This article attempts to approach two of Nietzsche's most puzzling ideas: the Eternal Return and Amor fati, the “love of fate.” How exactly are these ideas to be understood — and above all: What do they have to tell us? How can we not only affirm fate, which is interpreted as an eternal return, but really love learn?

Among the philosophers, it was in particular the “main philosopher” of the Institute for Social Research, Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), who was skeptical or negative of these ideas of Nietzsche. Where remains, from the point of view of Amor fati, of critique and utopia whose banner Adorno and his intellectual companions held up?

As a result of the general failure of Marxisms to deal with fascism theoretically, the Frankfurt Institute tried to reorient itself from the 1930s onwards. The success of this movement seemed understandable to many unorthodox Marxists not only on the basis of economic laws; in their opinion, greater consideration was needed of the “subjective factor,” i.e. the psychological structure of the bourgeois individual. As part of this paradigm shift, Adorno turned to Sigmund Freud as well as Nietzsche. For the rest of his work, the German philosopher was a recurring point of reference for him.

Adorno, however, remained stubborn towards Nietzsche in an aspect that is typical of Marxist Nietzsche interpreters time and again: the insistence on the orientation towards a state of redemption for humanity in some way — the anticipation of which is manifested above all in the devaluation of the present. From this point of view, he also criticizes in his main aphoristic work Minima Moralia (1951) — according to him, a “sad science [...] of the right life”¹ — Nietzsche's concept of Amor fati. Nietzsche's will to “just be a yes-sayer at some point”², he thinks is a kind of Stockholm syndrome in the philosophy of life. However, such a task — not only of affirmation, but even of the will to affirm — would amount to abandoning the basis for every living appropriation of Nietzsche's philosophy. Taking up Adorno's critique, with reference to the interpretation of the important French Nietzsche interpreter Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), it is intended to explore what Nietzsche provides for the universal and yet always very personal question of why existence — here and now — wants to be affirmed.

It is well known that Nietzsche's history of influence has been read and absorbed across all political camps. But what about our present tense? Paul Stephan examines the writings of two authors who are about the same age as himself, in their mid/late 30s, and whose perspectives on Nietzsche could hardly be more different: While French journalist and YouTuber Julien Rochedy declares Nietzsche a pioneer of a right-wing cultural struggle, the German philosopher and political scientist Karsten Schubert attacks him for a left-wing identity politics. Both positions do not really convince our authors; rather, they are entirely within the framework of the prevailing simulation of politics as a cultural struggle, which would need to be countered by focusing on the really pressing life problems of contemporary humanity.

Nietzsche is generally regarded as a literary philosopher whose aphoristic nihilisms not only conjure up the death of God, but who also reinforced the dark sides of German history as a posthumous master thinker. In contrast, the following text would like to be part of the series What does Nietzsche mean to me? invite you to learn to read Nietzsche anew as the discoverer of the all-too-unknown philosophical continent of Mediterranean existentialism.

In his recently published study Theory of Liberation [Theorie der Befreiung]Frankfurt philosopher Christoph Menke describes liberation as “fascination,” as pleasurable desubjectization and dedication. He refers decisively to Nietzsche — but for him, “fascination” means bewitching, entanglement in lack of freedom and resentment. Can the mystical power of fascination really set us free — or is it not rather Nietzsche's right and liberation means above all self-empowerment and autonomy, whereas the fascinated sacrifice means submission, not least to a fascist leader?