Certain contemporary Nietzsche scholars claim to have discovered Nietzsche’s position on metaethics through a careful reading and interpretation of his texts. Whose account is most accurate? Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s texts underdetermine his views on metaethics; we lack the textual evidence to settle these debates decisively. Does this mean that the historical Nietzsche’s metaethical beliefs, ultimately inaccessable, are of little use to contemporary metaethical study? Or instead, must metaethicists interested in Nietzsche fundamentally change how Nietzsche’s works are to be understood? While I (...) present scholars who argue that Nietzsche’s corpus as a whole should be understood in radically different ways, I ultimately argue that we can avoid both of the above questions if scholars working in the history of philosophy tradition pivot their focus from attempting to offer a descriptive account of Nietzsche’s metaethical view and instead embrace appropriation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article considers Friedrich Nietzsche’s claims about value creation alongside his proclamation that ‘nature is always value-less’, assessing their implications for his metaethics. It begins by weighing the evidence for a recent constructivist interpretation of Nietzsche’s metaethics, arguing that despite several apparent interpretive advantages, Nietzschean constructivism ultimately fails. Through a close reading of GS 301 and related passages, the constructivist interpretation is shown to be misguided in taking Nietzsche’s talk of value creation as expressing a metaethical view according to which (...) the evaluative attitudes of philosophers ground what is valuable. Against this, it is argued that GS 301 should be understood as an assertion of the status of philosophers as the causal sources of new evaluative outlooks that shape the held values of their respective cultures, a claim developed through analysis of passages in which Nietzsche discusses his ideal of the ‘genuine philosopher’ and contrasts this figure with ‘critics’ or ‘philosophical laborers’. It is next argued that, insofar as it is best understood as describing a social or anthropological phenomenon rather than a metaphysical one, GS 301 is a poor piece of evidence not only for the constructivist interpretation, but in fact for any account of Nietzsche’s metaethical position—including radical anti-realist interpretations informed by his statement that ‘nature is always value-less’. The paper then concludes by appealing to another passage, GS 55, which hints towards a very different—and plausibly realist—picture of Nietzsche’s metaethics. (shrink)

Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman.

Nietzsche’s ambiguous and allusive style of writing creates special problems for the principle of charity, the idea that we should work to understand philosophic statements in the way that will yie...

It is a truism that Nietzsche is a critic of morality. But what does Nietzsche have against this institution of morality? I consider the prominent interpretation of Brian Leiter’s that Nietzsche takes morality to task for its bad effects in hampering the flourishing of great individuals and cultures. There are good reasons, I argue, to resist this reading as the best, and certainly as the exclusive, account of the grounds for Nietzsche’s criticism of morality. I go on to propose an (...) alternative construal that sees Nietzsche as objecting to the expressive character of moral values themselves . My project, in the first instance, is the exegetical one of understanding what is going on in Nietzsche’s texts when he criticizes morality. Nonetheless, there are important philosophical lessons to be learned here from Nietzsche’s work, if not necessarily about the actual failings of morality itself, the.. (shrink)

I consider an epistemological, methodological dispute between Nietzsche and Kant about the possibility of rational self-critique: an activity where the intellect reflects on its cognitive powers, demarcates the proper use and limitations of these powers, and thereby achieves a systematically complete insight into what we can and cannot know. Kant affirms whereas Nietzsche denies that we can successfully conduct such a self-directed rational enquiry. By reconstructing the central argumentative moves that Nietzsche and Kant do or could make to defend their (...) respective position, I trace their disagreement to starkly diverging models of philosophical enquiry, of what philosophy is and ought to be all about. (shrink)

Nihilism is one of Nietzsche’s foremost philosophical concerns. But characterizing it proves elusive. His nihilists include those in despair in the wake of the “death of God.” Yet they also include believing Christians. We have, among these nihilists, those fervently committed to frameworks of cosmic meaning. But we also have those who lack any such commitment, epitomized in the “last man.” We have those who want to escape this life. And we have those who wouldn’t dream of such a prospect. (...) Extant accounts have shed helpful light on the particularities of these various manifestations of nihilism. Yet they have not explained what ties these together. In this paper, I propose a unifying thread. Nihilists, on my reading of Nietzsche, are those who have come unmoored from the most important values. That is not to say that there is nothing more to nihilism than being wrong. But it is to say that we don’t understand Nietzschean nihilism fully if we just focus on the descriptive psychology of valuers. The unifying thread of Nietzschean nihilism, on my reading, in fact turns out to be structurally similar to the familiar idea of it we get in a number of other 19th century thinkers and authors—and ironically with those moralists who brand Nietzsche himself a nihilist. Where he differs from them is not in his account of what nihilism fundamentally is, but in the values he sees nihilists as having come unmoored from. (shrink)