Nietzsche's radical guide to a joyful life (Amor Fati explained)

I promise you this concept can change your life if you only give it the chance what do you associate with friederick ner is it his famous phrase God is dead and we have killed him is it his criticism of morality societal role is it just a vague memory of him being really edgy and having a big mustache whatever it is I bet it's not his concept of amarti which I think is the most underrated part of his philosophy and it is a genuinely lifechanging idea so what is amarati one loving life amarati translates to loving

one's fate and it's a development from a much earlier stoic idea the stoics thought that whatever happened that was outside of our control we should just learn to accept rather than let it burn us up inside this is what gives us images like the noble soldier who is unwavering in his courage even as he's led to the Executioner block but nature was unsatisfied with this mere acceptance he wanted to go one step further he wanted us to not just accept our Fates but actively love it he wanted us to energetically take it in our arms

embrace it hug it kiss it it and be grateful for its existence if you break your leg nature says that you should still love life love your fate love the fact that your leg is broken and this is not just a passive attitude this is an active one for nature you must be genuinely and energetically grateful that the leg is broken and may even jump or in this case Hop For Joy about it n recommended this attitude because he had a very very particular philosophy on life he held that any experience good or bad Pleasant

or unpleasant had the potential to lead to a richer experience of life itself self unlike other philosophers such as Jeremy benam who thought that life was good if it led to pleasure n valued the complexity or the fullness of Life over it being merely Pleasant whatever you think of this as a philosophy it certainly allowed n to do and argue things that a thinker like benam could not it allowed him to say that life was worth living in any circumstance and it allowed him to assign value to experiences that may initially seem to have no

upsides at all as n puts it my formula for greatness in a human being is Amor FY 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 but love it so now we know what N means by amorti or at least as much as anyone can know what N means by anything but what can it do for us if you want more on philosophy and the art of learning then subscribe to my email list the link is in the description two

positive suffering n viewed it as a great strength of his doctrine of amatti that we can turn suffering into a positive and edifying experience by truly believing that it's worth loving my favorite example of this that a lot of people can already relate to is being at the gym when you're working out you are sweating you will feel pain in your muscles and fear at the next set of Weights but despite this seasoned Veterans of the gym describe it as an overwhelmingly positive experience this is because they recognize the pain itself as a sign of

muscle growth the suffering is the point of the exercise if it were easy then they would not be achieving what they want to achieve they would not be doing what they want to do amarti allows you to do this on a much wider scale it a achieves this by changing the evaluative terms for your experiences rather than asking is this experience Pleasant or not you ask how can I love this experience and then you do your best to find a way to do it n had to make great use of this principle in his own

life when he was bedridden for months due to illness he said he turned this experience into a positive one by making his suffering the fire that fueled his thinking I myself happen to suffer from a pretty painful chronic illness and I turn to n's idea of amarti when things are truly awful because without it I would struggle to see the point in going on and N is not arguing this in a trit everything happens for a reason sort of way almati is not a fully rationally held belief in fact it's not really a view he

argues for on the basis that life is actually worth loving he instead frames it as a sort of philosophical therapy that will prevent you from going insane since we're stuck with life we may as well love it for it is the only sensible thing to do and we all suffer at various points in our life there is not a single person on this Earth who has never experienced sadness or fear or loss or pain in fact if they had not experienced any of those things they would probably bear the suffering of boredom instead and they'd

be no better off n here is your philosophical psychotherapist and amarati is his prescribed medicine considering the Alternatives I suggest we swallow his pill three creative freedom here I want to focus on the active energetic nature of amarati it is not simply lying back and taking one's fate willingly but embracing it with both hands this Hands-On approach to face not only allows you to emotionally love it but also puts you in a good position to shape it n did not think that loving your fate meant letting life happen to you but thought it was the

way to seize it most fully after all what are the emotions that lead to sluggishness and lack of action they are despair sadness and frustration and these are all exacerbated by despising one's Fate by contrast being loving and energetic in that love is a great stimulus for action and this action will help you shape your life in whatever Direction you want within reason of course imagine someone who has truly managed to embrace ory and they will love their life no matter what happens to them that person has the biggest and most resilient emotional safety net

anyone could ask for they do not need to fear failure or fear their life blowing up in their face they are free to approach life in whatever creative way feels best to them they are truly liberated not only from societal constraints but from the constraints imposed on them by their own emotional reactions in his other works ner hints at this mythical figure who has managed to fully internalize the concept of amarati among some of his other Concepts n speaks of a type of person that he affectionately dubs the child the child is the embodiment of

the type of person n thinks could exist in this post-enlightenment world the child is spontaneous creative joyful and is fully liberated in their desires they do not feel societal constraints but pursue life with all of the innocent Wonder of a toddler this is what theoretically might arise from a full Embrace of amarati I also think there's a good chance that it might be impossible to achieve but even if we can never reach the heights of n's child that does not mean that we can't taste some some of the liberary fruits of amorti four an antidote

to resentment think about how much of our lives are wasted in resentment I personally know an elderly couple from my childhood who are just eaten up with resentment at one another they keep score of one another's misdeeds Envy one another's successors and do everything they can to bring one another down all while professing to love one another and for what neither of them actually gains anything by this Arrangement but they just cannot stand to see one another succeed it isn't even that they particularly enjoy watching one another fail it just prevents their misery from growing

even deeper Roots such is the life of someone consumed with resentment but nich's amarati is his antidote to such an awful existence one non-obvious consequence of amarati is that since other people's actions do form your fate what with being outside of your direct control you must also love what other people do and this by default bars off resentment loving fate itself does sort of entail loving the fate of other people which also entails being happy for someone when they succeed this goes doubly for friends who you're already emotionally invested in in affirming your life you

simultaneously affirm the lives of the people around you even if they would not consider their lives worth living you do I've long wondered whether there's an inverse to the German concept of shardon freuder the pleasure that is felt at another's pain that is I've wondered whether we can reliably feel pleasure at another's pleasure imagine the potential enjoyment on offer here if you could feel pleasure whenever someone else was having a good time you would have a whole world's worth of delights available to you at any moment after all just as there's always someone somewhere who

is suffering there's always someone somewhere who's having the best day of their life I think that n's concept of amoa along with some other ideas like the Buddhist conception of loving kindness can really help here and it also seems very difficult to feel resentment when you're fully in love with your own fate resentment is at least partly caused by being dissatisfied with your lot in life and amarati allows you to be both perfectly content with what you have yet still strive for more you can be full of gratitude and yet throw yourself wholeheartedly into ambition

treating it like a fun game this may seem like a contradiction in terms but n makes it all hold together with his concept of amorti five the affirmation of Life ultimately the main benefit of amatti is exactly what it says on the tin it is the greatest affirmation of life one can give and this is the source of all of its other benefits and this is also where n professes to break with almost all of the classic philosophical cannon from Socrates to aquinus to schopenhauer most philosophers before nature took some sort of pessimistic view on

this life they saw it as either a precur to a life that is much better or had a generally negative view of life on Earth as in the case of shophow n saw this as a sign of madness he saw it as the natural human states to love life and thought these philosophers were essentially mentally ill and nature would probably see this mental illness everywhere in today's world I'm always struck by the conception of Life shown by many on social media and I know I do sound like an old man but bear with me there

is a fixation on the elements of life that most people would find awful a general lack of personal meaning and a view that optimism about life is some somehow the standpoint of the fool we are to a certain extent living in a world of shoing house without a joyful face in sight amarati challenges us to be that joyful face and raise our joyful voice to say that even in the darest of circumstances life is worth living to follow our basest instinct to continue struggling on even when times are genuinely horrible and to always say yes

to each passing day no matter how bad it gets because of the simple idea that life is always something worth affirming this doesn't mean that we shy away from hardship or ignore suffering and struggle but rather that we kick against the reflex to reject life in the face of it being deeply unpleasant and instead run towards life not away from it and this is what makes amarati so hard to talk about it is to a certain extent a deeply irrational Doctrine if you sat me down for a hundred years I wouldn't be able to come

up with a conclusive justification for it based on facts in the world characteristically of n he is appealing to something between rationality and instinct amarti is something you can only halfway be convinced of the rest is a leap of faith and a stubborn refusal to let life convince you that it is a curse rather than the ultimate blessing subscribe to both my channel and my email list for more on thinking to improve your life