of so doing. Instead, Ecce Homo chronicles Nietzsche’s spectacular failure to
love his fate.44 To catalogue some of those instances that occur before the first
mention of amor fati and thus would be in the reader’s mind when she comes
across the initial amor fati passage: Nietzsche laments that his contemporaries
are too small to understand him (EH P:1); perhaps he is merely “externally
sprinkled with what is German” and is instead descended from Polish noblemen (EH “Wise” 3); despite an obvious penchant for skewering his opponents,
he claims he never attacks persons (EH “Wise” 7); although he has contemplated the origin of evil since he was thirteen (GM P:3), he never experienced
any religious difficulties (EH “Clever” 1); and he is “envious of Stendhal” for
stealing his comic material (EH “Clever” 3), even though Stendhal died two
years before Nietzsche’s birth. The suppressed revision to section 3 of “Why I
Am So Wise” contains this passionate embrace of genetic fate: “I confess that
the gravest objection to the ‘eternal recurrence’ [. . .] is always my mother and
sister.” To be fair, Nietzsche occasionally loves his fate. He happily recalls
that because his birthday coincided with that of King Frederick William IV, it
was a holiday throughout his childhood (EH “Wise” 3). More seriously, in the
dedicatory or intercalated passage, he is thankful for his amazingly productive
fourth quarter of 1888:
On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns
brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back, I looked forward,
and never saw so many and such good things at once. It was not for nothing that
I buried my forty-fourth year today; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life
in it has been saved, is immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values,
the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize
with a hammer—all presents of this year, indeed of its last quarter! How could I
fail to be grateful to my whole life?—and so I tell my life to myself.
Undoubtedly, 1888 was a very good year for Nietzsche and he is genuinely
grateful for it. But does he exhibit amor fati? He is “grateful” (“dankbar”)
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Nietzsche’s Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo 295
to his entire life, which is in keeping with the holism of amor fati, but the
required sense of necessity is missing. He offers no evidence that his life had
to ripen in his forty-fourth year. It is tempting to attribute to Nietzsche foreknowledge of his collapse a few months later, but this would be to romanticize
a coincidence rather than to make a factual claim. He describes the books
he wrote in 1888 as “presents” (“G e s c h e n k e”). Perhaps the giver of the
presents is fate. Less romantically, this passage might be best understood
according to Leiter’s interpretation: Nietzsche writes as “the conscious ‘self ’
which views the life as though a (grateful) spectator upon it.”45 Any of these
three interpretations would show Nietzsche’s literal and attenuated amor fati.
The difficulty is that because Nietzsche does not allude to any necessity,
this passage is also consistent with our everyday understanding of “having a
good year,” which does not involve fate at all. If we connect this passage with
what follows immediately—gratitude for his entire life—we might think that
Nietzsche values those books more than the struggles he had in his life prior
to 1888. The works of 1888 then redeem his life, and redemption is precisely
what amor fati seeks to avoid.46
If Nietzsche is not here expressing love of fate, we ought to be able to offer a
psychological explanation for that along the lines of BGE 21. The explanation
must not only address why Nietzsche doesn’t express love of his fate here but
also must cohere with what else we know about him, especially as presented in
Ecce Homo. Recall that the first type of person who wants to cling to freedom
of the will is the one who wants to take credit for her accomplishments. While
the chapter titles of Ecce Homo suggest that Nietzsche is this type of person,
their contents do not. For example, why is Nietzsche so wise? The first of the
two reasons he gives is that it is because he has the sort of parents that he does.
The second is his acute sense of smell. Neither of these are achievements, and
Nietzsche does not present them as such. He continues, correlating the production of The Dawn with various ailments he endured. He stops short of attributing
The Dawn to his sickness but also never takes credit for himself. The section
ends with his assertion that his unparalleled view of humanity stems from his
oscillating between sickness and health, between decadence and vitality. The
rest of the book generally follows suit and describes what makes Nietzsche great
as largely beyond his control.
If Nietzsche is not rejecting fatalism out of pride, the other possibility presented in BGE 21 is a desire to blame others and generally avoid responsibility
for one’s actions. Continuing with the same section from Ecce Homo, Nietzsche
clearly isn’t seeking to blame others. In particular, the shift to discussing his
sickness avoids the economy of blame. This medical move beyond good and evil
isn’t limited to Nietzsche’s life. Even though he traces the origin of decadence to
Socrates, he never blames Socrates for his own decadence or even for its spread
(TI “Socrates” 11, EH “BT” 1).
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296 Brian Domino
Another route into the intercalated passage is to interpret Nietzsche’s ostensible
rhetorical question (“How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life?”) as a
question to be answered. One could fail to be grateful if one harbored resentment
toward fate (or whatever one wishes to call the forces that ostensibly direct one’s
life); if, in other words, one believed that one’s life could have been better. This
of course is a version of the mendacious idealism against which Nietzsche rails in
Ecce Homo. Here he seems consistent. He doesn’t pine for a life different than the
one he has so far led. Again, though, believing that one’s life could not be better
is not the same as believing it to be fated, to have unfolded according to necessity.
As a final attempt to locate amor fati in the intercalated passage, let us pursue the possibility that what Nietzsche meant to gesture toward is the more
general idea of being grateful for his sickness because it led to his philosophy.
He explicitly connects these registers in Nietzsche contra Wagner, but not in
Ecce Homo. Nonetheless, Nietzsche does put a positive spin on his illnesses in
Ecce Homo. If we prioritize the text, if we say that Nietzsche’s writings are the
manifestation of his philosophy, we run afoul of his proclamation that he is one
thing and his writings another (EH “Books” 1). Even if we ignore this separation
and accept the general tenor of these comments to mean that his philosophy is
no small part of who he is, Ecce Homo fails to present him as conforming to his
own teaching. The question is not why Nietzsche wasn’t perfect, but why he
chose to record his repeated failures to embrace amor fati. Certainly not out of
some naive fealty to historical accuracy. No one needs to be entirely honest in a
biography: “What prudent man would write a single honest word about himself
today?—he would have to be a member of the Order of Holy Foolhardiness to
do so. We are promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner: who doubts that
it will be a prudent autobiography?” (GM III:19).
That Nietzsche nonetheless presents both amor fati and his failures to enact
it—without providing one success story of even minor importance—suggests
that a more complex picture lies underneath. One need not have gone through
the detailed textual analysis we just completed to see this. For example, in
Ecce Homo, Nietzsche seems to have conflicting desires. His avowed purpose
in publishing the book is “to say: Hear me! For I am such and such a person.
Above all, do not mistake me for someone else” (EH P:1). His desire for his
readers to get these things right seems problematic given that he also asserts
“I am one thing, my writings are another matter” (EH “Books” 1) and “I want
no ‘believers’” (EH “Destiny” 1). This insistence on the separation of the
author from his texts does not stem from some prescient notion of privacy.
After all, he tells us where his apartment is (EH “TI” 3). Instead the problem
is that, according to his own diagnosis, the world (or at least Western Europe)
has inherited toxic values that have enfeebled everyone, including Nietzsche
himself. This un-Nietzschean separation of author and texts draws the reader’s
attention to the need to both study Nietzsche’s ideas and to protect herself from
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Nietzsche’s Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo 297
them because of the problem that Nietzsche cannot be certain that he is writing
in a state of health (and thus presumably forwarding healthy teachings) and
not one of decadence.
To insure that his readers notice his hypocrisy, Nietzsche declares that
“[m]y formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati” (EH “Clever” 10).
The immediate inference is that Nietzsche is not a great person by his own definition. His failures force his readers to ask themselves whether Nietzsche failed
because it’s a poor teaching in some relevant sense or whether the teaching is
still a healthy one despite his failings. In either case, Nietzsche has succeeded
in having the reader focus on the teaching rather than the teacher.
Nietzsche advertises his health so well that it is difficult to remember that he
still suffers from decadence, much less to remember that he is concerned with
infecting his readers. But he does provide evidence of this, as I hope to show
now. Clearly the target of Ecce Homo is what Nietzsche calls “ideals.” Half of the
sections of “Why I Am a Destiny” attack mendacious ideals and foists Nietzsche
up as the first one to notice the problem and then to rise in opposition to it. His
book-by-book chronology identifies ideals attacked in each book (HH 1 being
the most obvious instance), as if to remind the reader that he has consistently
attacked a wide range of values that deprecate life and sicken us. The range of
ideals he tilts at is extensive, as are the ills they produce. What is unclear is what
we can do about them. We do learn what Nietzsche does to combat ideals: he
coolly puts them on ice and allows them to freeze to death (HH 1). Presumably
this means to place the ideals in contact with Nietzsche’s philosophy, and
“[p]hilosophy,” he explains, “as I have so far understood and lived it, means
living voluntarily among ice and high mountains.” “The ice is near” around his
writings, and indeed “there is no small danger that one may catch cold in it”
(EH P:3). Even Nietzsche must be careful in his own rimy philosophy: “I do not
refute ideals, I merely put on gloves before them” (“Ich widerlege die Ideale
nicht, ich ziehe bloss Handschuhe vor ihnen an”) (EH P:3). Duncan Large helpfully expands on Kaufmann’s translation with “I just put on gloves to protect
myself against them.”47 Today we might immediately think of surgical gloves.
I do not want to put too fine a point on this, but the gloves are not to protect
Nietzsche from the ideals he freezes but from the bitter cold of his philosophy.
I suggest this both because it makes more sense (i.e., nowhere does Nietzsche
suggest he needs protection from ideals) and is historically accurate. It was
only during Nietzsche’s lifetime that the germ theory of disease was gaining
currency. The most important proponents of germ theory (e.g., Robert Koch,
Pasteur, Lister, and John Snow) were all Nietzsche’s contemporaries. It was not
until 1890 that germ theory had attained a significant enough following that
surgical gloves were invented. Nietzsche’s lauding of his olfactory abilities may
stem from then-dominant miasma theory. On this theory, foul-smelling water
or air was a source of disease. In any event, the gloves Nietzsche dons are to
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298 Brian Domino
protect his hands from his icy philosophy, a lesson Zarathustra apparently failed
to learn: “Alas, ice is all around me, my hand is burned by the ice” (EH “Z” 7).
If Nietzsche risks frostbite from his own philosophy, surely his readers would
risk hypothermia. Knowing this, he devises amor fati as a means helping them
overcome idealism in a less risky manner. If you think of yourself as largely fated,
quite a number of Nietzsche’s most reviled ideals fall away. Morality requires
freedom; without it, one cannot do evil. If one cannot do evil, the world is not
in need of redemption and hence also not in need of a redeemer. At the same
time, that one need love one’s fate prevents a collapse into nihilism. Without
the injunction to love one’s fate, one might reason that one will do whatever one
is fated to do, and so on. If we must love our fate, our attitude toward it will be
radically different. To love something is to value it.
The Intended Audience of Ecce Homo
My interpretation relies on certain assumptions about the kind of readers
Nietzsche wanted to attract with Ecce Homo. I conclude by discussing the topic
of his auditors, especially given the disparity between the audience Nietzsche
expected to get almost immediately and the audience he did get decades later.
It isn’t obvious from the book itself, but Nietzsche wanted Ecce Homo to be a
best seller. In early December of 1888, Nietzsche finished revising the manuscript of Ecce Homo and shared his plans for the book with the Swedish writer
August Strindberg. He wanted it “appear simultaneously in German, French,
and English.” He thought about the publisher and the selling price: “I suppose
it would be, in the French edition (perhaps with Lemerre, Paul Bourget’s publisher!) priced at about three francs fifty. Since it says unheard of things and
sometimes, in all innocence, speaks the language of the rulers of the world,
the number of editions will surpass even Nana.”48 Those of us unfamiliar with
the history of marketing might wonder about Nietzsche’s sales projections.
According to one source, “The first printing [of Nana] was fifty-five thousand
copies, and on the day of publication ten thousand more were ordered, figures
hitherto unprecedented in French fiction.”49 While salacious scandal helped
boost sales of Nana, its success was also very much the product of extensive
marketing:
In September, 1879, when Zola had written about half of Nana, he arranged
with M. Laffitte, editor of Le Voltaire, which was then publishing his articles
on “scientific fiction,” to produce the story in that newspaper; and M. Laffitte at
once advertised it in a fashion worthy of Barnum himself. Huge posters appeared
on all the wall of Paris, “displayed” announcements invaded the newspapers,
sandwich men patrolled the streets, ticket-advertisements were even affixed to
the gutta-percha tubes of the pipe-lights in the tobacconists’ shops; and, indeed,
upon every side one found the imperious injunction: Read Nana! Nana! Nana!!50
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Nietzsche’s Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo 299
Nietzsche may have been oblivious to this Parisian marketing, but I suspect he
knew of it, if only secondhand. Nietzsche considered himself a “good European”
(EH “Wise” 3) rather than a German or citizen of any country in particular
(GS 377, HH 475). His frequent travels and stays in hotels and boarding houses
put him in contact with people from all over the Continent. If he had a remotely
accurate idea about the sales of Nana, then he wanted Ecce Homo to reach a
very broad audience. Of course, Nietzsche had no guarantee that his correspondence would be collected and disseminated, and it is certainly a speculation
that Nietzsche had some inkling about the hypermarketing of Nana. I therefore
want to look at what Ecce Homo tells us about the readership Nietzsche hopes
to cultivate without relying on material he could not assume we would have.
Who are the readers Nietzsche expects? Nietzsche liked to point out the difficulties intellectuals had with his work (EH “Books” 1, HH 6, CW 4). While
the obvious implication is that no one is smart enough to understand him, Ecce
Homo differs from Nietzsche’s other books in terms of the intended audience.
Nietzsche did not expect philosophy professors to read Ecce Homo. Indeed, that
he lumps them with “other hollow pots, [and] cabbage heads” (EH “Books” 5)
suggests he doesn’t want professors reading him. In an oft-quoted passage from
the same section, Nietzsche describes the kind of readers he merits: “That a
psychologist without equal speaks from my writings, is perhaps the first insight
reached by a good reader—a reader as I deserve him, who reads me the way good
old philologists read their Horace” (EH “Books” 5). Since Nietzsche must supply
the inference that a good reader would reach, we can infer that in Ecce Homo
he does not expect to have the readership he deserves.51 Since he nonetheless
wishes to convey something to his readers, he might need to be a bit obvious, if
only by the standards of Nietzsche scholarship today. Thus, he not only presents
multiple instances demonstrating his failure to love his fate but also repeatedly
boasts of his psychological prowess.
The latter portion of this deserved reader quotation is well known, but I’m
unaware of anyone explaining its meaning. It ostensibly means “read me carefully,” but that seems circumlocutory for Nietzsche. After all, Nietzsche could’ve
written “read me as a philologist would” if he meant to convey only the idea of
reading him carefully. Moreover, since Nietzsche just implied that he does not
expect such readers, it is all the more unlikely that those he does get would have
detailed knowledge of how “old philologists read their Horace.” Nietzsche’s
remark won’t make the reader suddenly train a sharper set of exegetical tools
onto Ecce Homo. And why Horace? Why not Ovid or Virgil? Or why not more
simply “the way old philologists read ancient texts”?
The sort of reader that Nietzsche expects to have in Ecce Homo would probably not know how “old philologists read their Horace” beyond “carefully.”52
She may, however, know Horace as the author of many famous quips, including the now clichéd “carpe diem.” The full passage from which that expression
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300 Brian Domino
comes reads “as we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little
as possible in the morrow.”53 Horace enjoins his reader to “seize the day,” but
the old philologists do this by reading Horace, not by acting on his advice. That
they are “old” suggests that they’ve done this for decades. In reviewing his
writings in “Why I Write Such Good Books,” perhaps Nietzsche believes that
he deserves this kind of reader because of the complexity of his thought and
its aphoristic expression. So he deserves readers who will devote their lives to
studying the intricacies of his works but never follow them. With Ecce Homo,
he wants to change that because the future of humanity is at stake. Recall his
earlier description of his imaginary “perfect reader” as “a monster of courage
and curiosity; moreover, supple, cunning, cautious; a born adventurer and discoverer” (EH “Books” 3). In short: not an old philologist. Thus the readers “he
deserves” is not a laudatory phrase but a sarcastic jab at his fate. The kinds of
readers he wants for Ecce Homo are those who will experiment with the strategies and techniques for flourishing presented in Ecce Homo but who will do so
as scientists and not believers.
Conclusion
I have made two points. First, we should not understand amor fati as a repackaged
version of eternal recurrence or the appropriate attitude to have toward eternal
recurrence—or even as the specific teaching that we ought to love our fates
simpliciter. Rather, the expression amor fati is a convenient way of referring
to Nietzsche’s teachings about what is necessary and our reactions to them as a
whole. I did not exhaustively list those teachings in order to pursue my second
thesis, namely that Nietzsche’s ironic use of amor fati in Ecce Homo is strategic.
Specifically that his self-reported failures to love his own fate together with his
description of amor fati as his formula for greatness in a human being should
make his readers all the less likely to follow him blindly and instead focus critically on what they might learn from him. Nietzsche pursues this strategy to help
minimize the chances that he will infect his readers à la Socrates. If I am right
about this, Ecce Homo needs to be interpreted from a different standpoint from
that of Nietzsche’s other works and from which it has so far been read by many.
Miami University
dominob@muohio.edu
Notes
An earlier version of part of this essay was presented at the 2011 meeting of the North Carolina
Philosophical Society. I would like to thank the audience members for their questions and
suggestions, especially John Whitmire and Christopher Hoyt. I would also like to thank the two
JNS reviewers for their helpful comments and criticisms. Paul Loeb offered some sound advice on
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Nietzsche’s Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo 301
a number of issues, and I am always grateful for his thoughtful and rapid assistance. Lastly, I must
thank Anthony K. Jensen for his patience while I battled my own case of décadence.
1. See his letters to Constantin-Georg Naumann, November 19, 1888, Peter Gast, October 30,
1888, and Georg Brandes, November 20, 1888.
2. See his letters to Meta von Salis, November 14, 1888, Franz Overbeck, November 13,
1888, and Gast on October 30, 1888.
3. I generally rely on Walter Kaufmann’s translations. Quotations in German are from KGW.
4. Readers familiar with Daniel Conway’s work, especially Nietzsche’s Dangerous Game
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), will no doubt think of his interpretation. I have
a more optimistic view of what Nietzsche’s goals and methods in Ecce Homo, which I hope to
articulate in subsequent publications.
5. EH “Wise” 1; EH “Books” 5; see also his letter to Malwida von Meysenbug, dated
October 18, 1888, in which he declares that “in questions of decadence, I am the highest authority
on Earth.” Preventing the spread of decadence isn’t the same as eliminating it, something
Nietzsche had already argued in Twilight of the Idols cannot be done (TI “Socrates” 11; TI
“Skirmishes” 43).
6. I give one such strategy in “The Casuistry of the Little Things,” Journal of Nietzsche
Studies 23 (2002): 51–62.
7. The problem is stated clearly by Locke, who in his discussion of what has come to be
known as the fallacy of appeal to authority notes that once someone “has gained a name” and is
held as some kind of authority, “it is thought a breach of modesty for others to derogate any way
from it, . . . and it is looked upon as insolence, for a man to set up and adhere to his own opinion”
(An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 4.17.19).
8. Béatrice Han-Pile, “Nietzsche and Amor fati,” European Journal of Philosophy 19.2
(2009): 224–61.
9. Paul Loeb’s recent study of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010]) mentions amor fati only once, and then only in
a quotation from another scholar. Similarly, in Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of “Thus
Spoke Zarathustra” (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), Laurence Lampert relegates
discussion of amor fati to footnotes, where it is connected to The Gay Science (334 n. 95 and
350 n. 14) or other scholars (335 n. 102).
10. Should one need evidence, see the many interpretations of Zarathustra discussed in Steven
E. Aschheim’s The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890–1990 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992).
11. C. Heike Schotten, Nietzsche’s Revolution: Décadence, Politics, and Sexuality (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 196.
12. Roberto Alejandro, Nietzsche and the Drama of Historiobiography (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), 188.
13. Bernd Magnus, Nietzsche’s Existential Imperative (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1978), 216 n. 2.
14. Leslie Paul Thiele, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul: A Study of Heroic
Individualism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 197.
15. Françoise Lionnet, Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1989), 88.
16. Alphonse Lingis, “The Will to Power,” in The New Nietzsche, ed. David B. Allison
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 39.
17. Rose Pfeffer, “Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche’s Philosophy,” Review of Metaphysics
19.2 (1965): 294–98; Hugh J. Silverman, “The Autobiographical Textuality of Nietzsche’s Ecce
Homo,” boundary 2 9.3 (1981): 145.
18. Pfeffer, “Eternal Recurrence in Nietzsche's Philosophy,” 294.
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302 Brian Domino
19. Max R. Layton, “In Defence of Ecce Homo,” Gnosis: A Journal of Philosophic Interest
1.1 (1973): 86.
20. Nel Grillaert “Determining One’s Fate: A Delineation of Nietzsche’s Conception of Free
Will,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 31 (2006): 54–55.
21. Layton, “In Defence of Ecce Homo,” 86.
22. Aaron Ridley, “Nietzsche’s Greatest Weight,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 14 (1997): 23.
23. Nietzsche does take ownership of eternal recurrence once, namely in Twilight of the Idols
(TI “Ancients” 5).
24. In a forthcoming careful and thought-provoking study that I became aware of as this article
was going to press, Paul Loeb (“Ecce Superhomo: How Zarathustra Became What Nietzsche Was
Not,” in Nietzsche’s “Ecce Homo,” ed. Duncan Large and Nicholas Martin [Berlin: de Gruyter,
forthcoming]) also challenges the equation of amor fati and eternal recurrence, albeit for different
reasons concerning his interpretation of eternal recurrence as allowing the possibility of déjà vu
and transinstantiational memory.
25. Irving Singer, The Creation of Value: Meaning in Life, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2010), xxi. Daniel Chapelle offers a less compact but essentially identical formulation: “the love
of what was and is and will be, for no other sake than its own” (Nietzsche and Psychoanalysis
[Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993], 80).
26. Michel Harr, Nietzsche and Metaphysics (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1996), 128.
27. Bernd Magnus, “Self-Consuming Concepts,” International Studies in Philosophy 21.2
(1989): 69.
28. David Parker makes an even stronger claim: amor fati requires “the strength to forget
all that negates” an abundant life (“Nietzsche’s Ethics and Literary Studies: A Reading of Ecce
Homo,” Cambridge Quarterly 33.4 [2004]: 309–10).
29. Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990), 282.
30. Julian Young, Friedrich Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 18, 501 (“willing), 337, 351 (“desiring”) 531 (“embracing”), 501. Philip
Kain also describes Nietzsche as “embracing” eternal recurrence (“Eternal Recurrence and the
Categorical Imperative,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 45.1 [2007]: 110), a description John
Nolt uses in the title of his essay (“Why Nietzsche Embraced Eternal Recurrence,” History of
European Ideas 34.2 [2008]: 310–23).
31. Michael Casey, Meaninglessness: The Solutions of Nietzsche, Freud, and Rorty (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2002), 34.
32. André Van der Braak, Nietzsche and Zen: Self-Overcoming Without a Self (Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books, 2011), 115.
33. Thiele, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul, 200.
34. The argument for eternal recurrence in Z:III “Vision and Riddle” 2 supplies no empirical
evidence.
35. For example, Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, 245–86, Paul Loeb, “Identity
and Eternal Recurrence,” in A Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson (Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 2006), 171–88, Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche, Life as Literature (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1985), 148ff., and Ivan Soll “Reflections on Recurrence,” in Nietzsche:
A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Robert Solomon (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 973), 323.
See Robert Wicks, “Nietzsche's ‘Yes’ to Life and the Apollonian Neutrality of Existence,”
Nietzsche-Studien 34 (2005): 118, for an interesting twist on the cosmological vs. ethical
interpretations.
36. Cf. Kain, “Eternal Recurrence and the Categorical Imperative.”
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Nietzsche’s Use of Amor Fati in Ecce Homo 303
37. Christa Davis Acampora and Keith Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”:
A Reader’s Guide (New York: Continuum, 2011); Gareth Southwell, A Beginner's Guide to
Nietzsche's “Beyond Good and Evil” (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
38. Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, 282.
39. Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, 282.
40. Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, 282.
41. Michael Ryan doesn’t see the problem in the same way: “Furthermore, Dionysus, the
Dionysian considered as amor fati, that which castration threatens, might also, by converting
accidents into necessities, work to neutralize castration” (“The Act,” Glyph 2 [1977]: 67).
42. Aaron Ridley sees this as “a job for the intellectual conscience,” a claim in need of
substantial unpacking (introduction, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other
Writings [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005], xiii).
43. EH P:2 and 3; EH “Clever” 1, 2, 10; EH “Books” 1, 4, 5; EH “Destiny” 3. Relevant here
are his accounts of mendaciousness: EH P:2; EH “Books” 3; EH “Destiny” 1, 4, 5, and 7.
44. Others have noticed this failure. See Julian Young, Nietzsche's Philosophy of Art
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 151–52, and Parker, “Nietzsche’s Ethics and
Literary Studies,” 310. Robert Solomon reads it as “Nietzsche’s ultimate self-irony” (Living with
Nietzsche: What the Great “Immoralist” Has to Teach Us [Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003], 35). In contrast, Kaufmann finds the picture Nietzsche paints of his own life to be “imbued
with gratitude and love—with amor fati” (editor’s introduction, On The Genealogy of Morals
and Ecce Homo [New York: Vintage, 1969], 206) as does Michael Platt (“Behold Nietzsche,” in
Nietzsche: Critical Assessments, ed. Daniel W. Conway and Peter S. Groff [London: Routledge,
1998], 235, 243).
45. Brian Leiter, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Nietzsche on Morality (London:
Routledge, 2002), 85.
46. Cf. Babette Babich, “Nietzsche’s Imperative as a Friend’s Encomium: On Becoming the
One You Are, Ethics, and Blessing,” Nietzsche-Studien 32 (2003): 30.
47. Ecce Homo: How to Become What You Are, trans. Duncan Large (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007).
48. Letter to August Strindberg, December 7, 1888.
49. Ernest Boyd, introduction, Nana (New York: Modern Library, 1928), vi.
50. Ernes A. Vizetelly, Émile Zola, Novelist and Reformer: An Account of His Life and Work
(New York: John Lane, 1904), 187.
51. Nietzsche is well known for lamenting the state of the reading public. See, e.g., GM P:8.
52. See section 5 of the preface Nietzsche added to Dawn in 1886 for a compact discussion
of his “definition” of philology and the philologist. Note, too, that in the final sentence he
distinguishes between “perfect readers” and “philologists.”
53. Horace, Odes 1.11.8.
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