Nietzsche Affirmative Morality

Nietzsche's Affirmative Morality: An Ethics of VirtueAuthor(s): Thomas H. BrobjerSource: Journal of Nietzsche Studies, No. 26 (AUTUMN 2003), pp. 64-78Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20717820 .

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Nietzsche's Affirmative Morality: An Ethics of Virtue

Thomas H. Brobjer

In this article I shall attempt to give a birds-eye view of Nietzsche's ethics, with special emphasis on its affirmative aspect. I will also attempt to show

that there exists one relatively simple aspect of Nietzsche's ethics that has not been realized, but that makes it much more consistent and comprehensi ble. In summary: Nietzsche's ethics, unlike almost all thinking about ethics in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth was not act-ori ented but character- or person-oriented. This kinship of Nietzsche's affirma tive ethics with ethics of virtue has not been realized, but the interest in ethics of virtue during the last twenty years now also makes it easier to grasp Nietzsche's ethics.

Let me begin by summarizing Nietzsche's profound critique of morality. One

of the most common dichotomies made in respect to moral judgments is that

they must be based on either the consequences of an act or the intentions of the acting person. Nietzsche rejects both these possibilities. We have no knowl

edge of the future, and hence we can never know the consequences of an act.

Perhaps we can know the immediate consequences, but the chain of causality never ends, and that which at first appears as a good result may well in the long run turn out to have negative consequences: "any action at all, it is and remains

impenetrable; that our opinions about 'good' and 'noble' and 'great' can never

be proved true by our actions because every action is unknowable."1 Those who emphasize that morality is based on the intentions of the act

ing person are not bounded by the consequences of the act. However, Nietzsche

denies that we can ever know the intentions of any other human being. In

fact, Nietzsche emphasizes the relative unimportance of conscious thinking, "consciousness is a surface,"2 in favor of subconscious thinking and instincts.

Hence, Nietzsche argues, not only can we not know the motives of other indi

viduals, we cannot even know our own motives. This is a frequent theme in

Nietzsche's writings, for example, "the most common lie is the lie one tells

to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception."3

Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 26, 2003

Copyright ? 2003 The Friedrich Nietzsche Society.

64



Nietzsche s Affirmative Morality 65

Furthermore, Nietzsche claims that we have no free will4 and hence we

have no moral responsibility. Closely associated to this argument is his view

that man is an animal and part of the natural world in which there is no moral

ity. In his genealogical discussions Nietzsche often attempts to show that the

original reasons for many of our moral values were different (and often had a nonmoral origin) than they are today.

Moral principles, even relativistic moral principles, assume or presuppose moral opposites, presuppose good and evil things, thoughts and deeds.

Nietzsche, however, rejects the belief in moral opposites. "Between good and evil actions there is no difference in kind, but at the most one of degree. Good actions are sublimated evil ones; evil actions are coarsened, brutalized good ones."5 Nietzsche does not only reject moral opposites as opposites, but he also claims that that which is conventionally regarded as good and evil in fact

belongs together and cannot be separated. Both good and evil are necessary in the development of personality and in the development of whole cultures:

there is a personal necessity for misfortune; that terror, want, impoverishment,

midnight watches, adventures, hazards and mistakes are as necessary to me

and to you as their opposites [. . .] for happiness and misfortune are brother

and sister, and twins, who grows tall together, or, as with you, remain small

together!6

I have mentioned above a number of aspects of Nietzsche's thinking that are

contrary to many of the assumptions and presuppositions of morality. I have referred to his claim that we cannot know the consequences of actions, or the motives behind those actions, his denial of free will, his denial of moral oppo sites and his belief that man is part of nature, and that in the natural world there is no morality.

Nietzsche not only rejects specific presuppositions of morality, but fre

quently he also rejects the whole concept of morality as being an error, a fatal error. "Thus I deny morality as I deny alchemy, that is, I deny their prem ises"7 and Nietzsche calls Zarathustra "the annihilator of morality."8 In G?tzen

D?mmerung, Nietzsche summarizes much of what he has stated previously about morality:

One knows my demand of philosophers that they place themselves beyond good and evil?that they have the illusion of moral judgement beneath them.

This demand follows from an insight first formulated by me: that there are no moral facts whatever. Moral judgement has this in common with religious

judgement that it believes in realities which do not exist. Morality is only an

interpretation of certain phenomena, more precisely a misinterpretation.9

Apart from the frequent rejection of morality as such, Nietzsche often calls himself an immor?list.10



66 Thomas H. Brobjer

Nietzsche furthermore denies the applicability of general principles, abstrac

tions, and the unconditional. General principles are necessarily, like con

sciousness and rationality, merely surface interpretations and abstractions.

Nietzsche's interest and emphasis goes deeper, to the instinctual and the non

intentional and nonrational. Hence, much of Nietzsche's critique of moral

ity goes outside what is conventionally regarded as morality and he questions even the possibility of generalizations.

After such an extreme critique and rejection of morality and the presup

positions of morality, can Nietzsche be anything other than a nihilist? Can

he possibly have an affirmative morality? However, Nietzsche rejects nihilism,11 and he emphasizes the importance

of values. He regards values and evaluating as the ultimate nature of man:

"the problems of morality [. . .] there seems to be nothing more worth tak

ing seriously"12 and "no people could live without evaluating [. . .] 'Man,' that is: the evaluator. Evaluation is creation: hear it, you creative men! Valuating is itself the value and jewel of all valued things. Only through evaluation is

there value: and without evaluation the nut of existence would be hollow."13

Nietzsche's demand of the philosophers of the future is not that they should

destroy values but that they create new values.

Nietzsche's project is not that of a nihilist, not a rejection of all values, but

rather a revaluation of all values. Much of this revaluation is concerned with a rejection of Christian values, and of unconditional values, and with an affir

mation of ancient Greek values.

Nietzsche does have an alternative affirmative morality, but it differs pro

foundly from that of conventional morality as it has been understood during the past two hundred years, in being almost indifferent to acts and instead

emphasizing persons. The fundamental aspect of Nietzsche's moral judgment and thinking is his concern and emphasis of personality and character. Not

principles, but personality and character are the determining criteria of value

according to this morality. I call this aspect an ethics of character, but it could

also be called an ethics of virtue. We will see below how this central tenet of

Nietzsche's ethics to a large degree is able to bring together the different

aspects of Nietzsche's morality to some sort of consistent whole.

Ethics in general refers to a set of standards by which a particular group or

community decides to regulate its behavior. In a more philosophical sense, ethics or moral philosophy is the discipline that concerns itself with judg ments of approval and disapproval, judgments of the Tightness and wrong ness, goodness or badness, virtue or vice of actions, dispositions, ends, or

objects. The word "ethics" comes from the Greek ta ethika (or ethikos), which

originally comes from the word ethos, which means character. Nietzsche was

undoubtedly aware of this original meaning of the word. He, for example, states: "Personal distinction?that is antique virtue"14 and it is not surprising




that he with his high regard for Greek thinking would connect back to this ancient sense of the word.

In the not quite finished and never published book Die Philosophie im

tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen, which Nietzsche worked on at about the same time as Die Geburt der Trag?die, he writes: "For us [modern men], even the most personal is sublimated back into an abstraction; for them [the ancient Greeks], the greatest abstraction kept running back into a person."15 Although he does not here state this explicitly, I think that there can be little doubt that Nietzsche's sympathy is with the ancient practice, as I will try to

show below. This is somewhat clearer in a section called "The un-Hellenic in Christianity" in Menschliches, Allzumenschliches:

The Greeks did not see the Homeric gods as set above them as masters, or

themselves set beneath the gods as servants, as the Jews did. They saw as it

were only the reflection of the most successful examplars of their own caste,

that is to say an ideal, not an antithesis of their own nature.16

Nietzsche, like the Greeks, wanted to set up personality, character, or "the most successful examplars" as ideals and these ideals were to him much more

important and related to life than any abstract principles. This is made clear in a note from 1886:

"You seem to me to have bad intentions for the future, one could believe that

you wanted mankind to go under?"?I once said to the god Dionysos.

"Perhaps," answered the god, "but so that something for it comes out of it."?

"What then?" I asked curiously.?"Who then?, you should ask." Thus spoke

Dionysos.17

It follows naturally from this ethics of character-perspective that Nietzsche's concept of the ?bermensch in one sense is a modern version of the Greek gods and in another sense is merely an example and an ideal, i.e., a natural extension of his ethics of character. This can be seen in

Nietzsche's use of "the word '?bermensch' to designate a type that has turned out supremely well, in antithesis to 'modern' men, to 'good' men, to Christians and other nihilists."18 These two senses of the word ?ber

mensch actually merge into one.

I want first to show the close connection that Nietzsche sees between cre ative work and man; between the philosophy and the philosopher, between the books and the author, and between the music and the composer. Thereafter I will demonstrate the importance of personality and character for Nietzsche. I will show that he places the man (the character) above the works, and I hope to indicate that the concept of the ?bermensch is a natural consequence and

aspect of this.




In a letter to Lou Salom?, Nietzsche writes in 1882:

Your idea of reducing philosophical systems to the status of personal records

of their authors is a veritable "twin brain" idea. In Basel I was teaching the

history of ancient philosophy in just this sense, and liked to tell my students: "This system has been disproved and it is dead; but you cannot disprove the

person behind it?the person cannot be killed." Plato, for example.19

About three years later, Nietzsche writes in Jenseits von Gut und B?se: "It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy has hitherto been: a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; moreover, that the moral (or immoral) intentions in

every philosophy have every time constituted the real germ of life out of which the entire plant has grown."20 As Nietzsche indicates in the letter, this belief that the works are only a reflection of the character of the man was not new to him. It can clearly be seen in both prefaces to Die Philosophie im

tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen and in the Unzeitgem?sse Betrachtungen, where he claims: "To understand the picture one must divine the painter."21

Similar statements can also be found in the works of the middle period: "However far a man may extend himself with knowledge, however objective he may appear to himself?ultimately he carries away with him nothing but his own biography."22 Nietzsche pointed at the close connection between the man and the works, and he strongly emphasized the importance of character or personality (as I will shortly show) throughout the whole of his adult life.

It is Nietzsche's belief that "assuming that one is a person, one necessar

ily also has the philosophy that belongs to that person,"23 which is the cause not only of his many references to other thinkers but also of the often ad hominem (directed at the man?rather than at the principles) nature of so

many of his statements about them. These ad hominem statements have often been regarded by commentators as unjustified and unfair attacks on other

persons. However, for Nietzsche, to carry an argument back to the person is the essence of philosophy and morality, while most modern thinkers believe that the man should be kept separate from his belief and philosophy. For

Nietzsche, the value of a man is determined by the order of rank of his drives, that is, by his character. According to the Christian and the "modern" view,

man has an inherent value, more or less independent of his character, his abil

ity, his values, and his deeds. Nietzsche uses persons, examples, and ad hominem arguments because he

does not accept philosophy as an essentially abstract field of inquiry. This means that for Nietzsche ad hominem arguments are the strongest possible form of argument. Most other forms of arguments are merely abstractions?

effective for winning dialectical debates but in the end not very convincing? since they only involve part, and the smaller part, of the disputants.



Nietzsches Affirmative Morality 69

Nietzsche's use of ad hominem arguments is not a minor aberration but a

consistent strategy or approach that reflects what he thinks morality is and

ought to be. The close connection between man and works is a theme Nietzsche stresses

again and again. Why is this theme so important for him? Because philoso phy and other "works" are, like morality, really only symptoms of the under

lying character?"moralities too are only a sign-language of the emotions"24? which is Nietzsche's true interest. Character, personality, or "the man" is one

of the fundamental units of Nietzsche's philosophy, and he repeatedly claims that he goes through the works to the man, to the character. "This sensitiv

ity furnishes me with psychological antennae with which I feel and get hold of every secret: the abundant hidden dirt at the bottom of many a character?

perhaps the result of bad blood, but glossed over by education?enters my consciousness almost at the first contact."25 This general approach can be

exemplified with, for example, Nietzsche's statement: "Quite apart from the value of such assertions as 'there exists in us a categorical imperative' one can still ask: what does such an assertion say of the man who asserts it?"26 and instead of asking for what is truth and what is the will to truth, Nietzsche asks: "What really is it in us that wants 'the truth'?" He continues and asks for "the value of this will"27 and the answer reconnects it to a personality, to a character.

Nietzsche's interest in the character behind the work is also clearly stated in both the early prefaces to Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der

Griechen:

On the other hand, whoever rejoices in great human beings will also rejoice in philosophical systems, even if completely erroneous. They always have one

wholly incontrovertible point: personal mood, colour. [. . .] The task is to bring to light what we must ever love and honour and what no subsequent enlight enment can take away: great individual human beings. [. . .] But I have selected

those doctrines which sound most clearly the personality of the individual

philosopher.28

This continues to be Nietzsche's method for the rest of his life.

It is well known that Nietzsche rejects the idea of philosophical systems as

being in any sense true or valuable per se. Hence he rejects all attempts at

systematization.291 will not dispute this claim as such, but Nietzsche does

nonetheless, in a sense, believe in the existence of "systems." In Jenseits von Gut und B?se, Nietzsche claims that philosophical concepts are related to one another and he argues for the existence of a sort of "Zeitgeist."30 More

important for my argument is that Nietzsche also believes in another sort of

"system": the human being. That our thoughts and values are all connected




and constitute a whole, a character, that forms a sort of "system," though not a conscious one:

For this alone is fitting for a philosopher. We have no right to isolated acts of

any kind: we may not make isolated errors or hit upon isolated truths. Rather

do our ideas, our values, our yeas and nays, our ifs and buts, grow out of us

with the necessity with which a tree bears fruit?related and each with an

affinity to each, and evidence of one will, one health, one soil, one sun.31

Not only does Nietzsche emphasize the close connection between man and works (which leads him toward an interest in, and use of, psychology), but he also clearly means that it is man who is the more fundamental and inter

esting and the one he holds highest in value. "If one is something one really does not need to make anything?and one nonetheless does very much."32 Not only is the man of higher interest and value than the works, the value of the man is (or rather, can be) independent of his actions and his works. "The

value of a human being [. ..] does not lie in his usefulness: for it would con

tinue to exist even if there were nobody to whom he could be useful."33 Here

it can clearly be seen that Nietzsche is not emphasizing utility, but something that can be called character. The value of a man is determined by his attitude toward life?he must not be filled with resentment and vanity but should have a full and overflowing personality.

It is not the works, it is the faith which is decisive here, which determines the

order of rank here, to employ an old religious formula in a new and deeper sense: some fundamental certainty which a noble soul possesses in regard to

itself, something which may not be sought or found and perhaps may not be lost either.?The noble soul has reverence for itself.?34

Nietzsche's strong emphasis on man (or character) can further be seen in the fact that Nietzsche regards culture?a very important concept for him?basi

cally as great men and their works and "thus only he who has attached his

heart to some great man is by that act consecrated to culture."35

For Nietzsche, the answer to the problem of value, like for Oedipus before

the Sphinx, is man!36 A large part of Nietzsche's philosophical endeavor con

sists of an attempt to improve man and to increase the value of man. The ref erences to this in Nietzsche's writings are frequent.37

This concern for character led Nietzsche to an interest in the more perfect man who can justify mankind: "This man of the future [. . .] he must come one day?."38 It is not ideas and principles that justify our existence and

improve it and us, but human beings, the best human beings, who by their mere existence both justify and improve man because they are examples who

show man what man really can be. It is not a coincidence that Nietzsche



Nietzsche"s Affirmative Morality 71

speaks of the philosophers of the future, not philosophies of the future. The

purpose of philosophy is, according to Nietzsche, not primarily the con

struction of new philosophies but the production of "new Platos" as he says

early in his development, or "new philosophers" as he says later.39

Nietzsche sees himself as fighting for the improvement of man?but not so much the abstract concept of man as of individual men and of man's per

sonality and character. This can be seen as much in what he attacks as in what he praises. His critique of God and Christianity is not due primarily to the fact that God does not exist, but because the belief in such a god as the Christian God makes man smaller.40 "The church sends all 'great men' to hell, it fights against all 'greatness of man.'"41

A consequence of Nietzsche's ethics of character is that his references to and

opinions of other men are not merely scattered and vague statements of lit tle importance. The opposite is the case. In Nietzsche's discussion of other

men, such as Goethe, Napoleon, Plato, and Rousseau, we are perhaps closer to the Archimedian point of his philosophy than at any other time. When

Nietzsche in G?tzen-D?mmerung, in the longest chapter, "Expeditions of an

Untimely Man," expounds his opinions of different thinkers and men in short disconnected statements, this is not idle prejudice. Nietzsche is, in fact, here

expressing his morality, his values, more clearly than at almost any other time. He is here illuminating not ideas or principles but the kinds of men

(character or personality) he finds worthy of veneration and numerous exam

ples of the opposite to this.42

For the past ten or twenty years, the view that three main ethical traditions can be regarded as constituting the larger part of Western ethical thinking has become standard: the ethics of virtue, utilitarian ethics, and deontological ethics. In a simplified form, one can say that the ethics of virtue is charac

ter-oriented, while the two other forms are act-oriented. Utilitarianism is act and goal-oriented, in the sense that it is mainly concerned with acts leading to, or resulting in, a certain goal, and is therefore often referred to as conse

quentialism. In this ethical theory, the goal is primary, and the most frequent goal has been pleasure or happiness, but others have also been suggested. In utilitarianism "the goal" or "the good" comes before "the right," in that the

goal (for example, pleasure) determines what is right (as that which increases

pleasure). Deontological ethics is act- and right-oriented. In this ethical tra

dition, right is primary, and right determines the good. This tradition is con cerned with acting according to rules, duty, and the moral law. The moral

law, and hence morality, is seen as being autonomous.

According to the utilitarian tradition, morality is not autonomous. The moral content of an act depends on how the good is defined?and the most

frequent definition of the good is to define it as a natural quality, usually as




pleasure or happiness. Hence, an act that increases pleasure or happiness is

moral, while one that decreases it is immoral. Thinkers in this tradition set

the consequences of acts at the center of their interest, and, in one form or

another, they stress that one will have to calculate the consequences of alter native acts and sequences of acts to determine which acts are most moral and useful.

Deontological thinking, which emphasizes "the right" and hence rules and moral laws, including "natural law," is based on intuition, rationality, and obedience. This tradition strongly emphasizes the distinction between facts and values and claims that morality is autonomous, i.e., that morality can in no sense be determined by, or depend on, nonmoral aspects. The moral con tent of an act, or of a human being, is independent of any consequences or

physical properties. Both utilitarianism and deontological ethics are normative in the sense that

they attempt to show us which acts should and should not be done. Virtue ethics, which is less act-oriented, is also normative in a much vaguer sense, basing its

"prescriptions" mostly on mutual values, persuasion, and example. Modern ethics, independent of whether it is goal- or rule-oriented, attempts

to inform us about how we should act in certain situations. It is essentially problem-oriented and tries to solve moral queries?"What is the correct way to act in these or those circumstances?" Ethics of virtue is a response to a

very different question: "How should one live one's life? What sort of per son should I be and become?" An ethics of virtue is hence not act-oriented

(or rule-oriented) but agent-oriented or character-oriented. It follows that in this tradition one judges persons or character traits rather than acts. An ethics of character will seem alien to many modern readers because it fundamen

tally and primarily judges character and character traits and only secondar

ily acts. Acts will not so much be regarded as good or evil, or right or wrong, but will be judged rather as worthy or unworthy, or sometimes more directly related to character traits (virtues), for example, as brave, dishonest, or unjust.

According to an ethics-of-virtue perspective, one does not, or should not, act "immorally" because it is unworthy, because it decreases one's self-respect, and because often it is cowardly.43 In other words, the criteria of action are

flourishing, esteem, and self-esteem.44 We can note that these are also of fun

damental importance in Nietzsche's thinking.

During the nineteenth century, there was no awareness of ethics of virtue.

When ethics was discussed or systematized more generally, it was done in terms

of utilitarianism and deontology. For example, Nietzsche read and heavily anno

tated William Edward Hartpole Lecky's History of European Morality in a

German translation (Sittengeschichte Europas, 1879, 2 volumes), where this

dichotomy of morality is very explicit?but this is also true for essentially all

the books about ethics Nietzsche read. Thus it is not altogether surprising that

Nietzsche regarded himself as an immor?list and destroyer of morals.




Almost all philosophers have primarily been concerned with the questions: "What is truth?" "What is to be done?" "What actions are to be condoned or condemned?" etc. For Nietzsche the questions are consistently rephrased as: "Who is to be created?" "Whose actions are to be condoned?" "Who is most valuable?" Nietzsche's strongly person-oriented approach to evaluations and

morality is radically different from that of modern moral philosophy. His atti tude seems to go against the grain of objectivity. Most of modern moral phi losophy?not to speak of jurisprudence?claims that we must judge the deeds

independently of the performer and this is reflected in such proclamations as: "it is wrong to steal" or "thou shalt not murder," which is often seen as

being special cases of the golden rule: "Do not to others what you would not wish them to do to you." Nietzsche, to the contrary, claims that "an action in itself is perfectly devoid of value: it all depends on who performs it. One and the same 'crime' can be in one the greatest privilege, in another a stigma,"45 and he denies the golden rule because men are different and should be treated

differently.46 It follows naturally from this person-centered view that not only is all morality merely symptoms but so also is all philosophizing.47 Symptoms of the person behind the philosophy. The character behind the philosophy is more interesting?and relevant?than his philosophy.48 With this in mind, Nietzsche's use of ad hominem arguments becomes understandable; they are

merely a special case of his character-oriented perspective. There are a number of reasons why Nietzsche both can and does use this

psychological ad hominem approach to philosophy. It becomes especially important to bring forward the reasons for this since so few other philoso phers have chosen to use it, or accept it as a valid approach.

Two factors are of foremost importance. First, Nietzsche's ethics of char

acter, i.e., his belief that individual human beings or characters are the ulti mate telos or value, rather than truth or actions or beliefs or social reforms. This leads Nietzsche to analyze, for example, a book not primarily in terms of truth, actions, beliefs, but in terms of character. This could be done within the framework of the text, i.e., to analyze and discuss what the text actually says, if it is consistent and without self-contradictions and what effect it might have on character?and to some extent Nietzsche does this, often, for exam

ple, when referring to the Bible?but more frequently he choses to use the text as symptom (of the author's character or of the time in which it was writ ten) and thus makes a diagnosis rather than an analysis. The reason for this is his belief in the limited nature and importance of reason and conscious ness. These are only surface phenomena and symptoms and ought not to con stitute the end of analysis. The second factor that explains why Nietzsche uses the ad hominem approach to philosophy can be summarized as Heraclitus's famous saying: "Man's character is his fate" or "Character for man is destiny."49 More specifically, in the case of Nietzsche, this factor can be broken down into several beliefs:




(i) that human nature or human character on the fundamental level is

difficult to change.50 (ii) that human character constitutes a sort of (consistent) system.51 (iii) that there is a close connection between character and the beliefs and

values that it encompasses.52

(iv) that the direction of influence between character and the philosophy associated with that character is stronger upward (from character to

the philosophy) than in the reverse direction.53 This last point follows

from, or is consistent with, the first point.

Nietzsche also explicitly claims to be using ad homonem arguments and meth

ods: "Much depends upon their persons: the point of my considerations of their teachings is to divine their persons,"54 and "from the lengthy experience afforded by such a wandering in the forbidden I learned to view the origin of moralizing and idealizing very differently from what might be desirable:

the hidden history of the philosophers, the psychology of their great names

came to light for me."55 A further example, which also illustrates some of the reasons why Nietzsche so often refers to himself as a physiologist: "Insight into the origin of a work [by means of the character of its creator] concerns

the physiologists and vivisectionists of the spirit."56 Furthermore, Nietzsche's

frequent references to values and beliefs as symptoms is of course also a

reflection of his application of the ad hominem method.57 A clear and rela

tively typical example of this is his refusal to accept rational arguments and

objective claims as such and instead to ask: "What does such a claim tell us

about the man who makes it?"58 This type of questioning is of course wholly consistent with Nietzsche's general psychological approach.59

Nietzsche's belief in the ultimate importance of character in combination

with his belief that there is a strong connection between a character and the

philosophy that belongs to this character leads him to the ad hominem

approach: to analyze books, people, philosophies, and ideologies in terms of

character. Such an analysis, however, is more akin to a diagnosis than to a

conventional philosophical analysis?and such diagnoses appear to most read

ers as invalid or irrelevant ad hominem arguments.

Summary

Nietzsche's critique of morality has received much attention, but his affir

mative ethics has received little, and it has been badly understood. However, the prevailing interest in ethics of virtue and in Aristotle's ethics during the

last ten to twenty years makes it easier to comprehend Nietzsche's view of

ethics?although this kinship with ethics of virtue has not yet been realized,




either among Nietzsche scholars or among those interested in ethics of virtue.

Nietzsche, like the Greeks, did not regard deeds and actions (neither the

intentions behind them nor their consequences) as the central question of ethics as has generally been done in modern philosophy; instead he empha sized that ethics is related to the sort of character, the sort of person one is.

"Restoration of 'nature': an action in itself is perfectly devoid of value: it all

depends on who performs it."60 Nietzsche points out that "it is obvious that moral designations were every

where first applied to human beings and only later, derivatively, to actions."61 He wanted to set up personality, character, or "the most successful exem

plars" as ideals, and these ideals constituted to him the essence of ethics. It

is not ideas and principles that justify our existence and improve it and us, but human beings, the best human beings, who by their mere existence both

justify and improve man because they are examples of what man can be.

Furthermore, Nietzsche's concept of great men and even of the ?bermensch can be seen as a natural extension of his ethics of character. Man, the high est conception of man, takes the place of God. For Nietzsche, the answer to

the problem of value, as for Oedipus before the Sphinx, is thus man!

Department of Philosophy University of Uppsala

Notes 1. GS, 335. See also "we deny accountability, 77, "The Four Great Errors," 8, and D, 208.

2. EH, "Why I Am So Clever," 9.

3. A, 55. One especially clear example of Nietzsche's argument for our lack of self-knowl

edge can be found in TI, "The Four Great Errors," 4 where he argues that when we hear a dis

tant canon-shot while sleeping and dreaming it often happens that "the canon-shot enters [the

story of the dream] in a causal way, in an apparent inversion of time. That which comes later, the motivation, is experienced first, often with a hundred details which pass like lightning, the

shot follows. . . . What has happened? The ideas engendered by a certain condition have been

misunderstood as the cause of that condition.?We do just the same thing, in fact, when we are

awake." See also HH, 107.

4. See, for example, BGE, 18 "the hundred times refuted theory of 'free will'"; GS V 345, "the superstition of free will," and AOM, 50, "The strongest knowledge (that of the total unfree

dom of the human will)." See also 77, "The Four Great Errors," 3 and 7, which includes a one

page section called "The error of free will."

5. HH, 107.

6. GS, 338. For the development of whole cultures, see, for example, WS, 67. See also, for

example, GS, 1 and 4.

7. D, 103. See also, for example, D, 3, 9, 14, 563. Much of the first part of Morgenr?te deals with the problem of morality.

8. EH, "Why I Write Such Excellent Books," 1.

9. 77, "The 'Improvers' of Mankind," 1.

10. For example, in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche says of himself: "I am the first immor?list: I am

therewith the destoyer par excellence" (EH, "Why I Am a Destiny," 2.) 11. Almost all of Nietzsche's many references to nihilism are critical, for example: "values




of decline, nihilistic values hold sway under the holiest names" (A, 6). Other examples can be found in A, 7, 20, and 58. In Der Wille zur Macht, they abound. The first occurrence in his pub lished writings seems to be in BGE, 10 and 208. Already here it is used as a negative concept.

12. GM, Preface, 7.

13. Z.T, "Of the Thousand and One Goals."

14. D, 207.

15. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, 3, trans. Marianne Cowan (Chicago: Regnery, 1962), 41-42. See also, for example, the preface to Jenseits von Gut und B?se, where Nietzsche

plays with a version of this idea when he says: "Supposing truth to be a woman."

16. HH, 114.

17. '"Du scheint mir Schlimmes im Schilde zu f?hren, man m?chte glauben, du wolltest den

Menschen zu Grunde richten?'?sagte ich einmal zu dem Gotte Dionysos. 'Vielleicht, antwortete

der Gott, aber so, da? dabei Etwas f?r ihn heraus kommt.'?'Was denn? fragte ich neugierig.? Wer denn? solltest du fragen.' Also sprach Dionysos." KSA 12:4[4] Anfang 1886-Fr?hjahr 1886.

Compare also note 37 below.

In Der Antichrist, 3, Nietzsche writes: "The problem I raise is not what ought to succeed

mankind in the sequence of species (?the human being is an end?): but what type of human

being one ought to breed, ought to will, as more valuable, more worthy of life, more certain of

the future."

18. EH, "Why I Write Such Excellent Books," 1.

19. Letter to Lou Salom?, September 16, 1882.

20. BGE, 6. Compare also BGE, 5: "They pose as having discovered and attained their real

opinions through the self-evolution of a cold, pure, divinely unperturbed dialectic [. . .] while

what happens at bottom is that a prejudice, a notion, an 'inspiration,' generally a desire of the

heart sifted and made abstract, is defended by them with reasons sought after the event?they are one and all advocates who do not want to be regarded as such, and for the most part no bet

ter than cunning pleaders for their prejudices, which they baptize 'truths'"; and BGE, 8: "In

every philosophy there is a point at which the philosopher's 'conviction' appears on the scene."

21. UM III 3. Compare also section 2.

22. HH, 513. Compare section 198. See also D, 553: "nothing other than the intellectual cir

cuitous paths of similar personal drives?" and GS, 241: "ultimately, his work is merely a mag

nifying glass that he offers everybody that looks his way." 23. GS, Preface (1886), 2. See also section 3 of the preface. 24. BGE, 187.

25. EH, "Why I Am So Wise," 8. See also A, 44.

26. BGE, 187.

27. BGE, 1.

28. From "Preface" and "A Later Preface" to Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks,

23-25.

29. "I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity." 77, "Maxims and Arrows," 26.

30. "That individual philosophical concepts are not something arbitrary, something growing

up autonomously, but on the contrary grow up connected and related to one another; that, how

ever suddenly and arbitrarily they appear to emerge in the history of thought, they none the less

belong just as much to a system as do the members of the fauna of a continent" (BGE, 20). 31. GM, Preface, 2.

32. HH, 210. Compare this with a quotation that I have been unable to locate: "The errors

of great men are more important than the truths of little men." It is not truth, objective truth, that Nietzsche emphasizes, but man, in particular the great man, and only secondarily his rela

tion to the world, his truth. See also, Z.TV, "The Greeting": "Nothing more gladdening grows on earth, O Zarathustra, than an exalted, robust will: it is the earth's fairest growth. A whole



N?ETZscHi s Affirmative Morality 77

landscape is refreshed by one such tree." 77, '

." 44: "The great human being is a terminus"

[Der gro?e Mensch ist ein Ende]. 33. WP, 877.

34. BGE, 287. For Nietzsche's rejection of moralities that deny the importance of personal

ity, see, for example, EH, "Why I Am a Destiny," 7: "The morality of unselfing is the morality of decline par excellence

35. ?/MIII6.

36. In 77, "Morality as Anti-Nature," 6, Nietzsche asks what advantage could there be in the

law of life, and he answers "?But we ourselves, we immoralists, are the answer to that."

37. For example, in BGE, 295, Nietzsche lets Dionysos say: "I often ponder how I might advance him [man] and make him stronger, more evil and more profound than he is." Zarathustra, in Z.TV, "Of the Higher Man," teaches the same: '"Man must grow better and more evil'?thus

do 7 teach." Many other quotations about Nietzsche's concern for, and the wish to improve, the

health of man can be given: for example, BGE, 269 and 295; GM I 11 and 12, and GM III 14.

38. GM, II 24.

39. UM III 8, for "new Platos" and, for example, GS, 289 and BGE, 2, 44, 203, 210, and 229

for "new philosophers." 40. This is explicit in A, 47: "not merely an error but a crime against life!' 41. WP, 871. Compare also A, 5, and a note from 1875: "Christus f?rderte die Verdummung

der Menschen, er hielt die Erzeugung des gro?en Intellekts auf. Consequent! Sein Gegenbild w?rde vielleicht der Erzeugung von Christus' hinderlich sein.?Fatumtristissimum generis humani!" KSA 8:5[188].

42. This is true not only when he is discussing the highest forms, for example, Goethe in

sections 49-51, and the lowest forms, for example, Rousseau in section 48, but also in all the numerous short ad hominem (positive and negative) statements with which the chapter is filled.

43. See, for example, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics IV (1124b): "The high-minded man

[megalopsychos] [. . .] will also be outspoken concerning his hatreds and friendships, for secrecy is a mark of fear [. . .] he will speak and act openly, because he has contempt for secrecy and

falsity." 44. It follows from an ethics-of-virtue perspective that individuals with little self-esteem, or

societies that yield such members, will be approximately morally equivalent to how egoists are

regarded in modern morality. 45. WP, 292.

46. "Moralities must first of all be forced to bow before order of rank, [. . .] it is immoral to

say: 'What is good for one is good for another'" (BGE, 221). Compare also "that what is fair

for one cannot by any means for that reason alone also be fair for others; that the demand of one morality for all is detrimental for the higher men; in short, that there is an order of rank

between man and man, hence also between morality and morality" (BGE, 228). For critique of

the golden rule, see also KSA 13:22[1] = WP, 925 and KSA 13:11 [127] = WP, 926.

47. "Morality is merely sign-language, merely symptomatology: one must already know

what it is about to derive profit from it" (TI, "The 'Improvers' of Mankind," 1.

48. "Plato ist mehr werth als seine Philosophie! Unsere Instinkte sind besser als ihr Ausdruck

in Begriffen. Unser Leib ist weiser als unser Geist! Wenn Plato jener B?ste in Neapel glich, so

haben wir da die beste Widerlegung alles Christenthums!" KSA 11:26[355] Summer-Autumn

1884.

49. Diels-Krantz, fragment 22B 119. Translations by Charles . Kahn, The Art and Thought

ofHeraclitus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), and Kathleen Freeman, Anelila to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948, 1983),

respectively. 50. For example, Nietzsche's references to "that eternal basic text homo natura" (BGE, 230)

and states: "Learning transforms us, it does that which all nourishment does which does not




merely 'preserve'?: as the physiologist knows. But at the bottom of us, 'right down deep,' there

is, to be sure, something unteachable, a granite stratum of spiritual fate, of predetermined deci

sion and answer to predetermined selected questions. [. . .] 'convictions.' Later?one sees them

only as footsteps to self-knowledge, signposts to the problem which we are?more correctly, to

the great stupidity which we are, to our spiritual fate, to the unteachable 'right down deep'" {BGE, 231).

51. For example: "In a philosopher, conversely, there is nothing whatever that is impersonal: and above all, his morality bears decided and decisive witness to who he is?that is, in what

order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relation to each other" {BGE, 6).

Already in UM III 1, Nietzsche had written: "everything bears witness to our being?our

friendships and hatreds, the way we look, our handshake, the things we remember and forget, our books, our handwriting."

52. For example: "A human being's evaluations betray something of the structure of his soul"

{BGE, 268). 53. For example: "A philosopher [. ..] simply cannot keep from transposing his states every

time into the most spiritual form and distance: this art of transfiguration is philosophy" {GS,

Preface, 3), and in his claim that "all philosophers were building under the seduction of moral

ity" {D, Preface, 3). 54. The Struggle between Science and Wisdom, p. 129 in Philosophy and Truth: Selections

from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870s, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (London, 1979,

1991). 55. EH, Preface, 3. Nietzsche continues by stating that error and falsehood is not an intel

lectual mistake but an 'error' of character or virtue, "error is cowardice." In his notebooks {KSA

13:16[32]), Nietzsche had written almost the same words as those quoted in the text, and these

have later been published separately in WP, 1041.

56. GM III 4. Further example of Nietzsche's claim to be using this approach are:

"But I had discovered him [Schopenhauer] in the form of a book, and that was a great

deficiency. So I strove all the harder to see through the book and to imagine the living man" (t/M III 2).

"Once one has trained one's eyes to recognize in a scholarly treatise the scholar's idio

syncracy?every scholar has one?and to catch it in the act, one will almost always behold behind this the scholar's 'prehistory,' his family, and especially their occupa tions and crafts" {GS V 348).

57. "My attempt to understand moral judgements as symptoms" {WP, 258). Other examples of

this can be found in WP, 254; BGE, 187; 77, "The 'Improvers' of Mankind," 1, and GS, Preface, 2.

58. BGE, 187.

59. Which can be exemplified by statements such as: "What I am concerned with is the psy

chological type of the redeemer" {A, 29). 60. WP, 292 = KSA 12:10[46+47] Autumn 1887. Compare also: "Es gibt also keine

tadelnsw?rdigen Handlungen, sondern Lob und Tadel trifft nur Menschen, nicht Dinge" {KSA 9:1 [69] Early 1880).

61. BGE, 260.



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Nietzsche Affirmative Morality