'Destiny and History' and 'Freedom of Will and Destiny' Frederick Nietzsche (1862).

Nietzsche, June 1862.

A selection from the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche while he was 17years old on his Easter vacation.

Freedom of Will and Destiny

Generally, "submission to God's will" and "humility" are often nothing more than excuses for cowardly fear of boldly facing destiny.

Free will is... an abstract concept and means the capability to act consciously, while, by destiny, we refer to the principle that guides us in our conscious acting.

In freedom of will, there lies for the individual the principle of separation, of separation from the whole, of the absolute freedom from limits and boundaries; destiny, in turn, organically reconnects man with the overall development and forces him, by seeking to dominate him, to freely develop his own strength against it; absolute free will without destiny would turn man into God, and the fatalistic principle would turn him into an automaton.

Destiny and History

Free will appears as that which is not chained, as that which is deliberate; it is the infinitely free, roaming, the mind. Destiny, however, is a necessity if we do not want to believe that world history is made up of dream-like meanderings, that the unspeakable pain of humanity is a fidget of the imagination... . Destiny is the infinite force of resistance against free will, fee will without destiny is... inconceivable... since, after all, a certain quality or trait is always the product of contrasts.

Perhaps, free will is nothing but the highest potential of destiny. [...] If we consider the word world history in the most encompassing way, then it would (have to be considered) the history of matter. After all, there still have to exist higher principles in the face of which all differences have to flow together into a great unity, prior to which everything is in development, where everything flows towards a gigantic ocean, where all developments of the world find themselves again, united, merged, all one.