Love of fate is ignominious adaptation born of hopeless confinement.

Evidence

We might well ask whether we have more reason to love what happens to us, to affirm what is because it is, than to believe true what we hope. Is it not the same false inference that leads from the existence of stubborn facts to their erection as the highest value, as he criticizes in the leap from hope to truth? If he consigns ‘happiness through an idée fixe’ to the lunatic asylum, the origin of amor fati might be sought in a prison. Love of stone walls and barred windows is the last resort of someone who sees and has nothing else to love. Both are cases of the same ignominious adaptation which, in order to endure the world’s horror, attributes reality to wishes and meaning to senseless compulsion. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 112

Categorization

• XREF: ‘Love of stone walls and barred windows’ evokes the prison of damaged life central to the whole project; connects to Adorno’s critique of affirmation and of the naturalization of suffering.
• CANDY: ‘Love of stone walls and barred windows is the last resort of someone who sees and has nothing else to love’ — a devastating, quotable aphorism.