Amor fati: the Stoic art of accepting, and even loving, what happens

Amor fati is Latin for “love of fate”. The phrase is not an ancient Stoic one: it was made famous by the nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who called it his “formula for greatness”: wishing nothing to be different, and loving what is necessary rather than merely bearing it.¹

But the attitude it names is at the heart of Stoicism. Epictetus put it in one sentence that could serve as a definition:

From accepting to welcoming

There are three levels to this idea, and the Stoics aimed at the highest.

The first is simply not fighting what has already happened. Seneca:

The second is accepting it willingly, as part of a larger order you belong to. Marcus Aurelius reminds himself to do this even when events are unpleasant:

The third is to welcome it, to treat whatever happens as the material you have been given to work with. Marcus again, in one of his shortest entries:

The dog and the cart

The Stoics had a famous image for this, credited to the early Stoics Zeno and Chrysippus: a dog tied to a moving cart can trot along willingly, or it can be dragged, but either way it goes where the cart goes.² Seneca translated a hymn by Cleanthes, the second head of the school, that makes the same point:

Epictetus closed his Enchiridion with the opening of the same prayer, as a thought to keep “at our command” on every occasion.

What it does not mean

Amor fati is easy to misread as passivity: if everything is fate, why try? The Stoics meant nothing of the kind. The dichotomy of control still applies. You act, and act well, on everything that is up to you. What you accept is the outcome, once it is out of your hands.

Nor does it mean pretending bad things are good or feeling nothing. Seneca admits in his letters that he wept “so excessively” for his friend Annaeus Serenus. The point is to stop adding a second injury, the protest that “this should not have happened”, to the first.

And it does not mean giving up on changing the world. It means starting from how things actually are, rather than from how you wish they were. Marcus’s image of the obstacle is the practical form of amor fati:

Why it helps

The benefit is freedom. As long as your peace depends on things going your way, you are at the mercy of everything that could go wrong, which is almost everything. Wanting what actually happens is the one wish that is always granted. That is what Epictetus means when he promises that “your life will be serene”.

How to practise amor fati

1. Catch the protest. Notice when you are thinking “this shouldn’t be happening”. That thought, not the event, is usually the source of the distress.
2. Ask what the situation now asks of you. Not “why me?” but “given this, what is the best thing I can do?”
3. Look for the use. Is there a skill to practise here, such as patience, courage or kindness? Seneca argues in On Providence that hardship is precisely how the good are trained:

4. Look back. Musonius Rufus suggested remembering how many things in your life went against your wishes and turned out well:

Amor fati pairs naturally with memento mori and with resilience. For more passages, see our Stoic quotes on adversity.