Normativity for Nietzschean Free Spirits

Abstract

A significant portion of recent literature on Nietzsche is devoted to his metaethical views, both critical and positive. This article explores one aspect of his positive metaethics. The specific thesis defended is that Nietzsche is, or is plausibly cast as, a reasons internalist. This, very roughly, is the view that what an agent has normative reason to do depends on that agent's motivational repertoire. Section I sketches some of the metaethical terrain most relevant to Nietzsche's organising ethical project, his "revaluation of all values", and lays out three "design-requirements" that an adequate account of Nietzsche's metaethical views must satisfy. Section II introduces the basic internalist position. Sections III-IV provide textual support for the internalist reading of Nietzsche, with Section V showing how it meets each of the design-requirements. Section VI concludes by showing how the internalist apparatus also illuminates Nietzsche's views about the process of revaluing values.A significant portion of recent literature on Nietzsche is devoted to his metaethical views, both critical and positive. 1 Nietzsche does not have a well worked-out metaethics in our contemporary sense, any more than his contemporaries did, if by that we mean to include clear views about the ontological, epistemological and semantic commitments of ethical discourse. Nevertheless he does have, and certainly needs, views that are metaethical in a broader sense, concerning the nature and justification of the first-order ethical standpoints he variously opposes and espouses. This article explores one aspect of his positive metaethics in this broader sense. The specific thesis defended is that Nietzsche is-or is plausibly cast as 2 -a reasons internalist. This, very roughly, is the view that what an agent has normative reason to do depends

Nietzschean Self-Cultivation

“…Hunt's view is that RV explains the diversity of character traits that Nietzsche endorses as virtues because he thinks that 'one's virtues belong uniquely to oneself'. 40 Compared to Alfano, Hunt offers a narrower interpretation of the scope of RV because he views Nietzsche as regarding virtue as consisting in the individual 37 TI, V, 6 provides a forceful characterisation of Nietzsche's views of this: 'let us think how naive it is to say ''this is the way people should be!''. Reality shows us an enchanting abundance of types, a lavish profusion of forms in change and at play: and some worthless idiot of a moralist sees all this and says: ''no!…”