These Simple Words Can Change How You Think About The Past - Nietzsche

this video is sponsored by the book summary app blinkist if right now you were told that you would relive this life exactly how it has gone and exactly how it will go with all its ups and downs fortunes and tragedies pleasures and pains over and over for eternity what would you think would you be terrified would you want to change it would you be happy with it what could you do or think to make it okay and perhaps even desirable 19th century philosopher friedrich nietzsche used the version of this contemplation as a sort of thought experiment referred to as the eternal recurrence in part to consider and explore one of his important philosophical tenets known as amurfati the phrase amurphati is latin for love of one's fate this concept is recognized to have first been referenced and discussed in the philosophical work of stoic philosophers epictetus and marcus aurelius however nietzsche would be the first to explicitly use and focus on the phrase molding and integrating it as a unique important value of his philosophy he would most notably discuss the idea in his books the gay science echo homo as well as throughout other works notes and letters by this point in his life nietzsche had retreated to the swiss alps and was experiencing what one could easily infer as a period of deep self-reflection over a life that was spiked with hardships and failures he had fled from his family and career in academia to find independence and pursue freelance writing however he would not escape the reverberating negative effects of his family nor could he find success in his writing he lost friendships romances and soon to be his mind his health waned worse and worse throughout his mid-life as a result of various ailments and he would frequently be bedridden and in pain his work was essentially all he had and it was not enough at least at the time his books did not sell well and his philosophy went mostly unnoticed his life was beset with failure after failure misery after misery until he died a relatively horrible death of course we now know that following nietzsche's death he would go on to become a massive global success rising to prominence as arguably one of the greatest philosophical minds to ever live and so how did such a brilliant philosophical mind deal with such a failure-ridden dreadful existence he attempted to philosophize it to derive wisdom and understanding from it he concepted and integrated his view of amur fatih for nietzsche when referring to amor fati he is arguably talking more generally about the loving of one's life the term love is also essential here as a key nuance to his usage it suggests more than a stoic acceptance and rather an almost enthusiastic and total adoration it is a sentiment or rather a declaration against a tendency to regret to assume one could have retained more control over the outcomes and conditions of their reality to have done differently to have known any better to have found that an existence void of particular negatives would have ultimately netted more positive and instead to love and embrace all of life exactly how it is with all the good and the bad the success and the failure the satisfaction and the pain my formula for human greatness is amurfati nietzsche writes that one wants nothing to be different not in the future not in the past not for all eternity not only to endure what is necessary still less to conceal it all idealism is falseness in the face of necessity but to love it naturally and understandably we tend to find ourselves doing the opposite deluded by the mirage of hindsight and wishful thinking it seems as though there are options to have done differently for things to go differently to be better we regret and yearn for otherness in a theoretical sense this may be true there were potential different options to choose from in the past and different potential ways for things to go in the future but in this reality the one we must live there was no option to have done differently and there is no other way for things to go every decision you've made is the best and only decision you could have made at the time with the information you had and the state of mind you were in and every condition of life that either these decisions led to or that are fundamental to life in general you have no control over and cannot change to regret or desire to go back and edit the past assumes that the things we wish to change presumably things we perceive and interpret as negative are in the bigger picture purely negative or somehow avoidable in an equivalent sense it assumes that one could know what is truly and ultimately best how things would have gone if they went differently and that somehow one would not still find themselves in a likely similar state of regret and loathing if they did it is not necessarily that life could have been different that is the problem but that we resist finding the beauty and how it inevitably has gone resenting or fighting against what has happened to you or because of you only brings additional misery onto the now exasperating and adding more to resent and resist like pouring a gasoline of regret onto a fire of unchangeable circumstances we only unnecessarily intensify the flames the true challenge and task of life for nietzsche is to fall in love with what you are actually experiencing right now as it is in all the ways it is i want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things then i shall be one of those who make things beautiful amurfati 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 someday i wish to be only a yes sayer nietzsche wrote this overcoming of regret and loathing and resistance the question posed in nietzsche's eternal recurrence of whether or not you would want to live your life over whether or not you love or could love your life is not at all obvious or easy in the previous quote it should be noted that it concludes with the words someday i wish to be arguably nietzsche alluded to it as a task of existence because of how difficult and perhaps unlikely it is for most people to say yes to perhaps the notion of amorphati is more of an ideal that nietzsche establishes to strive toward ultimately to experience the moments of treachery and loneliness failure and disaster loss and death and all the rest that pervades existence and to still say yes i love it is perhaps impossible in a specific case by case sense but perhaps in certain moments of high enough spirits sufficiently distanced from misfortune it is possible to practice a certain love for the whole of it and for nietzsche achieving this is the greatest affirmation of life which can then be used to construct the lens through which we see the beauty in everything and more frequently arrive at that resounding yes ultimately the question may not be how much you love your life right now but how much you could and how and perhaps sometimes the only way to experience the beauty of things is to think about things in a beautiful way throughout his career nietzsche wrote extensively about the value of self-overcoming achievement vitality and power the constant defining and accomplishment of new goals set forth in the image of what one views as their ideal self and yet interestingly and at first pass almost contradictorily the focus of amorfati offers a much gentler and more passive sentiment however amurphati need not deny the notion of trying to overcome and accomplish of trying to thrash and swim against the current of existence and achieve things within it or control where it takes us rather one's fate includes this it includes trying to overcome life's conditions and failing in some ultimate sense and arguably this idea of amorphati was in its own right an overcoming of nietzsche's as well as potentially for those who adopt it an overcoming of this ultimate conclusion of self-overcoming the unattainable ideal self and ideal life amorphati is a sentiment of willingness to accept at last the way things have gone and will go to love a life that tries in almost every moment to make you hate it and to still stare back at it and say yes i love it what's scarier than an opponent who smiles while being beaten and perhaps because of that nietzsche remains arguably one of the most notable and dynamic philosophers of all time [Music] this video was sponsored by blinkist the absurdity of regret aside one thing many people do tend to likely wish they had done more of by the end of their life as engage more actively in their personal curiosities and passions with the book summary app blinkist you can easily and efficiently engage in the plethora of literature on the world and make the decision now to do it later in those foolish but sometimes unavoidable moments of regret you might wish you had done blinkist works by taking thousands of non-fiction books and condensing them into convenient 15-minute summaries these summaries can be both read or listened to even while you're offline blinkist has over 27 categories so whether you're interested in philosophy psychology science finance or whatever else blinkist has titles for just about anyone if you're interested in learning more about nietzsche blinkist has i am dynamite a biography written about him by super doe as well as beyond good and evil and original work written by nietzsche blinkist is perfect for those who want to engage in books without sacrificing too much time for heavier readers who want to optimize their search and discovery of new books or readers who would benefit from more easily returning to and refreshing themselves on books they've already read the first 100 people to use the link in the description will receive one free week of unlimited access as well as 25 off a full membership the free seven-day trial can be canceled at any time within the trial period and of course as always thank you so much for watching in general and see you next video you

Channel: Pursuit of Wonder

Views: 2,084,274

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Id: P6wH7bXG09k

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 01 2021