In summary, Nietzsche has grouped the sublime together with all other “higher feelings” which are bred from an attitude of life-negation. As such, he pits himself against all previous theorists including, of course, Schiller. However, as we’ve seen from our treatment of the latter, his endorsement of the sublime was a consequence of his very Nietzschean life affirmative stance! We are left with a problem: How can Nietzsche endorse an approach of amor fati, a position which, as we’ve seen from Schiller, places the will in a position to judge nature — in other words, a moral position — without also accepting man’s place exalted above nature? In order to begin to resolve this problem, we need to take a closer look at how Nietzsche himself evaluates the existence of nature all together.

In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche tells the story of how “the ‘true world’ finally became a fable” (The Portable Nietzsche, p. 485). From the outset, it is assumed that the “true world,” what might be equated with the noumenal, is in fact a myth. In other words, by surrounding “true world” in scare quotes, Nietzsche is referencing his perspectivalistic [1] position that claims that there is no world-in-itself. In this particular aphorism, Nietzsche recounts the evolution of western metaphysics; from Greek attempts to provide a full account of the true nature of the world up until our current, perspectival retreats into principled ignorance. The final step, Nietzsche’s own, states that “[t]he true world — we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one.” Once the true world has been revealed for what it is (that is, non-existent), we can no longer say that there is any one apparent world either. All that is left is the world as each of us experiences it; that is, we are left with interpretations, none of which is the true appearance. In this somewhat hermeneutic approach to ontology, metaphysics becomes an aesthetic endeavor, indeed “it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified” (The Birth of Tragedy, sec. 10). On this theory, the belief in an objective world-in-itself resulted from the Socratic estrangement of reason from art. It is their re-alignment that constitutes much of Nietzsche’s own thought and lays the foundation for his existence.

Let’s now return to amor fati. “To recreate all ‘it was’ into a ‘thus I willed it’ — that alone should I call redemption” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, sec. 2, “On Redemption”). We asked how such a position can possibly operate outside of the sublime. After all, don’t we need to remain independent and somewhat removed from nature in order to reinterpret it and make it our own? But this was because, until now, we had assumed that a rejection of the sublime border must ultimately lead to submission. For if we are not exalted above nature, then we must remain subject to its power.

Nietzsche’s (anti)metaphysics tells us that this assumption is wrong. The world we experience is only an element of the self. Instead of rising above nature in an act of affirmation, we must incorporate the world into ourselves and (re)create it. What we are left with is a complete reevaluation of the spirit behind amor fati. The doctrine of amor fati is not interested in reconciling two opposing parties. We need not overpower nor make peace with the world; the world is at is it for we have allowed it to be so. The forces of nature are the forces of our will-to-power. Amor fati is not nature-affirmative, but rather self-affirmative. It is loving the narrative which we alone have created; loving it, for it is our own.

In his Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky complains that “You cannot rebel: Nature doesn’t ask you for your opinion; it couldn’t care less about your desires, about whether you like its laws or whether you don’t… It means that a wall is a wall.” While the Underground Man continues to “beat [the] wall with [his] fists,” refusing to admit defeat, he forgets that resistance is only a feeble form of rebellion (I. III-IV). Both Schiller and Nietzsche recognize that in order to avoid bitter opposition, a more affirmative stance must be obtained. Rather than repeatedly hitting against it head-on, Schiller charts a course along the wall: “To destroy the very concept of a force means simply to submit to it voluntarily.” Nietzsche, on the other hand, chooses to expand his notion of the self, incorporating the very border which threatens his power. “I myself am fate and have been conditioning existence for eternities” (Works, XIV, 331). This pronouncement disturbs the very border between man and nature which Schiller’s Wille sets out to reconcile. Accordingly, it does not imply transcendence of the man/world divide, but rather its destruction.