2006-02-16T14:13:00.000-08:00

When is love ever not also desire? Don't we desire even the things we already have, knowing we will lose them, eventually? How is it possible to reconcile loving the world exactly as it is from moment to moment, when each moment is different? What kind of love dies with the object of love? In a world where everything is equally beloved, where does justice lie?

2006-01-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

Quotation:

"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 to bear what is
necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacious-
ness in the face of what is necessary—but love it."

Literal explanation:

The Latin phrase means "love of fate." For the writer of the above sentences, what happens in the world necessarily happens. Any attempt to change historical happenstance (to resist it, to will it or wish it were different) is wronghearted. Any desire to circumvent historical actuality demonstrates some detrimental shortcoming of personal character. The ultimate response to the world, as it has taken place and continues to do so, is to LOVE it. Perhaps this love would spell the very end of desire (for the great human being, there would be no OTHER to seek, no difference worth speaking of). Love of this kind could only be opposed to romantic (preferential) love. Moreover, its existence would efface in the individual every impulse toward an ethical "activism" (which seeks some change in the world or oneself). According to the above passage, the principle ethical life is inhabited in keeping with the practice of_amor fati_ .

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