Amor fati and the subject's position before what was not chosen: scope and limits of an approximation between Nietzsche and psychoanalysis

Abstract

This article examines the Nietzschean formula of amor fati and asks on what plane it may be brought close to the position psychoanalysis assigns to the subject before what was not chosen. The argument reconstitutes the formula in The Gay Science, Ecce Homo and Nietzsche contra Wagner, shows its dependence on the hypothesis of eternal recurrence, and distinguishes it from the notions with which it is commonly confused — resignation, conformism, optimism and passive acceptance of suffering — recalling that Nietzsche explicitly opposes it to ressentiment. It then reconstitutes three psychoanalytic operations invoked by the literature that makes this approximation: the work of mourning in Freud, the insistence of repetition beyond the pleasure principle, and the ethics of desire formulated by Lacan in Seminar 7. It is argued that the approximation does not hold on the plane of conceptual equivalence — affirming the necessary is neither working through loss, nor assuming castration, nor the Lacanian refusal to give way on one's desire — but does hold on the formal plane of the subject's position before what was imposed and not chosen. Finally, it is argued that turning the formula into a therapeutic prescription psychologises philosophy and impoverishes both fields.