Two Quotes for Tuesday

On existential authenticity:

"It is commonly assumed that no art or skill is required in order to be subjective. To be sure, every human being is a bit of a subject, in a sense. But now to strive to become what one already is: who would take the pains to waste his time on such a task, involving the greatest imaginable degree of resignation? Quite so. But for this reason alone it is a very difficult task, the most difficult of all tasks in fact, precisely because every human being has a strong natural bent and passion to become something more and different. . . . Why can we not remember to be human beings?"

Soren Kierkegaard writing as Johannes Climacus in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to "Philosophical Fragments" in A Kierkegaard Anthology, Robert Bretall ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), 208, 199.


"At this point the real answer to the question, how one becomes what one is, can no longer be avoided. And thus I touch on the masterpiece of the art of self-preservation--of selfishness. . . . I cannot remember that I ever tried hard--no trace of struggle can be demonstrated in my life; I am the opposite of a heroic nature. 'Willing' something, 'striving' for something, envisaging a 'purpose,' a 'wish'--I know none of this from experience. At this very moment I still look upon my future--an ample future!--as upon calm seas: there is no ripple of desire. I do not want in the least that anything should become different than it is; I myself do not want to become different. . . . My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it--all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary--but love it. . . . in all seriousness: nobody before me knew the right way, the way up; it is only beginning with me that there are hopes again, tasks, ways that can be prescribed for culture--I am he that brings these glad tidings.--And thus I am also a destiny."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (1908; New York: Vintage, 1967), 253, 255, 258, 315.