Nietzsche, Nature, Nurture

Abstract Nietzsche claims that we are fated to be as we are. But he also claims that we can create ourselves. To many commentators these twin commitments have seemed self-contradictory or paradoxical. The argument of the present essay is that, despite appearances, there is in fact no paradox here, nor even a tension between Nietzsche’s two claims. Instead, when properly interpreted, these claims turn out to be intimately related to one another, so that our fatedness (and our acknowledgement of our fatedness) emerges as integral to our capacity to become self-creators. The essay also offers, in the course of undermining a false alternative that is deeply entrenched in the philosophical tradition, a reading of Nietzsche’s doctrine of amor fati that actually—and the author believes uniquely—makes full sense of section 276 of The Gay Science, the chief source for this aspect of his thought.