DE Weekly: Amor Fati, Nietzsche, & Sisyphus
Below is an archived email originally sent on July 21, 2025.
Amor Fati, Nietzsche, & Sisyphus
Although existentialism didn’t roll around to officially cement itself as a bona fide philosophy until the twentieth century, earlier philosophies explored proto-existentialist ideas and laid the foundation upon which it would one day sprout from.
One philosophy that has quite a bit in common with existentialism, at least insofar as it seeks to answer many of the same questions, is the ancient philosophy of Stoicism.
Stoicism is a Hellenistic philosophy that had its heyday in ancient Greece and Rome. Its principle beliefs centered around living a life in accordance with nature; this encapsulated both the nature of the world and of human nature.
The Stoics practiced virtuous behaviors and believed they could reason a well-lived life through accepting the realities of life.
One of the most popular works of Stoic philosophy is Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, the Roman Emperor’s personal journal filled with his musings on life. (You’ve probably heard of him.)
Another of the most famous Stoic philosophers, who also lived in Rome around the same time as Marcus Aurelius, was Epictetus. Many of his writings have been just as influential.
There are two big ideas that Epictetus presented: Memento mori, or “remember you must die,” and Amor fati, or “love of (one’s) fate.”
Today, we’ll talk about Amor fati, as this phrase in particular was more closely adopted by the existentialists almost two thousand years later.
Amor fati––love of one’s fate––essentially means that we must accept what happens to us in life. This doesn’t mean we must “like” it when negative things happen; it means we should learn to embrace it, as there is no other way to face up against adversity other than by accepting it.
We can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we react to it. Sometimes, that’s the only thing we can control.
Bad things are going to happen. They are going to happen to us, and they are going to happen to those we love. So, what should we do about it?
We should show strength and resilience, and accept things as they are. If we are suffering or lose somebody close to us, all we can do is honor the circumstances and use it as an opportunity to become stronger, wiser, and smarter.
Choosing to react in this way, totally accepting our fate, is the key to being at peace with the life we live.
As you can gather, such an outlook on life can be radically useful in difficult times. In a way, it’s reframing your outlook on the storms of life and equipping yourself to be able to navigate them.
Friedrich Nietzsche, in his posthumously published Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, adopted amor fati as a useful concept in a section he called “Why I Am So Clever.”
Nietzsche wrote:
“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 mendacity in the face of what is necessary––but love it.”
For him, amor fati was more than just accepting his fate. It was loving it––truly loving it––and greeting everything life threw at him with joyfulness.
Is this really possible to do in all circumstances, even when we are in dire straits? What if we’ve been diagnosed with a terminal disease, or been dealt a physical disability that hinders our ability to function on our own?
Some things are easier to accept than others. But, same as trivial matters, even the serious things we can only respond to with acceptance.
Take The Myth of Sisyphus as an extreme example.
Albert Camus used Homer’s Sisyphus as a presentation of the absurd. Through Sisyphus, Camus illustrated what it’s like to suffer a meaningless existence, separated from the divine, yet still with courage and with acceptance of one’s lot in life.
Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to continually roll a giant boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll back down each time he reaches the top. He must then walk down the mountain, and roll it back up again. For eternity.
What meaning is there in his existence? What rewards for reaching the top of the mountain, what reasons for doing so?
Sisyphus has no reprieve from his fate, no one he can talk to. The gods don’t converse with him and he is left to suffer his fate alone. The only moments of contemplation he has are when he is walking down the mountain to retrieve the boulder again.
Sisyphus must think to himself, Camus suggests, that there is no meaning in this task. But even so, it is his task, his fate; his solely. He has no other options than this. Although it has no apparent purpose, he has no choice––he must go on.
“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart,” writes Camus. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Happy? Sisyphus? That’s exactly right.
In contemplating his fate, he sees that there is meaning in it. His burden is his, and that makes it worth something. His mountain and his boulder… they form a world. Through love of his fate, why can’t Sisyphus be happy?
Nietzsche’s “Yes-sayer” and Camus’s Sisyphus are one and the same. Both show us that we must accept our realities with uncompromising fortitude, embracing it as something we love. No matter how difficult.
“I want to learn more and more to see 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! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.” –– Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
From Homer to Epictetus to Nietzsche to Camus…
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