Fate, in Gwendolin Kirchhoff’s account, is a web of connections greater than we are. In her fourth conversation with Elisa Gratias, on the Odyssey (2026), she calls it a very large picture: “that fate is greater than we are, that there are connections we cannot see the whole of” (Kirchhoff, 2026, Das Schicksal ist größer als wir, 31:36). Of divine necessity, in Greek Ananke, she says that it applies to everyone, relentlessly and without exception. We cannot steer the forces at work in the whole of what happens, she says; we can name them, as far as we recognise them.
#What does it mean that fate is greater than we are?
That fate is greater than we are means, for Gwendolin Kirchhoff, that there are connections which exceed us and take us into their service. She says this in the Odyssey conversation when asked what a person today can take away from Homer’s hero’s journey and from Christopher Nolan’s film. We are, she says, shaped in an entrepreneurial way by a culture of optimisation and productivity that expects the individual to take their fate into their own hands (cf. Kirchhoff, 2026, Das Schicksal ist größer als wir, 31:19–31:32). Against this she sets connections “which far exceed us and which seize us and which we have to accept and by which we are taken into service, whether we want it or not” (ibid., 31:50). She herself, she adds, cannot see the whole of these connections either (cf. ibid., 31:43–31:47).
That, according to Kirchhoff, can give a certain peace and above all a view outwards (cf. ibid., 32:02–32:12). In bourgeois modernity people are very busy looking inwards, into the box of the psyche, at everything there that is supposed to be optimised; outwards there is at most a market (cf. ibid., 32:11–32:26). It is something completely different to let the world as a whole phenomenon speak to us and to let it be greater than we are. She sees this relation to being lost above all through a doer’s mentality that treats everything as within our reach, although not everything is within our reach, or should be (cf. ibid., 32:25–33:04). Sometimes the wisest answer is to refrain from interfering and first to perceive something and hold oneself back (cf. ibid., 33:13–33:29).
Later in the conversation she puts the limit briefly: “We can name them, the forces at work, to the extent that we recognise them, but we cannot steer them.” (ibid., 42:33)
#Why is fate impartial?
Fate is impartial because, in Gwendolin Kirchhoff’s reading of the Greeks, it is the same towards everyone: “Fate is the same towards everyone.” (Kirchhoff, 2026, Das Schicksal ist größer als wir, 23:46) She shows this with the Trojan War. Nolan’s film, she says, presents the Greeks as the evil ones and the Trojans as the pure ones; in the Greek original, fate acts on both alike (cf. ibid., 20:19–20:34). “And both are determined by the same fate, by the same gods.” (ibid., 20:52) Even the victors of Troy, as she tells it, did not come home without consequences: Agamemnon was killed by his wife, Odysseus came home a beggar (cf. ibid., 23:05–23:29). “Fate is, so to speak, impartial.” (ibid., 23:28)
The Greeks, Kirchhoff says, see connections of retribution: forefathers commit a wrong that sons or grandsons must atone for (cf. ibid., 21:49–22:29). She recalls the saying attributed to Anaximander; in her rendering, things make amends to one another for the injustice according to the order of time (cf. Anaximander, as rendered in Kirchhoff, 2026, Das Schicksal ist größer als wir, 21:55–22:17). She puts it more sharply herself: “The dead, with their wishes for retribution, extend their rule into the realm of the living, and the living have to settle accounts, again and again.” (ibid., 22:51) And: “The settling of accounts overtakes everyone, absolutely everyone.” (ibid., 23:00)
Instead of dividing the world into good and evil, Kirchhoff asks other questions. One might rather see “what strands of fate do we set in motion through our deeds?” (ibid., 24:01), and ask: “What wants to happen through us? What settling of accounts wants to happen through us?” (ibid., 24:13)
#What does Ananke mean?
Ananke is the Greek word for necessity. Gwendolin Kirchhoff speaks of divine necessity and stresses that it holds without exception: “divine necessity, in Greek Ananke, applies to everyone, and it applies relentlessly; there are no exceptions.” (Kirchhoff, 2026, Das Schicksal ist größer als wir, 44:16) Even a person we like, whose side we are inclined to take, can, if they expose themselves to forces of fate in a certain way, meet exactly the same consequences as anyone else (cf. ibid., 44:22–44:42).
Plato gave Necessity a form in the myth of Er at the end of the Republic. The spindle by which all the spheres are moved is turned between her knees, and around her sit her daughters, the Fates Lachesis, Clotho and Atropos; Lachesis sings of the past, Clotho of the present, Atropos of the future (cf. Plato, Republic X, 616c–617c). A prophet speaks to the souls in Lachesis’ name: “it is not your life’s destiny that chooses you by lot; you choose your destiny yourselves.” (ibid., 617d–e) Kirchhoff recounts the scene in the Odyssey conversation: in a near-death experience Er sees the regions beyond, and there sees how people choose their life’s fate themselves, through a lot from Lachesis (cf. Kirchhoff, 2026, Das Schicksal ist größer als wir, 28:24–28:47). The soul of Odysseus chooses last and, remembering its earlier labours, looks for the life of a private man far from affairs of state (cf. Plato, Republic X, 620c–d); Kirchhoff reads this as an image of something in Odysseus having been worn away (cf. Kirchhoff, 2026, Das Schicksal ist größer als wir, 29:16–29:27). Whether fate is predetermined, and how necessity and freedom go together, is treated in the entry on Determinism.
Kirchhoff finds the same element, one that remains greater than us and cannot be controlled, among the Chinese as well. There yin and yang constantly alternate, everything is caught up in continual change, and the noble person withdraws when it is time, steps forward when it is time, and goes with the course of things, which is greater than he is (cf. Kirchhoff, 2026, Das Schicksal ist größer als wir, 48:23–49:01). The entry on the I Ching introduces the Chinese Book of Changes, the entry on Dharma the Indian thinking of cosmic law, and the entry on Amor fati Nietzsche’s formula of the love of fate.
#What does Greek tragedy show about fate?
Greek tragedy shows, according to Gwendolin Kirchhoff, that we are exposed to a great context we cannot influence (cf. Kirchhoff, 2026, Das Schicksal ist größer als wir, 24:47–25:00). She arrives there through three questions: “how do actions take effect? What comes back to me? What do I have to pay for what I have done? Some day.” (ibid., 24:40) Then follows: “And that is, after all, the birth of Greek tragedy.” (ibid., 24:47)
Her example is Oedipus, who tries to escape his fate. There is an oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother, and his parents abandon him; precisely by doing so they create the conditions under which he later strikes down his father and marries his mother. The oracle stays true (cf. ibid., 24:59–25:22). Odysseus too, she says, was told that he could only return home to Ithaca once he had lost all his men; how it would come about, the seer tells him. He has to pay an unbelievable price for what he has done (cf. ibid., 25:22–25:40). How myth stands beside the concept as a way of grasping reality in its own right is taken further in the entry on Myth and Logos.
#What does it mean to respect another person’s fate?
Gwendolin Kirchhoff gives an answer from family constellation work (Familienaufstellung): when a burden taken on out of love is handed back, she gives the sentence “I respect your fate and I leave it with you.” (Kirchhoff, 2024, Systemic Family Constellations, 32:46) In this introduction to systemic family constellations (2024) she describes how children who see that their mother or father is sad take this into themselves and think they could resolve it; this, she says, creates an entanglement, because the child cannot resolve what it takes on (cf. ibid., 31:32–32:05). Handing such a burden back can be carried out bodily in a constellation: one holds a heavy object until one feels how heavy it is and gives it back to the other person (cf. ibid., 32:12–32:40). She calls this handing over of the burden very important, “for I cannot make another person’s fate my own.” (ibid., 32:40) Among the things one learns from constellation work she counts “bowing before the fate of others, not taking everything on oneself” (ibid., 45:36), and also that the actual movement towards resolution is present in the room (cf. ibid., 45:46–45:53).
How such a bond arises and comes undone is set out in the entry on Entanglement and Resolution; what is handed down across generations, in the entry on Transgenerational Transmission. How a burden taken on can be given back is described in the essay How to Stop Feeling Guilty. Whether karma is the same as fate is taken up in the entry on karma.
#Sources
- Kirchhoff, G. & Gratias, E. (2026). «Das Schicksal ist größer als wir» Gwendolin Walter-Kirchhoff über Christopher Nolan und das Leben (“Fate is greater than we are”: Gwendolin Walter-Kirchhoff on Christopher Nolan and life) [Video]. TransitionTV, YouTube, 18 September 2026. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smlQFizE8Lg All times refer to this TransitionTV version; the Manova version Die Odyssee (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjtervR5tR4) has different times.
- Kirchhoff, G. (2024). Systemisches Familienstellen (nach Bert Hellinger), eine Einführung – SYMPOSIUM (Systemic Family Constellations after Bert Hellinger: An Introduction) [Video]. YouTube, 28 August 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwd1x1RzNoE
- Plato. Republic (Politeia), Book X, 616c–620d (the myth of Er). Translated from the German text in Platon: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 2, Berlin [1940], pp. 400–405, at zeno.org.
