Nietzsche and Stoicism

Resolution of contradictions

After describing the Stoics’ essential psychological characteristics, Nietzsche advances two obscure but critical remarks. First, he questions whether the Stoics’ attainment of their ethical ideal is significant on the grounds that the decision to adopt Stoic therapy is determined in advance by one’s character. Second, he rebukes the Stoics for underestimating the worth of pain and passion, and for the fatalistic acceptance of life that their therapy produces. Confusingly, however, Nietzsche elsewhere celebrates characteristics for which Stoicism is well known; for instance, self-sufficiency and its associated characteristics, such as hardness, independence, and self-mastery. Moreover, the Stoic’s fatalistic declaration, ‘I want nothing different!’, seems to express precisely the love of fate, or amor fati, that Nietzsche himself embraces.

The Stoics view nature as rationally ordered and teleological. Their world is pervaded by a ubiquitous casual order, called fate, which governs everything in accord with reason (Gould 1974, esp. 17–18; Long and Sedley 1987, 331, 340–343).
Specifically human flourishing, or virtue, consists in perfecting humanity’s uniquely rational nature (Epictetus 6; Marcus VII.55). This requires assenting only to impressions in accordance with nature’s rational order, desiring only what is appropriate to this order, and acting only on rational desires. If achieved, such rational self-discipline allows joyful acceptance of fate (Epictetus 8; Marcus VIII.26).

James A. Mollison (2019) Nietzsche contra stoicism: naturalism and value, suffering and amor fati, Inquiry, 62:1, 93-115, DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2019.1527547