Trajectory (plain list)
Amor fati
From the New Year wish of 1882 through the ordeal of recurrence to the late formula of greatness: wishing nothing different, necessity loved rather than endured.
1882 · Introduces
The Joyful Science · §276 · For the New Year
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
New Year’s wish: Amor fati — to want only to be a yea-sayer, beautifying the necessary.
_For the New Year._—I still live, I still think; I must still live, for I must still think. _Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum._ To-day everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favourite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself to-day, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,—a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in…
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1882 · Develops
The Joyful Science · §341 · The Heaviest Burden
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
The heaviest burden tests whether affirmation can love even the eternal return of every pain.
_The Heaviest Burden._—What if a demon crept after thee into thy loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to thee: "This life, as thou livest it at present, and hast lived it, thou must live it once more, and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh, and all the unspeakably small and great in thy life must come to thee again, and all in the same series and sequence—and similarly this spi…
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1882 · Anticipates
The Joyful Science · §285 · Excelsior!
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
Before the name, Excelsior already refuses ultimate repose — the demand that will later become love of necessity.
_Excelsior!_—"Thou wilt never more pray, never more worship, never more repose in infinite trust—thou refusest to stand still and dismiss thy thoughts before an ultimate wisdom, an ultimate virtue, an ultimate power,—thou hast no constant guardian and friend in thy seven solitudes—thou livest without the outlook on a mountain that has snow on its head and fire in its heart—there is no longer any requiter for thee, nor any amender with his finishing touch—there is no longer an…
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1882 · Develops
The Joyful Science · §290
The Joyful Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 1882/87)
Affirmation as craft: giving style to character under a self-imposed law of necessity.
_One Thing is Needful._—To "give style" to one's character—that is a grand and a rare art! He who surveys all that his nature presents in its strength and in its weakness, and then fashions it into an ingenious plan, until everything appears artistic and rational, and even the weaknesses enchant the eye—exercises that admirable art. Here there has been a great amount of second nature added, there a portion of first nature has been taken away:—in both cases with long exercise …
Sources: gutenberg:52881
1885 · Develops
Thus Spoke Zarathustra · IV, The Drunken Song
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85)
Joy’s hunger for eternity stages the affective core of loving fate rather than merely enduring it.
1. Meanwhile one after another had gone out into the open air, and into the cool, thoughtful night; Zarathustra himself, however, led the ugliest man by the hand, that he might show him his night-world, and the great round moon, and the silvery water-falls near his cave. There they at last stood still beside one another; all of them old people, but with comforted, brave hearts, and astonished in themselves that it was so well with them on earth; the mystery of the night, how…
Das Nachtwandler-Lied 1. Inzwischen aber war Einer nach dem Andern hinaus getreten, in’s Freie und in die kühle nachdenkliche Nacht; Zarathustra selber aber führte den hässlichsten Menschen an der Hand, dass er ihm seine Nacht-Welt und den grossen runden Mond und die silbernen Wasserstürze bei seiner Höhle zeige. Da …
Sources: gutenberg:1998 · gutenberg:7205
1885 · Develops
Thus Spoke Zarathustra · Z-IV-the-drunken-song-10
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85)
Joy’s logic: to say Yea to one joy is to say Yea also unto all woe.
Ye higher men, what think ye? Am I a soothsayer? Or a dreamer? Or a drunkard? Or a dream-reader? Or a midnight-bell? Or a drop of dew? Or a fume and fragrance of eternity? Hear ye it not? Smell ye it not? Just now hath my world become perfect, midnight is also midday,— Pain is also a joy, curse is also a blessing, night is also a sun,—go away! or ye will learn that a sage is also a fool. Said ye ever Yea to one joy? O my friends, then said ye Yea also unto ALL woe. All thi…
Sources: gutenberg:1998
1886 · Develops
Beyond Good and Evil · §56
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
The da capo ideal: wanting the piece again as it was and is — amor fati under the mask of world-affirmation.
Whoever, like myself, prompted by some enigmatical desire, has long endeavoured to go to the bottom of the question of pessimism and free it from the half-Christian, half-German narrowness and stupidity in which it has finally presented itself to this century, namely, in the form of Schopenhauer's philosophy; whoever, with an Asiatic and super-Asiatic eye, has actually looked inside, and into the most world-renouncing of all possible modes of thought--beyond good and evil, an…
Wer, gleich mir, mit irgend einer räthselhaften Begierde sich lange darum bemüht hat, den Pessimismus in die Tiefe zu denken und aus der halb christlichen, halb deutschen Enge und Einfalt zu erlösen, mit der er sich diesem Jahrhundert zuletzt dargestellt hat, nämlich in Gestalt der Schopenhauerischen Philosophie; wer w…
Sources: gutenberg:4363 · gutenberg:7204
1888 · Revises
Ecce Homo · Why I Am So Clever §10
Ecce Homo (1888)
Formula for greatness: wishing nothing different, forward or backward — necessity not concealed but loved.
You may be wondering why I should actually have related all these trivial and, according to traditional accounts, insignificant details to you; such action can but tell against me, more particularly if I am fated to figure in great causes. To this I reply that these trivial matters--diet, locality, climate, and one's mode of recreation, the whole casuistry of; self-love--are inconceivably more important than, all that which has hitherto been held in high esteem! It is precise…
Sources: gutenberg:52190
1888 · Comments on
Ecce Homo · Why I Am So Clever §10 → The Joyful Science · §276 · For the New Year
Ecce Homo (1888)
Late formula names what GS 276 wished: greatness as wishing nothing different.
You may be wondering why I should actually have related all these trivial and, according to traditional accounts, insignificant details to you; such action can but tell against me, more particularly if I am fated to figure in great causes. To this I reply that these trivial matters--diet, locality, climate, and one's mode of recreation, the whole casuistry of; self-love--are inconceivably more important than, all that which has hitherto been held in high esteem! It is precise…
Sources: gutenberg:52190