How does this shed light on the question, "Are we free to do what we want with our lives?" It doesn't shed light on it, so much as reveal that the question was asked from the darkness. Our "free will" is an illusion, but we do act, and our actions are our own. They have manifold causes, but not one of them could possibly be "outside of nature" or outside "the whole," and none of them could be attributable solely to my freedom. Rather, the constraints I mentioned at the outset, and even the wants I mentioned there, are pieces of the whole, and "there is nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our Being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, condemning the whole...But there is nothing apart from the whole!" The best I can do to do what I want with my life is to want my life as it is, as part of the whole -- to affirm my life. And this much not only is to "do what I want with my life," it is also to do what I should with it.

REFERENCES

1. Clark,...

"Nietzsche, Friedrich," in E. Craig (Ed.) Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge, 1998.
2. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ, translated by R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin Books, 1990.

3. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols, translated by Duncan Large. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

4. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality, translated by Carol Diethe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

5. O'Connor, Timothy, "Free Will," in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

6. Strawson, Galen. "Free will," in E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2004.

7. Wicks, Robert, "Friedrich Nietzsche," in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

All page numbers in parentheses are to Nietzsche 1998.