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Saying Yes To Being: Sartre's Amor Fati, Ann Taylor

Ann Connolly

In The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche introduces the idea of amor fati, or “love of fate,” an idea that he further explores in Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Ecce Homo. This idea of amor fati seems in some ways another formulation of eternal recurrence: how can one will that which already is, that over which we have no control, that which is necessary? On one level, it addresses the literal possibility of eternal recurrence, as well as commonly held ideas about fate and destiny. On another level, however, it addresses the bare fact of being human- that being …