Amor fati is a Latin phrase meaning love of fate; in Ecce Homo, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) calls it his “formula for greatness in a human being” (Nietzsche, 1888, Ecce homo, “Warum ich so klug bin” 10). What he means, Nietzsche goes on, is that one wants nothing to be different and does not merely bear what is necessary but loves it (cf. ibid.). Gwendolin Kirchhoff talked about amor fati with her father, the philosopher Jochen Kirchhoff, in her SYMPOSIUM series, in the conversation “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit” (Nietzsche and the Great Health), which has been on her channel since 2024.
#What does amor fati mean?
Amor fati means love of fate: amor is the Latin word for love, fati the genitive of fatum, fate. For Friedrich Nietzsche the formula means more than accepting the inevitable. In Ecce Homo he defines it like this: “that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity” (Nietzsche, 1888, Ecce homo, “Warum ich so klug bin” 10). And he adds: “Not merely to bear what is necessary, still less to conceal it - all idealism is mendaciousness before what is necessary -, but to love it…” (ibid.).
In this sentence merely bearing is not enough for Nietzsche, and concealing he rejects; what he asks for is love. Jochen Kirchhoff, in conversation with his daughter, calls amor fati “a famous formula” and translates it as “the love of one’s own fate” (Kirchhoff, G., 2024, “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, 37:17; 37:18; cf. 37:15–37:20).
#Where does Nietzsche write about amor fati?
Among other places, Nietzsche writes about amor fati in section 276 of The Gay Science of 1882, a section headed “For the New Year”. There he sets out what he wishes for himself: “I want to learn more and more to see what is necessary in things as what is beautiful – thus I will be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love from now on!” (Nietzsche, 1882, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, § 276). He does not want to wage war against what is ugly, does not want to accuse, not even to accuse the accusers; looking away is to be his only negation (cf. ibid.). The section ends: “some day I want to be only a Yes-sayer!” (ibid.).
In Ecce Homo, which Nietzsche wrote in 1888 and which appeared posthumously in 1908, the formula returns twice. In the chapter “Why I Am So Clever” he calls it his formula for greatness in a human being (cf. Nietzsche, 1888, Ecce homo, “Warum ich so klug bin” 10). In the chapter on The Case of Wagner he complains about the Germans and about friends who, he says, never studied his writings, and then writes: “I myself have never suffered from all this; what is necessary does not hurt me; amor fati is my inmost nature.” (ibid., “Der Fall Wagner” 4).
#What does amor fati have to do with eternal recurrence?
As Gwendolin Kirchhoff sums it up, Nietzsche sets the great affirmation and amor fati against the nihilistic will, also in the extreme image of eternal recurrence. In her conversation with Jochen Kirchhoff she sums up, in connection with what Nietzsche sees as health: the nihilistic will, the will directed against life, either somehow wants to dominate life on its own terms or in some form produces depression or suppressed life impulses (cf. Kirchhoff, G., 2024, “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, 24:29–24:46). Against it, in her account, Nietzsche sets this great affirmation and amor fati, also in the extreme image of eternal recurrence (cf. ibid., 24:46–24:54), and holds that if one affirms everything, there is not a single depressive or life-denying spot left in a human being (cf. ibid., 24:53–25:04).
Jochen Kirchhoff says in the same conversation that one then really has to affirm everything; that is how Nietzsche arrives at the “insane thought of eternal recurrence”, as one can also call it (ibid., 18:53; cf. 18:47–18:55).
Nietzsche introduces the thought itself in section 341 of The Gay Science with a question: what if a demon stole after a person into their loneliest loneliness and told them that they would have to live this life once more and innumerable times more (cf. Nietzsche, 1882, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, § 341). If that thought gained power over one, Nietzsche writes, the question “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon one’s actions as the greatest weight (ibid.).
#How does Jochen Kirchhoff read amor fati?
Jochen Kirchhoff reads amor fati as affirming one’s own fate: “I affirm my own fate.” (Kirchhoff, G., 2024, “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, 37:30; cf. 37:30–37:33). Towards the end of the conversation Gwendolin Kirchhoff asks him what one can learn from Nietzsche about vitality and health and what he would want to pass on to the viewers (cf. ibid., 36:21–36:34). Jochen Kirchhoff answers with what he himself has learned: the consistency of his own saying Yes to the values he stands for, an unconditional affirmation and a consistency in affirmation; as far as at all possible, he tries to do that (cf. ibid., 36:34–37:07). Then also an affirmation as a matter of principle: all the Noes have to flow into a Yes (cf. ibid., 37:07–37:13). Then he names amor fati and, “now quite grandly” as he puts it himself (ibid., 37:25; cf. 37:23–37:27), speaks the sentence about his fate. “The way it is, it is right.” (ibid., 37:35). There are moments, he admits, when he thinks: why did it not turn out differently; but in the depths, probably in the metaphysical depths before his birth, there must, he assumes, have been something that already set this direction, and that he affirms (cf. ibid., 37:40–38:00).
Earlier in the conversation Jochen Kirchhoff talks about Nietzsche’s total affirmation: “If I affirm something absolutely, this moment here, for example, then I have affirmed everything that led to this moment.” (ibid., 18:03; cf. 18:02–18:10). All the suffering, all the errors, all the mistakes are present in that moment, he says (cf. ibid., 18:11–18:16). There are always people who say: if only I had done this and that differently, I would be someone else entirely now. The subjunctive is “completely idle”, Jochen Kirchhoff says (ibid., 18:34; cf. 18:19–18:35). In the end one is who one is, because everything became the way it became; one cannot want to go back into the past (cf. ibid., 18:38–18:47).
That, too, is health, Jochen Kirchhoff says at that point, affirming everything, suffering included, and immediately asks whether that is masochistic (cf. ibid., 18:55–19:06). Towards the end of the conversation he says that suffering is not to be affirmed in that sense; rather, one goes through suffering (cf. ibid., 38:20–38:26).
#Did we will our own fate?
Whether one willed everything one has done is something Jochen Kirchhoff plays through in a later SYMPOSIUM conversation as a thought one can think without asserting it. His starting point is an idea which, by his own account, he put forward “rather half playfully” in his book Die Anderswelt (The Otherworld, 2002) (Kirchhoff, G., 2025, “Was ist der Sinn des Lebens?”, 31:42; cf. 31:33–31:45): to imagine that one has oneself been thrust out of a future into the present (cf. ibid., 32:17–32:32). Building on it, he says one can imagine having willed everything one did in life oneself, from a higher vantage point, like a script one wrote oneself and lives by (cf. ibid., 32:46–33:12). It may be that life, apart from individual factors, ultimately always arises anew; but it may also be that there is a basic script which the individual co-wrote before birth, or in which they at least had a part (cf. ibid., 33:30–34:05).
He is not claiming that it is so, Jochen Kirchhoff stresses: “I am only saying one can think the thought.” (ibid., 34:35; cf. 34:32–34:39). Where freedom would remain then, and whether there is little or more room for play, he calls highly interesting questions (cf. ibid., 34:53–35:02). Nietzsche is not mentioned at this point. A different sense of birth, the not-yet-born in human emotional life, is described in the entry Pre-Birth. Fate as a web of connections greater than we are, and divine necessity, Ananke, are discussed in the entry on Fate.
#Is amor fati a Stoic idea?
In the passages this entry quotes, Nietzsche does not invoke the Stoics for amor fati; on the Stoics themselves he passes a sharp judgement in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). In the very first chapter he mocks their principle of living according to nature: “Oh you noble Stoics, what a fraud of words!” (Nietzsche, 1886, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, § 9). The Stoics wanted to prescribe their own morality and their ideal to nature, Nietzsche says, and he sums it up: “Stoicism is self-tyranny” (ibid.).
In Ecce Homo the weight of the formula falls on love: not merely to bear what is necessary but to love it (cf. Nietzsche, 1888, Ecce homo, “Warum ich so klug bin” 10). How Nietzsche describes the decay of inherited values is traced in the entry Nihilism.
#What can amor fati ask of your own life?
Above all, amor fati raises the question of how far your own affirmation reaches. Jochen Kirchhoff asks it in the conversation about Nietzsche’s affirmation, turning it back to personal experience: “What do I affirm? And how far does my affirmation go?” (Kirchhoff, G., 2024, “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit”, 25:22; cf. 25:20–25:26).
For philosophical conversation, this entry suggests taking up the formula as a question, not as a rule. Where do you talk about your life in the subjunctive: if only I had, if only I were? What would you have to cut out of your story for it to please you, and would you still be who you are without that piece? Do you bear what is necessary, conceal it, or can you love it? Such a conversation decides nothing about any suffering; it asks about your relation to what has happened to you.
How Jochen Kirchhoff reads Nietzsche’s Yes as health is traced in the entry Great Health; the No that first needs something outside itself is described in the entry Ressentiment. Zarathustra’s teaching of the overman is traced in the entry Übermensch. What Nietzsche wanted is examined in the essay What Did Nietzsche Really Want?.
#Sources
- Nietzsche, F. (1882). Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science). Chemnitz: Ernst Schmeitzner. Quoted from zeno.org, http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/Die+fr%C3%B6hliche+Wissenschaft (§ 276, § 341). English translations our own.
- Nietzsche, F. (1888). Ecce homo. Wie man wird, was man ist. Written 1888, first published Leipzig: Insel-Verlag, 1908. Quoted from Projekt Gutenberg-DE (“Warum ich so klug bin” 10; “Der Fall Wagner” 4). English translations our own.
- Nietzsche, F. (1886). Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Beyond Good and Evil). Quoted from Projekt Gutenberg-DE (first chapter, “Von den Vorurtheilen der Philosophen”, § 9). English translations our own.
- Kirchhoff, G. (2024). “Nietzsche und die Große Gesundheit – Ein Gespräch mit Jochen Kirchhoff – SYMPOSIUM” [Video, German]. YouTube, 19 October 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS8vCl4BkvI (conversation partner: Jochen Kirchhoff).
- Kirchhoff, G. (2025). “Was ist der Sinn des Lebens? – Ein Gespräch mit Jochen Kirchhoff – SYMPOSIUM” [Video, German]. YouTube, 29 June 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjDEu6-D0vg (conversation partner: Jochen Kirchhoff).
- Kirchhoff, J. (2002). Die Anderswelt. Eine Annäherung an die Wirklichkeit. Klein Jasedow: Drachen Verlag.
