This week I finished reading Sue Prideaux's I Am Dynamite: A Life of Nietzsche. Alongside this latest Nietzsche biography (in years past I have read Leslie Chamberlain's Nietzsche in Turin and Rüdiger Safranski's Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography), I re-read what amounts to Nietzsche's own idiosyncratic autobiography, Ecce Homo. It is his utter originality that makes Nietzsche so captivating.
Friedrich Nietzsche, by Edvard Munch, 1906
Don't worry. I am not going to go off on a philosophical digression- though one would be fitting today because is the birthday of my dear Ludwig Wittgenstein. I will note that Nietzsche's philosophical project was at the service Amor fati, that is, loving one's fate. In other words, life's agon, struggle, or battle consists not only of accepting your life as it is but of loving it to the point of not desiring it to be otherwise. If you are familiar in the least with Nietzsche's life, he set himself no small task by placing amor fati at the center of his enterprise.
Msgr Luigi Giussani talked about loving your destiny. Now, fate and destiny can be seen as two different things or one can attempt to harmonize the two. In essence, they are the same thing because they refer to where you've been, where you are now, and where are going. Past, present, and future are inextricably linked. Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence, which is the only part of his philosophy that came to him in a revelation-like manner, sought to unravel this intertwining. On first consideration, the difference between fate and destiny is that fate is blind and destiny is guided. Regardless as to whether it is chance or the result of providence, anyone who pays attention to her own life understands that the continuum of past, present, and future consists in far more than mechanistic cause and effect. In other words, even for those of us who adhere to destiny, there is a heavy dose of what we might call chance/luck/fortune that comes into play. Despite what the peddlers of success through time management say, life does not work in the manner of "Do x and y will inevitably follow." Such a view amounts to deception about reality.
Nietzsche found in Bizet's opera Carmen something of an affirmation of all this. In his book The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche sees Carmen as expressing healthy exuberance expressed through the “Mediterraneanization of music.” For him, Carmen represented a “return to nature, health, cheerfulness, youth, virtue!” (The Case of Wagner, sec. 3). Bizet's music “liberates the spirit” and “gives wings to thought” (The Case of Wagner, sec. 2). I don't usually recommend reading the comments for anything on-line, but I loved reading the comments for the Royal Opera production of Carmen from which the aria that is today's traditio is taken. Many of them capture the exuberance that Nietzsche found so appealing. My favorite is- "personally, I wouldn't mind being that guy whose butt she slaps at the end..."
So, on this Friday in the Octave of Easter, love your destiny, which is eternal. Only something or someone infinite can satisfy your infinite longing, a longing that persists and, indeed, grows stronger, rather than being satisfied, when a dream or an aspiration is realized. Sunday afternoon, after the last Mass, I tried to relax but could not. I went to back to the church, entered, then walked around and prayed. I felt restless, but my restlessness seemed confirmed, natural, whole. How can resurrection leave you in anything but an unsettled state?
As indicated, our Friday traditio, which, given the Octave, is really a Sunday traditio, is the aria popularly known as "Habanera." "Habanera" refers to the music or dance of Havana. The actual name of the aria is "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle." In English: "Love is a rebellious bird." Our rebellion against love often consists of hating our fate. Maybe a way of harmonizing fate and destiny is to say that fate is your path to destiny. Where Giussani and Nietzsche converge is Giussani's insistence that you must learn to consciously "use" your fate, your present circumstances, to realize your destiny.
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