JNS - 47-3 PDF

A bb revi ations and Citations of Friedrich
Nietzsche’s Works
The same citation format is utilized throughout the journal. References to

Nietzsche’s texts are given in the body of the articles and reviews. Refer
ences to Nietzsche’s unpublished writings are standardized, whenever pos-
sible, to refer to the most accessible print editions of Nietzsche’s notebooks
and publications: Kritische Studienausgabe (KSA ), compiled under the gen-
eral editorship of Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari and based on the
complete edition of the Kritische Gesamtausgabe (KGW ) (Berlin and New
York: Walter de Gruyter, 1967ff ) or the electronic version published in the
Nietzsche Source collection (http://www.nietzschesource.org/eKGWB)
[abbreviated eKGWB ]). References to the print editions of letters published
by de Gruyter are cited as KSB (Sämtliche Briefe: Kritische Studienausgabe)
or KGB (Briefe: Kritische Gesamtausgabe).
In references to Nietzsche’s works, Roman numerals generally denote
the volume number in a set of collected works or standard subdivision
within a single work, and Arabic numerals denote the relevant section
number. In cases in which Nietzsche’s prefaces are cited, the letter P is used
followed by the relevant section number, where applicable. When a section
is too long for the section number alone to be useful, the page number of
the relevant translation is also provided. In the cases in which the KGW , and
KSA are cited, references provide the volume number (and part for KGW)
followed by the relevant fragment number and any relevant aphorism (e.g.,
KSA 10:12[1].37, p. 1 refers to volume 10, fragment 12[1], aphorism 37, page 1).
Abbreviations for titles of published works
AOM = Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche (in Menschliches,

Allzumenschliches II ); frequently translated as Assorted Opinions
and Maxims
BGE = Jenseits von Gut und Böse; translated as Beyond Good and Evil
BT = Die Geburt der Tragödie; translated as The Birth of Tragedy
CW = Der Fall Wagner; translated as The Case of Wagner
D = Morgenröthe; frequently translated as Daybreak or Dawn
DS = David Strauss (Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen I )
GM = Zur Genealogie der Moral; frequently translated as On the
Genealogy of Morals or On the Genealogy of Morality
Abbreviations and Citations of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Works | v
GS =
Die fröhliche Wissenschaft; frequently translated as The Gay
Science or The Joyful Wisdom
HH =
Menschliches, Allzumenschliches; translated as Human
All-too-Human
HL =
Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben
(Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen II ); frequently translated as The
Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life
IM = “Idyllen aus Messina”; translated as “Idylls from Messina”
RWB = Richard Wagner in Bayreuth (Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen IV)
SE = Schopenhauer als Erzieher (Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen III );
translated as Schopenhauer as Educator
TI =
Götzen-Dämmerung; translated as Twilight of the Idols;
references to this work also include an abbreviated section name
UM =
Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen; frequently translated as Untimely
Meditations, Unmodern Observations, or Unfashionable
Observations
WS =
Der Wanderer und sein Schatten (in Menschliches,
Allzumenschliches II ); frequently translated as The Wanderer and
His Shadow
Z = Also sprach Zarathustra (part IV originally published privately);
translated as Thus Spoke Zarathustra; references to this work
also include an abbreviated section name
Abbreviations for other frequently cited posthumous and private publica-

tions, authorized manuscripts, and collections of Nietzsche’s unpublished
writings and notes
A =
Der Antichrist; frequently translated as The Antichrist or The
Antichristian
BAW = Friedrich Nietzsches Werke: Historisch-Kritische
Gesammtsausgabe, ed., Hans Joachim Mette and Karl Schlechta
9 vols. (Munich: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung,
1934–40).
DD = Dionysos-Dithyramben; translated as Dionysian Dithyrambs
DW = “Die dionysische Weltanschauung”
EH = Ecce Homo; references to this work also include an abbreviated
section name
vi | Abbreviations and Citations of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Works
FEI = “Über die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten”; translated as “On

the Future of our Educational Institutions”
GSt = “Der griechische Staat”; translated as “The Greek State”
HC = “Homer’s Wettkampf ”; translated as “Homer’s Contest”
HCP = “Homer und die klassische Philologie”; translated as “Homer
and Classical Philology”
NCW = Nietzsche Contra Wagner
PPP = “Die vorplatonischen Philosophen”; translated as “The Pre-
Platonic Philosophers”
PTAG = “Die Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen”;
translated as Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks
SGT = “Sokrates und die griechische Tragödie”; translated as “Socrates
and Greek Tragedy”
TL = “Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne”;
frequently translated as “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-moral
Sense”
WPh = “Wir Philologen”; translated as “We Philologists” or “We
Classicists”
Letter From the Editor
Dear Readers,
In my letter published in the last issue, I announced my efforts to facilitate

a leadership transition for the journal. I am very pleased to report that the
search for the new Executive Editor for the Journal of Nietzsche Studies has
concluded with the enthusiastic endorsement of Dr. Jessica Berry, Associate
Professor of Philosophy at Georgia State University. And I’m happier still
that she’s agreed to take on the role and make Georgia State the journal’s
new editorial home. I hope you will join me in celebrating this fortunate
result.
Professor Berry is an expert in the field and the author of Nietzsche and
the Ancient Skeptical Tradition and numerous articles on Nietzsche and
antiquity. She is well known by our readers, since for nearly four years she
has served as Associate Editor for the journal and brings considerable expe-
rience with content editing and development.
I am deeply grateful to Editorial Board Member Professor David Owen
for stepping up as chair of the committee and to fellow board members,
Professors R. Lanier Anderson, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter, and Paul
S. Loeb, for their service along with the president of the Friedrich Nietzsche
Society, Professor Herman Siemens.
Thanks in large part to you, our readers, the journal is in good shape for
the new editor with plenty of opportunities for her to develop. Please sup-
port her with your suggestions and submissions of your current research.
Yours truly,
Christa Davis Acampora
JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2016

Copyright © 2016 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
Nietzschean Self-Overcoming
JONATHAN MITCHELL
Abstract: The aim of this article is to provide a novel reading of Nietzsche’s

concept of self-overcoming and in doing so draw out some distinctive fea-
tures of his thinking about ethics and ethical ideals. However this reading
will be different from the work of those interpreters who read self-overcoming
in terms of Nietzsche’s will to power psychology. Rather it attempts to frame
self-overcoming as a distinctive kind of re-evaluative, ethical activity. Section 1
explains what this reading of self-overcoming involves in terms of the idea of
overcoming self-evaluative frameworks. Section 2 argues that Nietzsche’s idea
of achieving a standpoint “Beyond Good and Evil” serves as a central exam-
ple of self-overcoming read in this way. Finally section 3 explores Nietzsche’s
remarks on continual self-overcoming and argues that this idea points towards
what I will call the horizonal nature of “future moralities.”
Keywords: self-overcoming, will to power psychology, self-evaluative

frameworks, future moralities, horizonal ends
Introduction: Self-Overcoming and Will to Power Psychology
Nietzsche often writes in praise of self-overcoming (Selbst-Überwindung).

He tells us that his humanity consists in “constant self-overcoming”
(EH “Why I Am So Wise” 8)1 and that if someone wanted to give a name to
his lifelong self-discipline against “Wagnerianism,” Schopenhauer, and “the
whole modern ‘humaneness,’” then one might call it self-overcoming (CW
P). He says that his writings “speak only” of his overcomings (HH II P:1),
later claiming that “the development of states that are increasingly high,
rare, distant, tautly drawn and comprehensive . . . are dependent on the
constant ‘self-overcoming of man”’ (BGE 257),2 and that “the most spiritual
people, being the strongest, find their happiness where other people would
find their downfall . . . in harshness towards themselves and towards others,

324 | J O U R N A L O F N I E T Z S C H E S T U D I E S
in trials: they take pleasure in self-overcoming” (A 57). With a different

emphasis Nietzsche also links the notion to historical processes, for exam-
ple claiming that “Europe’s longest and most courageous self-overcoming”
can be seen in the development of a “will to truth” in religious conscience,
“sublimated into a scientific conscience,” which comes to find belief in the
Christian God untenable and which he thinks should, in a similar spirit
of truthfulness, lead us to draw a further inference against Christian
Morality (GS 357, cf. GM III:27). Finally, the two senses of the term, per-
sonal and historical, are drawn together when he speaks of Goethe as “a
type of self-overcoming on the part of that century” (TI “Skirmishes of an
Untimely Man” 49).
What role this concept is supposed to play in Nietzsche’s philosophy is
ambiguous. On the one hand it seems to underwrite some kind of signifi-
cant personal achievement. On the other, it is given a more historical role,
offered in an almost Hegelian idiom as accounting for the complex develop-
ment and internal dialectics of sociocultural phenomenon such as morality
and religious belief. In this article I focus on self-overcoming as a distinctive
kind of first-personal, and ethical, re-evaluative activity.
However, my account is different from those of recent commentators
who have explained this concept, and its relation to Nietzsche’s ethical
commitments, through psychological versions of the will to power. On one
prominent version, as put forward by Bernard Reginster, we are given an
account of human desire in which the ends of our first-order desires are
sought in conjunction with a second-order desire for the feeling of power,
a hedonic experience occasioned by overcoming resistances.3 While this
second-order desire, the will to power as the will to overcoming resistance,4
is dependent on those first-order desires, insofar as it can only get deter-
minate content and occasion for expression through them, this psycholog-
ical will to power has been put forward as fundamental to understanding
Nietzsche’s ethics and philosophy of value. According to these interpreta-
tions, the kinds of first-order activities and ends that Nietzsche thinks are
most valuable, and wants to direct us toward, are those in which the will
to power so construed is maximized.5 In this way it is claimed that will to
power psychology can provide us with a standard by which we can assess
and rank human activities, underwriting an “ethics of power.”6
For these commentators self-overcoming is framed in terms of this
will to power psychology,7 such that a commitment to self-overcoming is a
commitment to perpetually maintaining this power dynamic of seeking out
Nietzschean Self-Overcoming | 325
and overcoming resistance in the suitable first-order activities. Reginster,

for example, tells us that Nietzsche’s creators will power in this way, they
are “perpetually in search of new challenges to meet, of new overcomings,”
and in doing so eventually overcome themselves.8 However, Reginster does
not say enough about what is involved in this process. Both his and Paul
Katsafanas’s official position seems to be that self-overcoming is another
term for will to power, and as such is (like will to power is for them) a
constituent feature of all human psychology. Yet, at other times they, like
Nietzsche, describe self-overcoming as a distinctive achievement, and so
we are left with a number of questions. One might wonder if it is the case
that the achievement of self-overcoming is merely quantitative, such that
in overcoming enough resistance one overcomes oneself, or whether there
could be degrees of self-overcoming. Moreover in such instances when
“creators” eventually overcome themselves we might ask whether this was
an explicit aim of the activity or merely a by-product.
In fact, the way Nietzsche sometimes talks about self-overcoming
implies that it is not sufficiently explained as resulting from the pursuit of
overcoming maximum resistance. As highlighted by some of the quoted
passages at the beginning of this article we might think that it also matters
to Nietzsche what it is that stands to be overcome. As Peter Poellner notes,
for Nietzsche “evaluative judgements are also possible and required about
the worth of an overcoming in terms of what it is an overcoming of and
what it is an overcoming towards; that is, what our first-order desires aim
at.”9 That is to say we might think that Nietzsche’s evaluative commitments,
while often plausibly framed in terms of will to power psychology and its
conception of self-overcoming, are also concerned with first-order evalua-
tive practices in terms of their substantive content and normative ends.10
In this article I will argue that by interpreting self-overcoming as a dis-
tinctive kind of re-evaluative activity we can provide a different account of
this concept and its role in Nietzsche’s ethics than in those accounts that
focus predominately on the will to power. However, it should be kept in
mind that I am not claiming that the accounts that interpret self-overcoming
in that way are wrong to do so or that my reading should replace those
accounts. As both Reginster and Katsafanas argue there are textual and
philosophical grounds for their reading. In this sense what follows of my
own account of this concept is not intended to be a sufficient characteriza-
tion, either exegetically or philosophically, and in this sense I do not claim
to capture everything, or even necessarily the most important thing, that
Nietzsche intends with this concept. My claim is more limited. Namely that
my reading of self-overcoming as a distinctive kind of re-evaluative ethical
activity points toward something that the will to power accounts overlook
and therefore warrants consideration. Moreover, and as will become clearer
in section 3 (which explicates Nietzsche’s problematic ideas on continual
self-overcoming), my alternative interpretation of self-overcoming is also
able to provide a distinctive reading of what Nietzsche thinks is involved in
our striving toward ethical ideals, that is, what self-overcoming is an over-
coming toward. It does so by highlighting the way in which such ethical
striving is necessarily horizonal due to way in which we falsify what we
were striving for in trying to conceptualize our ethical ideals in specific
self-evaluative frameworks. It is in this sense, and others, that providing
an alternative reading of self-overcoming will allow me to draw out some
distinctive features of Nietzsche’s thinking about ethics and ethical ideals.
In terms of structure, section 1 presents an account of self-overcoming
as a distinctive kind of re-evaluative, ethical activity. Section 2 gives an
example of this kind of self-overcoming through Nietzsche’s idea of achiev-
ing a perspective “Beyond Good and Evil,” and suggests some further dis-
claimers on my account in light of this. Finally section 3 considers the idea
that we should be committed to self-overcoming continually.
1. Self-Overcoming as a Re-evaluative Activity
So, we need an account of self-overcoming that says something about “the

worth of an overcoming in terms of what it is an overcoming of and what
it is an overcoming towards.”11 In other words, we need an account of the
way self-overcoming relates to questions of value in terms of both (a) its
substantive content (what it is an overcoming of) and (b) its ends (what it is
an overcoming toward). In this section, I provide the start of an account of
(a). The central claim I want to argue for is that self-overcoming involves an
overcoming of values in relation to what I call self-evaluative frameworks.
What I mean by this will require explanation. To begin with it will be help-
ful to have an idea of what constitutes an evaluative framework simpliciter.
First, evaluative frameworks should be thought to involve normative
standards that allow for judgments of actions (or states of affairs) that fall
under the purview of the activity. Games are good examples of when we
adopt such evaluative frameworks, since by having certain preestablished
normative standards about what the relevant ends are, and how we are to
achieve them, they allow for contrasting, and often finely grained, judg-
ments of performance. A second feature of evaluative frameworks is that
insofar as we are sincerely engaged in activities governed by them, then
their normative standards are constitutive standards, such that if I do not
follow the norms then I cease to be performing that activity. For example,
if when playing cricket I claim to have scored a run by jogging on the spot,
this indicates that I am not really playing cricket at all.
With this characterization of evaluative frameworks in place, I will now
specify what the relevant differences are in the case of self-evaluative frame-
works. First, it should be noted that the distinction cannot just be that the
activity in question involves self-evaluation, such that it is specifically my,
or someone else’s, performance that is being assessed, rather than that of an
object (e.g., a car engine’s performance). Since evaluating people according
to externally specified normative standards is typical of, and essential to,
the vast majority of human activities.12 Rather, the important distinction is
to do with the content of what is being assessed and the kinds of questions
this different focus generates, such that we might say that self-evaluative
frameworks concern others and myself in an ethical sense. Charles Taylor’s
description of “strong evaluation” sets up some criteria for distinguishing
self-evaluative from evaluative frameworks on such grounds: “There are
questions about how I am going to live my life which touch on the issues of
what kind of life is worth living, or what kind of life would fulfill the prom-
ise implicit in my particular talents, or the demands incumbent on some-
one with my endowment, or of what constitutes a rich, meaningful life—as
against one concerned with secondary matters or trivia.”13
So, we might argue that with self-evaluative frameworks we are under
the jurisdiction of a set of normative standards according to which assess-
ments are made not just of our performance in a particular activity, but of
our conduct in ethical life. In this sense the normative standards that con-
stitute self-evaluative frameworks will be more general, but are also more
fundamental and important. For what self-evaluative frameworks are com-
prised of are the criteria according to which we make assessments of our
worth as persons, what we might call our fundamental evaluations, and
therefore the normative standards through which we construct our practi-
cal identities (I will explain my use of this term and its importance for my
account in what follows). As Nietzsche writes in a note, “morality is the doc-
trine of the order of men’s rank, and consequently also of the significance of
their actions and works for this order of rank: thus, the doctrine of human
valuations in respect of everything human”.14
Another significant aspect of self-evaluative frameworks are nor-
mative ideals against which we compare ourselves, often as a means for
improvement.15 Consider, for example, the self-evaluative framework of the
Christian. This individual’s assessments of ethical conduct are bound to an
ideal Jesus was taken to exemplify, providing her with certain fundamental
evaluations. I note this feature because we might think that a self-evalu-
ative framework’s normative ideal typically provides at least some of the
content of those, often contrastive, fundamental evaluations. We can see
this in the case of Christian Morality through its evaluations of redeemed
versus condemned, good versus evil. Yet, while such normative ideals for
self-improvement are a central feature of self-evaluative frameworks it is
what they concern that is important, namely, as stated above, assessments
of ethical conduct in a way that is bound up with our practical identity.
Indeed, it is this ethical dimension that is fundamental to understanding
the distinctiveness of self-evaluative frameworks.
Pausing for a moment, we might wonder what to make of an individual
who values his performance in a game so highly that it defines his practical
identity. Such an individual would not be shallow in Taylor’s sense of failing
to be attuned to issues of what it is worthwhile to do and what is worth-
while to be, since he would have answers to these questions.16 However, we
might think that one of the central intuitions that guides our sense that self-
evaluative frameworks are more important is that they should be comprised
of a more general set of fundamental evaluations that typically determine
our attitudes toward a wide variety of more specific first-order projects or
ends, so determining “the significance of their actions and works for this
order of rank”.17 Therefore, it might seem problematically narrow if any
one particular activity or end exclusively determined these fundamental
evaluations. In this sense, there is an important issue of the scope of one’s
fundamental evaluations, such that if an individual is only concerned with
his performance in a particular game, at the expense of all other concerns,
then we might think that it is an open question whether or not he is really
engaged in ethical life.18
Now that we have a working definition of a self-evaluative framework I
can return to my initial claim. I want to argue that self-overcoming involves
both questioning and ultimately abandoning a self-evaluative framework,
that is overcoming some set of fundamental evaluations through which
we make assessments of our ethical conduct, and therefore shifting the

normative standards through which we define our practical identities. It
seems that Nietzsche has this in mind when he has Zarathustra say that
the “greatest thing that you can experience” is “the hour of your great-
est contempt” (Z P:3), suggesting the creative power of a certain kind of
dissatisfaction-with-self.19 So we might say, framed in terms of the first
desideratum at the beginning of this section, that self-overcoming takes
self-evaluative frameworks as its substantive content, that is what it is an
overcoming of, and as such it is re-evaluative, ethical project.20
The exegetical case for attributing this view of self-overcoming to
Nietzsche, while present in many of the passages quoted in the introduc-
tion, will be provided in more detail in section 2. However, before this
I want to provide some further reflections on two aspects of my account so
far. I want to discuss, first, what kind of activities this interpretation rules
out as counting as instances of Nietzschean self-overcoming and, second,
how the account can make sense of the “self ” in self-overcoming.
It is important to note that interpreting self-overcoming in this way
rules out many first-order activities, and their ends, as counting as instances
of Nietzschean self-overcoming, even those that involve overcoming quan-
titatively significant resistances. For example, it should be clear that run-
ning a marathon or climbing a mountain would not count. Such activities
undoubtedly involve evaluative frameworks in which normative standards
govern self-assessment, and typically involve high degrees of sacrifice. But
we would be hard-pressed to argue that activities like these involve an over-
coming of the fundamental evaluations that constitute our practical identity.
This is of course not to deny that all kinds of activities, and achievements
within them, are commonly said to have involved self-overcoming without
such re-evaluation, for example running the marathon faster. My claim is
rather that at least part of what Nietzsche means when he uses this term
in something different, and in this sense the account of Nietzschean self-
overcoming suggested so far is not the same as a commonsense conception
of self-overcoming, whereby an individual has to overcome many obstacles
and is willing to make certain sacrifices in order to achieve certain ends.
Furthermore, we can see how this implies that the meaning of
Nietzschean self-overcoming might not be sufficiently captured by the
perpetual pursuit of overcoming resistance, that is in terms of those will
to power psychology readings considered in the introduction.21 If self-
overcoming involves, at least in part, re-evaluative, ethical activity then it
requires something more of those engaged in it than can be cashed out

solely in terms of overcoming resistances. This more specific emphasis is
captured by Nietzsche having Zarathustra say that “change of values—that
is the change of creators. Whoever must be a creator always annihilates”
(Z I: “On Thousand and One Goals” 43), later reminding us that “not
around the inventors of new noise does the world revolve, but around the
inventors of new values” (Z II: “On Great Events” 104).
Moreover, we should not confuse self-overcoming, in the way I have
interpreted it, with coming to value something differently, where this
merely amounts to becoming aware of some aspect of the object of eval-
uation of which I was previously not aware. For example, say individuals
have a positive evaluation of certain institutions and believe that they are
noble in their pursuit of knowledge, yet after years spent in them come to
realize that the pursuit of material wealth is in fact more important to them.
On this basis their evaluation might change to a negative one. However,
the normative standards for making evaluations have not changed. In fact
a precondition of this new negative assessment is their holding onto the
evaluative framework in which the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is
praiseworthy and the pursuit of material wealth is objectionable. These are
the fundamental evaluations that are not under question in such instances.
More positively, the reading of self-overcoming presented so far
also allows us to specify more clearly the “self ” that is involved in self-
overcoming. Remember, it was suggested that the role of the self in self-
overcoming is something that the will to power psychology readings do not
say enough about, as evidenced by the kinds of questions it was suggested
their accounts leave open (see the introduction). As has been argued it is
our practical identity, as constructed through certain fundamental eval-
uations, that is revalued in Nietzschean self-overcoming. Such a reading
therefore resists any overly literalist interpretation that might confuse prac-
tical identity, as primarily a matter of one’s self-conception, with something
like personal identity, which is a matter of psychological continuity for
temporally extended subjects. Since if self-overcoming referred to the latter
rather than the former, putatively involving a literal death of the self, then
the notion would become problematic: understanding self-overcoming as
something that can be reasonably attributed to me after the re-evaluation,
presupposes a psychological continuity that could not be overcome on pain
of the self in question after self-overcoming referring to a literally different
person. David Velleman stresses the need to keep this distinction in mind,
telling us “when someone suffers an identity crisis, as we call it, what is

threatened is not his identity as a person but his conception of himself as
a person, which might also be called his sense of identity or his sense of
who he is.”22 So, with Nietzschean self-overcoming, interpreted in my way,
it is our fundamental evaluations, those that are constitutive of our frame-
works for self-evaluation, and are essential to our practical identities (as
self-conceptions), that are re-evaluated.
A good example is the Christian-turned-atheist who achieves self-
overcoming in this way by abandoning her faith. Not only would such an
individual reject the religious-moral norms that allow for ethical assess-
ments such as “good Christian” or “sinner,” but by abandoning her faith the
self-evaluative framework in which she made these kinds of assessments
is rendered obsolete. Therefore, the overcoming of this self-evaluative
framework renders her practical identity as she previously conceived of
it destabilized. She can no longer rely on that familiar set of fundamen-
tal evaluations and norms to assess her, and others’, worth, and the former
ethical significance of her actions, thoughts, desires, and projects (i.e., her
self-conception) is re-valued.23
Through this example I think we can see that for something to count
as an instance of Nietzschean self-overcoming it cannot merely question
a self-evaluative framework, but it must also involve a shift away from it.
The question of a shift toward what then becomes important, and this is
precisely the second desideratum set out in the introduction, of needing
an account of the ends of self-overcoming (or what it is an overcoming
toward). Although I will hold off on considering this till section 3 since
I will be able to engage with it more adequately at that stage.
2. Beyond Good and Evil
Taking up the exegetical case more directly, I now want to argue that
Nietzsche’s idea of achieving a standpoint “Beyond Good and Evil” is an
instance of self-overcoming as described above, that is an overcoming of
a self-evaluative framework.24 This section’s role is therefore partly exe-
getical, showing how a project at the center of Nietzsche’s ethical thought
admits of a natural interpretation in the terms set out above. However, in
doing so I will also be able to draw out some further significant aspects of
self-overcoming as I am interpreting it.
In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche describes the project I have in

mind: “But today, thanks to a renewed self-contemplation and deepening
of humanity, shouldn’t we be facing a renewed necessity to effect a rever-
sal and fundamental displacement of values? Shouldn’t we be standing on
the threshold of a period that would be designated, negatively at first, as
extra-moral. . . . The overcoming of morality—even the self-overcoming
of morality” (BGE 32).25 In order to understand what Nietzsche means in
this passage it is helpful to look to On the Genealogy of Morality where he
provides a more detailed setting for this specific achievement. There we
find out that the overcoming of morality involves the rejection of a self-
evaluative framework that was born of the most world-historical reversal of
values, what Nietzsche calls the “slave revolt in morality” (GM I:7). While
this text paints a complex picture of this phenomenon in terms of its psy-
chological motivations and historical conditions, for our purposes we can
focus on the evaluative dimension of this original reversal.
One of the least interpretatively contested claims about Nietzsche’s
account of the development of what he calls “European morality” (GS 343,
380) is that he thinks it begins with the triumph of slave morality, which rep-
resented an overturning of the self-evaluative framework of noble morality.
He tells us it was a “revaluation of all former values,” the triumph “over
all others ideals, all noble ideals” (GM I:8, cf. GM I:16; Nietzsche identi-
fies noble morality with the dominant self-evaluative framework of Greco-
Roman culture). Whereas, we are told, noble morality expressed itself by
fundamental evaluations whereby “good = noble = powerful = beautiful =
happy” (GM I:7)—what Nietzsche calls the aristocratic value equation—
slave morality overturned this framework in favor of new normative stan-
dards according to which “Only those who suffer are good, only the poor,
the powerless, the lowly are good; the suffering, the deprived, the sick, the
ugly . . . whereas you rich, the noble and powerful, you are eternally wicked,
cruel, lustful, insatiate, godless, you will also be eternally wretched, cursed
and damned!” (GM I:7).
With this re-evaluation in mind we can make sense of Nietzsche’s
description of what the overcoming of morality amounts to when he says
“it has been sufficiently clear for some time what I want . . . with that dan-
gerous slogan which is written on the spine of my last book, Beyond Good
and Evil . . . at least this does not mean ‘Beyond Good and Bad’” (GM I:17).
Nietzsche is clearly guarding against the misleading idea that in overcom-
ing the particular morality he is opposed to we abandon all self-evaluative
frameworks. In this sense it is correct to say that the overcoming of m orality,

and self-overcoming generally, does not seek to abandon self-evaluative
frameworks in favor of evaluative nihilism (i.e., a world without any
self-evaluative frameworks).26 This could not be Nietzsche’s position since
that would mean going “Beyond Good and Bad” (GM I:17) and as he
has Zarathustra say, “only through esteeming is there value and without
esteeming the nut of existence would be hollow” (Z I: “On a Thousand and
One Goals” 43). Rather, Nietzsche is suggesting that we overcome the spe-
cific self-evaluative framework associated with the morality that he takes
to dominate modernity, “our entire European morality” (GS 343), which
he sees as a development of slave morality’s original reversal of the self-
evaluative framework of noble morality.
Nietzsche’s justification for making this association is complex and conten-
tious, since it is dependent on the alleged continuation in modern European
morality of the psychology of ressentiment and the normative agenda of harm-
ing the highest exemplars of humanity in favor of the “herd,” largely through
Christianity or sublimated Christian values.27 However, with regard to achiev-
ing a standpoint “Beyond Good and Evil” it is clear enough what the critical
object of this project would be insofar as Nietzsche describes it as the achieve-
ment of a “point beyond our good and evil . . . by which I mean the sum of
commanding value judgements that have become part of our flesh and blood”
(GS 380). So, it makes sense to find Nietzsche concluding that European
morality is “only one type of human morality beside which, before which, and
after which many other (and especially higher) moralities are or should be pos-
sible” (BGE 202), that is, new and higher self-evaluative frameworks.
So, we can now see how Nietzsche’s account of the overcoming of
morality can be given a natural interpretation in terms of the account of
self-overcoming set out in section 1. Yet, in light of this example we can
make two further stipulations. The first is that self-overcoming involves a
movement from one self-evaluative framework to another, not the aban-
doning of all ethical frameworks, a point captured by Zarathustra’s claim
that “whoever must be a creator in good and evil . . . must first be an anni-
hilator and break values” (Z II: “On Self-Overcoming” 90; although as we
shall see below this point generates a number of further complications). The
second is that self-overcoming should be thought of as historically s ituated.
As Robert Pippin states, “the conditions described as necessary for . . .
self-overcoming are clearly here historical (dependent on one’s time) and
social (dependent, in some way, on the state of a shared social world).”28
In fact there are two ways of taking Pippin’s point. The first would be
that self-overcoming is historically situated to the extent that the critical
object of such a project could only ever be an established self-evaluative
framework of the culture we are a part of. The second, and suggested
by some of Nietzsche’s remarks, is that certain “powerful creators” (in
Nietzsche’s idiom) might also overcome self-evaluative frameworks that are
in some sense of their own making, although this project will have to stand
in some relation to the self-evaluative frameworks of the culture they are a
part of. I shall discuss this suggestion in terms of the idea of continual self-
overcoming in section 3.
However, by considering self-overcoming through the example of the
overcoming of morality two problems with my account come into focus.
As we shall see, they both highlight the worry that the kind of activity
I described in section 1 was too general, such that we might ask if it is just
any self-evaluative framework that we are being encouraged to overcome.
I will call these the formal objections since they both involve specifying ways
in which my account of self-overcoming seems problematically nonspecific.
The first objection is that there are certain self-evaluative frameworks
that we could make a reasonable, perhaps even Nietzschean, case for pre-
serving. For example, we could point to the self-evaluative framework of
Nietzsche’s nobles, who are praised for possessing an ethical outlook built
around self-affirmations, their fundamental valuations being primar-
ily self-expressions, exhibiting a certainty about their elevated status and
showing reverence for everything of a “high rank” (BGE 262, cf. BGE 287,
GM I:10–12).29 The second objection is that we can envisage situations in
which an individual is a committed Nietzschean (whatever exactly that
involves) and then decides that Buddhist or Schopenhauerian resignation
is in fact the right answer to what she now perceives to be life’s greatest
problem, namely that of suffering. Likewise we might think of an individ-
ual who was previously a libertine and then coverts to being a born-again
Christian. The problem is that we seem to have instances of what could
be plausibly described as re-evaluations of those fundamental evaluations
that structure the practical identities in question, and yet it seems that both
cases would, and do, fall foul of Nietzsche’s criticisms. In other words, they
seem to involve Nietzschean self-overcoming as I am interpreting it so far,
and yet surely fall short of Nietzsche’s ideal.
In fact these formal objections to my account can be met. However, to
see how will require a detailed consideration of the second aspect of my
account, namely the ends of Nietzschean self-overcoming (what it is an

“overcoming toward”). Given this, I will provide my preferred responses at
the end of section 3. Before moving onto section 3 I want to consider two
different solutions to the formal objections that are unsatisfactory.
One response to the first formal objection would be to argue that the
self-evaluative framework we assent to in overcoming European moral-
ity, in shifting away from those norms of self-assessment, is actually noble
morality, such that the critical object of self-overcoming would be European
morality, in order to bring about a re-assent to noble morality. Yet, it should
be stressed that any return to the specific self-evaluative framework of the
Greco-Roman world is not a possibility Nietzsche seriously entertains (at
least in his works of the 1880s); “we children of the future . . . we ‘conserve’
nothing; neither do we want to return to any past” (GS 337, cf. GS 40). This is
not to undermine the significance Nietzsche attaches to his reading of noble
morality and its Homeric values (courage, heroism, beauty, etc.), since this
serves an important contrastive function insofar as he believes its funda-
mental evaluations were not based on ressentiment or normative ends dele-
terious to the highest forms of human excellence. Rather, it is just to stress
that Nietzsche’s emphasis on “future moralities” (BGE 202) and “undiscov-
ered land the boundaries of which no one has yet surveyed” (GS 382) sug-
gests that these new self-evaluative frameworks are not simply those of the
Greco-Roman world.
Addressing the second formal objection, one might argue that it is
not just that the overcoming of morality is an important instance of self-
overcoming, but more strongly that it is only this particular self-evaluative
framework, European morality, that Nietzsche wants to overcome. In other
words, overcoming the self-evaluative framework of European morality
would be the only instance of self-overcoming that Nietzsche is interested
in. Furthermore, since Nietzsche takes European morality to be defined
through its history in the “slave revolt” and its continued dependence of
the psychology of ressentiment, in fact the critical object of self-overcoming
could be ressentiment-based moralities, including (for Nietzsche) socialism,
anarchism, nationalism, feminism, and utilitarianism (GM I:11, cf. GM I:5,
BGE 145, 226). Self-overcoming could then be framed as involving a shift
away from self-evaluative frameworks in which ethical assessment of one-
self and others are “re-touched, re-interpreted, and reviewed through the
poisonous eye of ressentiment” (GM I:11). Clearly Nietzsche thinks this psy-
chology, a kind of self-deception that distorts certain evaluative features of
the world (primarily qualities of persons) in order to enact an “imaginary

revenge” (making up for a kind of powerlessness), plays a crucial role in
constructing and maintaining the fundamental evaluations that govern the
self-evaluative framework of European morality, establishing its norms of
ethical assessment.30
Nevertheless, such a position faces exegetical difficulties as a satisfactory
account of Nietzschean self-overcoming, since what then are we to make
of Nietzsche’s praise of constant self-overcoming in BGE 257 and EH “Why
I Am So Wise” 8? Moreover, we might wonder what it means when “life
speaks” to Zarathustra and says, “good and evil that would be everlasting—
there is no such thing! They must overcome themselves out of themselves
again and again” (Z II: “On Self-Overcoming” 90). Elsewhere in the same
text, Nietzsche has Zarathustra say that “good and evil, and rich and poor,
and high and trifling, and all the names of values: they shall be weapons and
clanging signs that life must overcoming itself again and again . . .” (Z II:
“On the Tarantulas” 78, my emphasis). In other passages Nietzsche expresses
similar thoughts, saying, “life, to us, that means constantly transforming all
that we are into light and flame” (GS Second Preface:3), and describes the
way in which “again and again we experience our golden hour of victory,—
and there we stand, the way we were born, unbreakable, tense, ready for
new, more difficult and distant things” (GM I:12). Nietzsche even describes
Beethoven, a figure he has uniform praise for, as “somewhere between
a brittle old soul that is constantly coming apart and an overly young,
future-orientated soul that it constantly on its way” (BGE 245, cf. GS 282).
Moreover, when Nietzsche discusses the notion of some kind of continual
self-overcoming he seems to offer it as central to his ethical thought, as
representing some kind of commitment, achievement, or attitude we can
take toward our ethical lives and practical identities. So I think the above
response, claiming that self-overcoming relates only to European moral-
ity, will not work. Nevertheless, what this commitment to continual self-
overcoming amounts to remains unclear, and I will now provide a reading of
why this concept is sometimes given this form.
3. Self-Overcoming as a Continual Activity
This section gives an account of what self-overcoming is an overcoming

toward, the second desideratum from the beginning of the section 1.
We can provide an answer to this question by considering Nietzsche’s

idea that we should be committed to self-overcoming continually, and the
relation between this idea and the evaluative malaise he sees humanity
confronted with in a post-moral age, that is a future in which European
morality is no longer subscribed to.
However, prima facie the idea of continual self-overcoming seems wor-
ryingly arbitrary and perhaps even psychologically implausible, at least
in the way I am reading Nietzschean self-overcoming, since can we really
think that Nietzsche is suggesting not just the overcoming of a particular
self-evaluative framework (say that of European morality), but a commit-
ment to doing so again and again? As Jaspers notes, we could see such a
demand as one of “constant self-crucifixion terminating in nothingness.”31
In contrast to first impressions, a plausible reading of this idea can be given.
Moreover, understanding what Nietzsche intends by his emphasis on con-
tinual self-overcoming will allow me to (a) discuss an aspect of Nietzsche’s
thinking about our striving toward ethics ideals that is both distinctive, and
not sufficiently discussed by will to power psychology readings, and (b)
respond to the formal objections proposed at the end of section 2.
The suggestion that we should pursue self-overcoming continually
could be framed as a commitment to the Enlightenment ideal of never-
ending re-evaluating and re-assessing. Although, according to my account
of self-overcoming, what would always be under question are the funda-
mental evaluations and normative standards through which we construct
our practical identities.32 Yet, we might wonder how plausible this is.
Insofar as we take it literally, as if in every moment and with every thought
we re-assess our fundamental evaluations, then it seems far-fetched, raising
concerns about whether a subject with such an attitude could think or act
at all. For even the most critical self-understanding cannot entertain the
suspension of all such values at once. However, we need not take it this
way. Rather, continual self-overcoming could make more sense as a stance
of openness, similar to how we might characterize an ideal scientist’s atti-
tude as always being open to revision, improvement, and in some instances
wholesale overhaul of paradigms. We would be mistaken to think that the
ideal scientific practitioner is constantly, or at one specific moment, over-
hauling everything, rather what is important is the continual commitment
to the possibility of wholesale shift in terms of ongoing attention to eviden-
tial or theoretical limitations. Analogously, the attitude of ethical openness
would never allow us to be done with ourselves, and it would therefore
serve the function of always holding open, as a possibility, those “future

moralities” (BGE 202, i.e., new self-evaluative frameworks).
Nevertheless, what more precisely are these new and future moralities
that self-overcoming, continual or otherwise, is directed toward? How, that
is, can we make more sense of the ends of Nietzschean self-overcoming? By
providing an answer to this question we will be able to see the limitations of
the reading of continual self-overcoming just presented (the “ethical open-
ness” reading) and suggest an alternative.
So, if self-overcoming involves a change in a self-evaluative framework
as directed toward “future moralities” then we might reasonably want
to know more about the latter’s nature and origins. Such supposed new
self-evaluative frameworks, despite Nietzsche’s talk about creating values,
should not be thought to come into existence ex nihilo. Rather, I think
Taylor describes something that seems close to the ends of Nietzschean
self-overcoming when he says “with these seekers . . . we are taken beyond
the gamut of traditionally available frameworks. Not only do they embrace
these traditions tentatively, but they also often develop their own versions
of them, or idiosyncratic combinations of or borrowing from or semi inven-
tions within them.”33 This perhaps captures, while remaining nonspecific,
what we might expect to find in such future moralities.
Yet, what should be remembered is that one of the main reasons
Nietzsche seems to be drawn to self-overcoming as some kind of ethical
ideal is that the ends to which such “semi-inventive” projects are directed
cannot be exhaustively articulated in advance, or put another way they
are what I will call horizonal. Self-overcoming then might be thought to
express, as Poellner puts its, “the desire for self-transformation through
an orientation towards what Nietzsche calls ‘ideals,’ the contents of which
cannot be determinately specified by us as we are.”34 I want to argue that
this idea points toward a more distinctive understanding of continual self-
overcoming than the stance of ethical openness captures. In order to see
how though we first need to make a distinction between two ways in which
we might think of the ends of self-overcoming as horizonal.
For all that has been said so far we could think that while these future
moralities remain to be specified at the initial point of engagement in
re-evaluative projects, or in other words that they cannot be articulated
in advance by us as we are at present, that over the course of such self-
overcoming we would, in the end, come to a fully articulated, no longer
inchoate, self-evaluative framework. Like the ideal scientist who overcomes
the theoretical or evidential limitations of a certain hypothesis in favor of a

new one that is a better fit, we might think that there are no limitations, in
theory, on achieving and conceptually formulating this new self-evaluative
standpoint. It is in this sense that Taylor remarks how when engaging in
such re-evaluations we appeal to some deep “unstructured sense of what is
important, which is as yet inchoate,” but that in the end this is brought to
articulation.35 The commitment to constant ethical openness dictates that
we could not be complacent, but read in this way it seems that achieving
the ends of Nietzschean self-overcoming is theoretically attainable, even
if in practice we might find it very difficult to maintain this commitment
continually.
Yet, there is a more distinctive way of taking Nietzsche’s point about
the horizonality of future moralities. We could say, pace Taylor, that it is
not merely at the beginning of our ethical re-evaluations that the higher
standpoint that we strive for is inchoate, but rather that in trying to bring
to definition our ethical ideals, by in some sense making them “objective”
and conceptually articulated, we somehow betray them, such that when we
try to move closer toward definitely achieving and articulating this new
self-evaluative framework Nietzsche thinks we in fact somehow always fal-
sify or fall short of what was more authentic in our original, adumbrated,
commitment to something higher.
In this sense we might highlight a kind of anti-conceptualist aspect to
Nietzsche’s thinking about ethical ideals. For example consider these two
particularly revealing passages: “I caught this insight on the wing and
quickly took the nearest shoddy words to fasten it lest it fly away from me.
And now it has died of these barren words and hangs and flags in them—
and I hardly know any more, when I look at it, how I could have felt so
happy when I caught this bird” (GS 298); “We stop valuing ourselves enough
when we communicate. Our true experiences are completely taciturn. They
could not be communicated even if they wanted to be. This is because the
right words for them do not exist. The things we have words for are also
the things we have already left behind” (TI “Skirmishes of an Untimely
Man” 26, cf. BGE 97, 160).36 This theme is problematic, and when Nietzsche
engages with it his prose often becomes more poetic. Yet given the difficulty
of trying to conceptualize a point about the problematic nature of concep-
tualizing our ethical ideals it is not surprising that he often reaches for a
more metaphorical style. For instance in the final aphorism of Beyond Good
and Evil when he asks, “What are the only things we can paint . . . only ever
things that are about to wilt and lose their smell. Only ever storms that have
exhausted themselves and are moving off, and feelings that are yellowed
and late . . . but nobody will guess from this how you looked in your morn-
ing, you sudden sparks and wonders of my solitude” (BGE 296).
Drawing on these passages we might say that for Nietzsche there is a
“wilting” that takes place in the activity of striving to conceptualize, and
so realize, our highest ideals. Put another way, Nietzsche seems to think
that there is a fundamentally self-defeating character to our projects of
ethical self-transformation.37 Interpreting the ends of self-overcoming in
this distinctive way, as suggesting something more theoretically, rather
than just practically, difficult about articulating (and achieving) the ends
of such re-evaluative activities, might allow us to see how continual self-
overcoming might make sense as something we could be committed to and
how it can combat what Nietzsche sees as the post-moral evaluative mal-
aise. To see how we need to specify more clearly what this malaise is, and
then examine how the first reading of continual self-overcoming, the stance
of ethical openness, fares on this score.
Nietzsche is concerned, as we saw in our discussion in section 2, by the
idea that in overcoming European morality we might sleepwalk into a kind
of evaluative nihilism, more specifically into a post-moral future in which
we give up on striving for higher ethical ideals, ignoring his call for higher
moralities after European morality (BGE 202). He thinks we might all too
easily fall into the trap of favoring that “pitiful contentment” (Z P:3) rep-
resented in Zarathustra’s depiction of the last human being who derisively
asks, “What is creation? What is longing?” (Z P:5).
So, if we return to our example of the ideal scientist as exemplary
of the stance of openness, we might note that while he must be open to
revision given new evidence or theoretical limitations, if at a given time
all such considerations speak in favor of a particular hypothesis then he
would reasonably have to accept it. In this way a commitment to openness
should not amount to arbitrary skepticism. Rather, the stance of openness
is openness to revision given that relevant reason-based evidence pres-
ents itself. Applying this to the ethical context, we might wonder whether
we can really make sense of a situation in which, having achieved some
proto-noble standpoint, that is to say if our fundamental evaluations are no
longer those of European morality, we would then be committed to over-
coming this new self-evaluative framework as well (whatever precise con-
tent the latter has).38 Since it might seem that if we arrive at this standpoint
and find no good reason, pace a kind of arbitrary self-skepticism, to again

revise these new fundamental evaluations, then the demand for continual
self-overcoming would be unreasonable and psychologically implausible.
In this sense a commitment to ethical openness should not dictate revision
regardless, since it is the reasons and intuitions about the limitations of a
particular standpoint that provide a good deal, if not necessarily all, of the
motivation for engaging in any particular self-overcoming in the first place.
Ethical openness should only commit us to openness to such reasons as
they are presented, and it does not itself supply those reasons.
Consequently, if even some proto-noble self-evaluative standpoint must
eventually be overcome, as implied by the idea of continual self-overcoming,
then we would have to have a reason why. Note that we cannot appeal to
the idea that this commitment might sustain our interest in ethical life in a
post-moral world, since it should not be the case that our end is to “affirm
life,” to find a way of striving toward new self-evaluative frameworks, and
that continual self-overcoming best serves this aim. Not only might this
betray Nietzsche’s remarks on continual self-overcoming which implicitly
resist this commitment becoming a means to an end, but it gives rise to
two objections. (1) There might be all kinds of different or preferable means
for achieving this end (“affirming life”) in a post-moral context and (2) we
would have to have an independent argument, pace nihilism, that “affirm-
ing life” in a post-moral context is actually realizable. So, the problem with
reading continual self-overcoming as the stance of ethical openness is that
it does not, by itself, give us a plausible explanation of the motivation to
overcome some proto-noble ethical standpoint or explain why we should
keep striving toward new ethical ideals in a post-moral context.
The more distinctive reading of continual self-overcoming, as growing
out of Nietzsche’s anti-conceptualism and the horizonal nature of our eth-
ical ideals, suggests a more plausible response to these problems (and the
first formal objection from section 2). The motivation for re-engaging in
re-evaluative projects makes more sense if we understand, on some level,
that we have fallen short and are therefore dissatisfied with what we have
ended up with as the result of a particular self-transformative project. In
this way my constant striving to overcome myself would not be arbitrary,
but might be explained in terms of the necessarily always limited attempt of
trying to get closer to an ethical ideal, underwriting what might be required
to possess “the power [and also the reasons] to create for ourselves our own
new eyes and ever again new eyes that are even more our own” (GS 143).
However, such continual attempts at ethical self-transformation would

not represent the myth of Sisyphus, of attempting to articulate, failing, then
starting again from the beginning. Rather we might think, as Nietzsche sug-
gests in GS 143, that attempts at articulation could come closer to expressing
our ethical ideals. Consequently, each attempt at articulation could over-
come, or at least confront, some of the limitations of previous articulations,
and therefore come closer to a more genuine expression. And this is the
case even if exhaustive, final realization of our highest ethical ideal is never
achieved, and if in continually striving toward such “future moralities” we
are aware of the limitations and sense of inadequacy that pervades all efforts
at articulation in specific, conceptualized self-evaluative frameworks. In
this sense the “future” in “future moralities” (BGE 202) does not merely
designate its temporal status, that is, being in the future, but rather more
significantly points toward the horizonal character of our highest ideals.
Interpreted in this way we can also see how the more distinctive read-
ing of continual self-overcoming might combat the post-evaluative malaise
more successfully. Since if what I end up with always falls short of what I
was striving toward, then this should provide the necessary reasons to take
up the project of self-overcoming again. By seeing the ends of Nietzschean
self-overcoming as inexhaustible in this way, there will always be the
opportunity for re-engaging in such projects, an understanding Nietzsche
describes as the realization that “the secret for harvesting from existence the
greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is—to live dangerously. . . .
Send your ships into uncharted seas” (GS 282, cf. GS 124), those “ships”
directed toward “distant futures not yet glimpsed in dreams” (Z III: “On Old
and New Law Tables” 157). Read in this way continual self-overcoming could
provide a more successful way of maintaining ethical interest in ourselves
in a post-moral future in which the traditional frameworks of European
morality are no longer subscribed to and self-evaluative frameworks take
on a more protean and individually indexed character, representing a key
aspect of Nietzsche’s project of staving off the potential slip of humanity
into an ethical malaise (GM III:14).
I think this more distinctive reading of the ends of Nietzschean
self-overcoming also provides a response to the second formal objection
from the end of section 2. There it was questioned how my account of
self-overcoming could make sense of those cases of the converted Buddhist
and born-again Christian, where we seem to have examples of what could
plausibly be described as an overcoming of a self-evaluative framework that
structures a practical identity, and yet it seems that both instances would,
and do, fall foul of Nietzsche’s criticisms. In other words, they seemed to
involve Nietzschean self-overcoming as I had presented it up to that point,
and yet surely we have to say they fall short of Nietzsche’s ideal.
One response to this objection would be to concede that such cases
are indeed instances of Nietzschean self-overcoming as defined but argue
that there is some other Nietzschean standard that could be applied, exter-
nal to his ideal of self-overcoming, which could rule them out. A second
response might be to deny that they are in fact instances of Nietzschean
self-overcoming because the reading I have given was never attempting to
be sufficient characterization of this concept. So perhaps we could appeal
to the will to power psychology readings of self-overcoming to try to deal
with such counterexamples. However, I think both of these responses
would undermine the significance of the reading of self-overcoming pre-
sented in this article. In fact I think we can do better by drawing on the
discussion of the horizonal ends of Nietzschean self-overcoming pre-
sented in this section.
As we have seen, at least one aspect of what is involved in the commit-
ment to Nietzschean self-overcoming as a continual activity is a recognition
of the way in which some final realization of our highest ethical ideal can
never be achieved; as was noted above the “future” in “future moralities”
(BGE 202) does not merely designate its temporal status but rather more
significantly points toward the horizonal character of our highest ideals.
However, whatever else the Christian or Buddhist self-evaluative frame-
works involve, they are both aiming toward some finished or final state of
rest (at least in their most traditional and typical formulations). For exam-
ple, in the Christian case we have the contemplatio Dei, or the ultimate end
of man, which Aquinas describes as “the complete good which satisfies his
desire altogether,”39 and in the Buddhist case the state of Nirvana, that “per-
fect oneness,” which Nietzsche describes as “that finally achieved state of
total hypnosis and silence . . . as an escape from every aim, every wish, every
action” (GM I:17). Moreover, such ends are aimed at by following fully cod-
ified and conceptually articulated self-evaluative frameworks in terms of
truths and normative standards expressed in canonical texts like the Bible,
which prescribe the various religious practices that have to be followed if
one is to achieve such states of “eternal beatitude.” As Nietzsche says about
Christianity, “the value, meaning, horizons of value were fixed, uncondi-
tional, eternal, one with God”.40
So even if converted Buddhists or born-again Christians, by virtue

of their “conversions,” could be said to have achieved a re-evaluation of a
self-evaluative framework which structured their practical identities, they
could not be said to be engaged in Nietzschean self-overcoming proper on
my reading because of what it is that their projects of transformation are
directed toward. In other words, what these instances of self-overcoming
are aiming at is a once and for all satisfaction in some final state, aiming for
what Nietzsche describes as a “deep sleep” (GM I:17). So, in this sense we
can see that while ethical re-evaluation might be a necessary condition for
something to count as an instance of Nietzschean self-overcoming on my
reading, it is not sufficient, and therefore the second formal objection has
been met.
While more could be said about this continual dimension to self-
overcoming, specifically in terms of its reliance on Nietzsche’s anti-
conceptualism, my aims in this final section have been more limited.
I have given an account of the ends of self-overcoming (what it is an
overcoming toward), showing that continual self-overcoming does not
collapse into arbitrariness or psychological implausibility but rather rep-
resents a novel dimension to Nietzsche’s thinking about ethical ideals, a
feature that also allows us to answer some of the objections to the inter-
pretation argued for in this article.
Conclusion
My central aim is this article was to provide a novel reading of Nietzschean

self-overcoming. By focusing on the first-personal dimension to this idea
I have been able to highlight at least one class of evaluative activities that
he values highly, namely those in which we stand to achieve ethical self-
transformation by overcoming the fundamental evaluations that structure
our practical identities. I then argued that achieving a standpoint “Beyond
Good and Evil” was an example of self-overcoming read in this way and
drew out some further stipulations on my interpretation. Finally, through
explicating Nietzsche’s idea of continual self-overcoming, I provided an
account of what self-overcoming is an “overcoming toward” in terms of
horizonal ethical ends expressed in the idea of “future moralities,” drawing
links between this idea and the potential for maintaining ethical interest in
a post-moral context.
While more could be said about a number of the claims argued for
in this article I think the account of self-overcoming offered here points
toward a more general idea about the different approaches we might take
in trying to understand Nietzsche’s thought, and specifically with regard
to ethics. Perhaps most importantly, it has shown that it is often possible
to frame distinctive ideas in Nietzsche’s ethics, such as the importance of
self-evaluative frameworks (section 1), and the horizonal nature of ethical
striving (section 3), without explicit reference to, or dependence on, will to
power psychology (and it is possible to do so even where the will to power
psychology readings might seem like the most natural interpretative routes
to take). Moreover, when we do so novel aspects of Nietzsche’s thought
emerge, such as the strong link between an anti-conceptualist ethics and
the notion of continual self-overcoming. In this sense it is worth exploring
whether or not there might be other significant areas of Nietzsche’s ethical
thought that could admit of similar attempts to cleave away what is distinc-
tive and of value in his texts from will to power psychology.
University of Warwick
Jonathan.Mitchell@Warwick.ac.uk
N OT E S
1. Translations used are Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, in The Anti-

Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Beyond Good and Evil, trans.
Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); The Case of
Wagner, in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings,
trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Ecce
Homo: How to Become What You Are, in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight
of the Idols, and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005); The Gay Science, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001); Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); On the Genealogy of Morality,
trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, trans. Adrian Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006); Twilight of the Idols, in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and
Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005); Writings from the Late Notebooks, trans. Kate Sturge (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
2. Some notion of self-overcoming is also present in Zarathustra’s concept of

the overman and the idea that the “human being is something that must be over-
come” (Z P:3; cf. A 57).
3. Bernard Reginster, The Affirmation of Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2006), 118–47.
4. Reginster, Affirmation of Life, 130–32.
5. Aside from Reginster, Paul Katsafanas also provides a similar account,
although with more “constitutive” themes in mind (see Katsafanas, “Deriving Ethics
from Action,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 [2011]: 620–60, 650–51,
and Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013], 145–83). John Richardson, with a slightly
different emphasis, states that, for Nietzsche, “I am to see that the point to life is
growth, growth by overcoming previous states of myself. . . . Nietzsche’s view again
looks like a kind of consequentialism, with power—the individuals own power—as
the good to be maximized” (Richardson, “Nietzsche on Life’s Ends,” in The Oxford
Handbook of Nietzsche, ed. J. Richardson and K. Gemes [Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013], 777).
6. Reginster, Affirmation of Life, 176. It should be noted that for Katsafanas will
to power gives us only a standard according to which we assess other values, and
with which our other values need be consistent. So, rather than the “foundational
principle from which we derive all other normative claims . . . will to power gen-
erates a standard in terms of which we are to assess all other values” (Katsafanas,
Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, 189).
7. Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, 158; Reginster, Affirmation
of Life, 250–51. This reading of self-overcoming was originally proposed by Walter
Kaufmann, who writes that “the will to power is conceived of as the will to overcome
oneself,” and that ‘“Power’ means something specific for Nietzsche: self-overcoming”
(Kaufmann, Nietzsche—Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist [Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1974], 200, 261).
8. Reginster, Affirmation of Life, 250–51.
9. Peter Poellner, “Aestheticist Ethics,” in Nietzsche, Naturalism and Normativity,
ed. C. Janaway and S. Robertson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 52–80, 55.
10. As Brian Leiter comments, one of the central charges that Nietzsche makes
against the kinds of morality he rejects are their “normative agenda[s] which ben-
efits the ‘lowest’ human beings while harming the ‘highest’” (Leiter, “Nietzsche and
the Morality Critics,” Ethics 107.2 (1997): 250–85, 26; see also Leiter, Nietzsche on
Morality [London: Routledge, 2015], 15–25). For a contrasting approach that makes
impotent will to power central to Nietzsche’s critique of morality, see Reginster, “The
Psychology of Christian Morality,” in Richardson and Gemes, Oxford Handbook of
Nietzsche, 701–27.
11. Poellner, “Aestheticist Ethics,” 55.
12. Leiter could be read as making this mistake when defining what constitutes
moralities for Nietzsche. He appeals to the idea of “Anthropocentric Evaluative
Practice,” the practice of evaluating oneself and others, claiming that “both slave
and master moralities are examples of morality” because they are evaluative prac-
tices that are “concerned not with things or texts or foods, but with human beings”
(Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality, 138). Yet, this does not tell us what is distinctive about
moralities. So while he rightly adds that “not every AEP is a morality,” it cannot
therefore follow that slave and master moralities are examples of moralities because
they involve AEP. Rather AEP would be a necessary condition, but is not sufficient.
As such Leiter’s definition does not tell us what distinguishes self-evaluative frame-
works from nonethical activities that are AEPs, such as games. Ken Gemes and
Christopher Janaway also highlight this problem in their “Naturalism and Value
in Nietzsche,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71.3 (2005): 729–40, 737.
13. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1989), 14 (cf. Harry Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care About [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998], 92).
14. Nietzsche, Writings from the Late Notebooks, 35[5]. For an extensive over-
view of the topic of normativity in Nietzsche, see Janaway and Robertson, Nietzsche,
Naturalism and Normativity. Of particular note in this collection for questions relat-
ing to first-order ethical commitments, and their status, are Poellner, “Aestheticist
Ethics,” 52–80; Peter Railton, “Nietzsche’s Normative Theory? The Art and Skill of
Living Well,” 20–51; Simon Robertson, “The Scope Problem-Nietzsche, the Moral,
Ethical and Quasi-Aesthetic,” 80–110. It is an important question, raised in the lat-
ter two articles, as to whether or not Nietzsche can consistently retain the usage of
properly deontic concepts (e.g., duty, ought) in the light of his “critique of morality,”
or whether his usage of them (cf. BGE 206, 212, 272) is in some sense “demoralized.”
Moreover, with regard to the issue of ethical ideals and the kind of requirements
Nietzsche might be imposing on his readers by suggesting self-overcoming as cen-
tral to ethical life, I am inclined to agree with Edward Harcourt, who writes that
“there seems to be plenty of room to hold an ideal—a conception of how to live such
that one can say what’s good about it—without any implication that other people
are required to live according to it. Indeed one might think this is what an ideal is: a
conception of how to live well that goes beyond what is required of one” (Harcourt,
“Nietzsche and the ‘Aesthetics of Character,’” in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of
Morality: A Critical Guide, ed. Simon May [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011], 272). For my own attempt to answer questions regarding the normative
authority of Nietzsche’s evaluative standpoint, see Jonathan Mitchell, “Nietzsche on
Taste: Epistemic Privilege and Anti-Realism,” forthcoming in Inquiry.
15. This feature is present in some evaluative frameworks but not in oth-
ers. For example, think of evaluative frameworks for assessing literature. Since
while we might have some ideal of what the highest type of literature should
attain to, in assessing a particular work we are not always doing so as a means to
improving it.
16. Charles Taylor, “What Is Human Agency?” in Human Agency and Language
(London: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 26.
17. Nietzsche, Writings from the Late Notebooks, 35[5]. See also Taylor, “What Is
Human Agency?” 39.
18. Perhaps this will seem like a question begging response, or a merely s tipulative
definition (i.e., defining this individual out of ethical life), especially to someone
who is willing to claim that concerns relating to his performance in the game do in
fact provide him with a wide range of evaluative attitudes toward other first-order
projects and ends. For example, he might be willing to entirely disregard certain
other-directed concerns in favor of focusing exclusively on training to improve his
performance. In the end if such an individual does not strike us as something of
a sociopath I expect that we cannot do much more than appeal to our intuitions
about the necessary scope of ethical life.
19. Robert Pippin makes a similar point about the importance of self-
dissatisfaction to self-overcoming. Although his more positive statement that
self-overcoming is a “self-negating and yet self-identifying and self-affirming state”
that involves “tension of the spirit” seems unclear to me. See Pippin, “How to
Overcome Oneself: Nietzsche on Freedom,” in Nietzsche on Autonomy and Freedom,
ed. K. Gemes and S. May [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009], 69–88, 82.
20. Note that ethics is used here, and in the preceding discussion, to suggest
something broader than “morality” in the sense Nietzsche is opposed to (see
section 2).
21. Nietzsche in fact tells us how the pursuit of endless “becoming,” that is, over-
coming resistance tout court, is problematic in GS 370.
22. David Velleman, Self to Self: Selected Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 356. Velleman’s target is an idea of “motivational essences”
he finds in Frankfurt, Importance of What We Care About, and Derek Parfit, Reasons
and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), according to which if one was
to change or abandon particularly important (essential) motives (i.e., those that are
constitutive of one’s personality), then something akin to literal death of the self
would be the result. While I do not have the space to develop this point fully, my
sense is that Nietzsche, like Velleman, would want to resist the idea that we have
“motivational essences” and also Frankfurt’s claim that we have an obligation to
self-preservation in these terms (see Frankfurt, Importance of What We Care About,
138, 139). In fact the commitment to self-overcoming might be opposed to what
Nietzsche would perhaps see as a kind of ethical conservatism in Frankfurt’s view
(see BGE 198).
23. Velleman makes the sound point that while, due to the radical nature of the
shift involved in such a revision of one’s self-conception, a certain resistance to such
self-overcoming would seem justified, that we would nonetheless not expect as
much resistance as for “sake of literal self-preservation” (Velleman, Self to Self, 356).
24. Another example can be found in Nietzsche’s overcoming of Romanticism.
For a detailed account of this topic, see David Mitchell, “How the Free Spirit Became
Free: Sickness and Romanticism in Nietzsche’s 1886 Prefaces,” British Journal for the
History of Philosophy 21.5 (2013): 946–66.
25. While the interpretation of the overcoming of morality set out in this section
captures something central to the notion, there is also a different sense to the idea,
namely that Judeo-Christian morality contains within itself the resources for its
own overcoming (see GS 357, cf. GM III:27).
26. Nietzsche explains what his immoralism amounts to in EH “Why I Am
Destiny” 4.
27. For development of these themes, see Peter Poellner, “Ressentiment and
Morality,” in May, Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, 120–41, and Leiter,
Nietzsche on Morality, 165–79.
28. Pippin, “How to Overcome Oneself,” 83.
29. Due to limitations of space I have not been able to consider the tension
between self-overcoming and Nietzsche’s praise of Goethean serenity as a kind
of harmony of the soul. For discussion of this theme see Leiter, “The Paradox of
Fatalism and Self-Creation in Nietzsche,” in Nietzsche, ed. J. Richardson and B.
Leiter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 227–61.
30. See Poellner, “Ressentiment and Morality,” 122.
31. Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche—An Introduction to the University of His Philosophical
Activity, trans C. F. Wallraff and F. J. Schmitz (London: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1974), 393–94. This objection is similar to that which Hegel directed against
the Romantics’ ideal of endless change (specifically as found in Novalis and
Schlegel’s “Irony”), claiming that they were expressive of a “bad infinity” (see
Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans T. M. Knox [Oxford: Clarendon, 1975],
64–69). Yet, the Romantics’ ideal of endless change, as a kind of endless striving due
to any finite end once attained being experienced as unsatisfactory, while similar in
certain regards, is not the same as Nietzschean self-overcoming, which on my read-
ing requires something more specific than this (i.e., ethical re-evaluation).
32. A commitment to continual self-overcoming might therefore seem close to
an aspect of Sartre’s ethics: “authenticity must precisely lay claim to live this very sit-
uation: this will be love as tension . . . this lived calling into question of self by self . . .
the shifting ensemble of perpetually calling things into question and or perpetu-
ally surpassing them” (Jean-Paul Sartre, Notebooks for an Ethics, trans D. Pellauer
[London: University of Chicago Press, 1992], 477–78).
33. Taylor, “What Is Human Agency?” 17.
34. Poellner, “Aestheticist Ethics,” 77.
35. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 41–42. Aaron Ridley explores a different way of
framing similar ideas in relation to Nietzsche’s ethical ideal as a kind of particular-
ism modeled after artistic creativity. Drawing on Nietzsche’s description of the way
in which artists follow “laws that defy conceptual formulation precisely because
of their hardness and determinateness” (BGE 188), Ridley argues, following Kant’s
reflections on artistic genius, that Nietzsche’s ethical agent does not have a formula
for practice or action in advance that he then might apply. Rather, in a similar
way to how an artist “sees what he should do” as it reveals itself precisely by being
involved in the practice of completing a musical phrase or completing a painting, as
a subtle kind of seeing-doing-and-responding dynamic in the artistic performance

itself, Ridley claims that the “good man ‘perceives’ what a situation requires of him,
even though there is no statable rule that allows him to do this” (Ridley, “Nietzsche
on Art and Freedom,” European Journal of Philosophy 15.2 [2007]: 204–24, 214).
36. Katsafanas argues that for Nietzsche there is a distinction between concep-
tually and non–conceptually articulated mental states that is coextensive with the
distinction between conscious and unconscious mental states. More specifically
he claims that Nietzsche thinks that “concepts are not primarily designed to por-
tray their objects accurately; rather, they are designed to facilitate human interac-
tion” (Katsafanas, “Nietzsche’s Theory of Mind,” European Journal of Philosophy 13
[2005]: 1–33, 17). I expect that the way in which, for Nietzsche, we “falsify” our eth-
ical ideals by conceptualizing them is a particular example of the way in which he
thinks conceptually articulated mental states fall short of some non–conceptually
articulated content.
37. This realization might seem melancholic, and Nietzsche claims that our insa-
tiable “thirst to possess” our ethical ideals, our constant striving for what is “beau-
tiful, strange questionable, terrible and divine,” has made it such that “nothing will
sate us anymore” (GS 382, GM III:13).
38. This is really just a way of rephrasing the first formal objection from section 2.
As will become clear in the text I do not think that continual self-overcoming read
as the stance of “ethical openness” can meet this objection.
39. Aquinas, The Treatise on Divine Nature: Summa Theologiae I 1–13, trans.
B. Shanley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), Ia, IIae, 2.8.
40. Nietzsche, Writings from the Late Notebooks, 11[26].
Ethics as Social Philosophy:
Nietzsche on Mutuality
ROBERT GUAY
Abstract: Nietzsche, I argue, did not have an ethical theory tradition-

ally structured around impersonal (or self-interested) considerations with
a strangely hierarchical content; his ethical thought, rather, is untradi-
tionally structured around very conventional content—e.g., enmity, love,
responsibility—considered relationally. Nietzsche, that is, takes the consider-
ations that emerge out of the ways in which persons relate to each other as
the primary subject matter of ethics. The main focus of reflection is accord-
ingly what sorts of relationships we can have and how they might be sustained.
Ethical reflection extends, furthermore, to the social world as a whole, as both
interpersonal relationships writ large and the context in which more particular
relationships are tenable.
Keywords: Nietzsche, ethics, mutuality, recognition, social philosophy
1. Introduction
There is a common understanding of Nietzsche’s views on ethics according

to which he believes that one ought to or should act on the appropriate cri-
teria, and that the appropriate criteria are relative to one’s status. Everyone’s
actions should be governed by some normatively compelling consideration,
but there are different considerations for different persons. One set of rules,
perhaps, obtains for the weak, sickly masses; another set of rules applies
for the strong, creative types. The superior types cannot be bound by the
same consideration that apply to others because their flourishing or their
projects are too important, or more simply their natural superiority entitles
them to greater prerogatives. Variations are of course possible, but some-
thing like this, I take it, is a common understanding of Nietzsche’s position.

One preliminary aim of this article is to argue that this common under-
standing of Nietzsche’s ethics is wrong in every respect.
Nietzsche, I shall argue, did not have a traditionally structured e thical
theory with a strangely hierarchical content; his ethical thought, rather,
is untraditionally structured around very conventional content. The spe-
cific notions to which Nietzsche appeals in order to flesh out his views are
familiar ones such as responsibility, love, and equality. What is unusual
about Nietzsche’s ethical views is that they are structured not around either
impersonal considerations or personal ones, but rather around interper-
sonal ones. Nietzsche, that is, takes the considerations that emerge out of
the ways in which persons relate to each other as the primary subject matter
of ethics. Ethical considerations, more specifically, are rooted in mutuality:
the reciprocal conferring and acknowledging of status through participa-
tion in relationships. To be sure, ethics conceived of in this way provides
for requirements on individuals. The main focus of reflection, however, is
what sorts of relationships we can have and how they might be sustained;
what relationships demand, on this view, transcends the requirements on
each of multiple individuals. Ethical reflection extends, furthermore, to the
social world as a whole, as both interpersonal relationships writ large and
the context in which more particular relationships are tenable.
A preliminary approach to understanding such an account is to consider
it by analogy to virtue ethics. In some versions of virtue ethics, one can only
perceive the ethical considerations that are salient in particular situations
from the standpoint of someone virtuous. One must actually possess the vir-
tues in order to negotiate other ethical considerations properly. The virtues
would arguably be fundamental, then, in two senses: they are more import-
ant than other ethical considerations, and they enable one to perceive those
other considerations, which may indeed take their importance by relation to
the virtues. What I want to suggest here is that in Nietzsche’s account, social
relationships are analogously fundamental: they are central in importance
and other considerations depend on them. To be sure, there are also disanal-
ogies between Nietzsche’s account and virtue ethics, but these will have to be
shown in the details of Nietzsche’s discussion. The main point now is that,
according to Nietzsche, there are not general ethical constraints that should
be applied socially; attributing such a position to Nietzsche leads to ridicu-
lous outcomes, such as that one has an impartial obligation to seize power
and dominate others. Nietzsche, rather, sees social relationships as funda-
mental, and any general ethical constraints as d
eriving from those.
Nietzsche on Mutuality | 353
My aims in this article are to show that Nietzsche’s ethical thought was
indeed structured primarily in interpersonal terms, and to articulate some
of the features of such a position. My main arguments are thus textual: I
aim to show that this is the best way to understand Nietzsche’s texts. I hope,
however, to show more than that this position is reflected in particular pas-
sages. I hope to show that Nietzsche is committed to such a position by
virtue of his views on self-formation and on the particular character of the
ethical commitments that he invokes. Nietzsche himself may not have seen
his position in precisely such a fashion, and the account is certainly sus-
ceptible to criticism. Nevertheless, the arguments that I present represent
Nietzsche’s views and collectively set forth a distinctive and cogent position.
I shall set out Nietzsche’s position in terms of responsibility, equality, and
some of the more particular notions in terms of which Nietzsche presents
his views. In the next section, I shall argue that Nietzsche had what I call a
“relational” view of ethics because he took responsibility to be fundamental
to ethical concern in general, and he took responsibility to be irreducibly
social. This leads, in the subsequent section, to a discussion of the nature of
ethical commitment in terms of self-constitution; I thus present Nietzsche’s
account of nobility and equality as the primitive elements in his account of
self-constitution through relationships with others. Although this discus-
sion of the ground of ethical commitment offers some more substantive
implications, the main discussion of irreducibly social concerns occurs in
the following section. There I discuss Nietzsche’s accounts of love as a basic
ethical relationship and culture as an interpersonal relationship writ large.
Nietzsche, I ultimately try to show, views ethical reflection in terms of the
kinds of relationships we have (and want and do not want to have): grounds
of action we adopt, ideals of character we might pursue, and the force of
others’ claims on how to treat them all depend on these relationships.1 I
conclude with a discussion of some of the prospects of defending and elab-
orating such a view of ethics.
2. Responsibility
The main claim of this section is that Nietzsche has what I call a “relational”
view of ethics, as opposed to an individualistic one. That is, ethical grounds
are relational in the sense that they emerge out of the relationships that per-
sons have with each other. Such an ethics may of course be individualistic in
some senses—individualized personalities may be valued, for example—but,
at least on this view, ethical grounds are not available outside the context of
human relationships. I make a textual case for attributing a relational view to
Nietzsche by contrasting it with what I call a “bifurcated” view, and then fur-
ther explicate Nietzsche’s views in terms of responsibility. Nietzsche has a dis-
tinctively social conception of responsibility, according to which responsibility
requires making claims to others who recognize those claims; it thus depends
on a form of social standing. Nietzsche takes responsibility in this sense to play
a fundamental role with respect to all of our ethical concerns because other
ethical standards depend on having such a picture of responsibility in place,
and more generally, because attributing commitments to particular persons
depends on it.
One general way of thinking about ethics runs as follows. Persons com-
mit or settle upon actions in one way or another. These actions are ethically
sanctioned when they relate appropriately to suitable reasons. In one famil-
iar picture, a person reflects on a choice situation by considering what rea-
son to adopt, and then reflects on whether that reason for action is morally
appropriate, perhaps by reference to a higher-level principle—a moral law
or supreme principle. If the reason for action is suitable, and the suitability
plays a role in acting upon it, then the resulting action has a moral valence
that it would not otherwise have. Of course, this general picture allows for
many variations. The suitability of the reason might be a function of the
particular moral salience of a given situation; the relevant general standard
might be an ideal of character or of human flourishing; there might be no
appeal to any standard higher than the person’s own interests and moti-
vations. In each case, however, the basic form of ethics involves a set of
relationships between individual persons and their actions, and the various
psychological and normative features that mediate between them. The dis-
tinctively moral character of this picture, furthermore, is usually that each
element has a suitably general form: there is a universal standard for moral-
ity, or a model of human perfection, or a generalized moral psychology.
Ethical reflection then moves from this formal equality to general obliga-
tions or particular restrictions on persons’ actions.
If we assume that Nietzsche offers an ethics that fits within this pic-
ture but with a deeply anti-moral content, then there seem to be two main
options.2 One possibility is that Nietzsche replaces the high-level principle
of morality with principles from another domain, such as aesthetics.3 This
would not only eliminate typical moral constraints on actions but also likely
eliminate a form of substantive equality: the ultimate aims of aesthetic
principles, even if they were formally available to everyone, would likely be

unavailable to most in practice, since few have the opportunity and ability
to devote a life to aesthetic creation. Such an aesthetic ethics might even
require general dedication to the aesthetic projects of a few. The other main
interpretive option is to eliminate even formal equality.4 Then, at some level
of generality, different persons have fundamentally different reasons and
principles. For example, there might be different types of persons, some
more worthy than others, with different sorts of claims upon them: the
lowly might be constrained by other-regarding rules, while the higher rank-
ing might have an entirely different set of prerogatives and obligations. In
this way the typical structure of ethics would be preserved but bifurcated,
so that parallel structures obtain for each of different statuses or ranks.
Disputing specific versions of these views would be unproductive
because no one actually advocates them. Although something like them
is, I think, widely considered to be Nietzsche’s position, no one who makes
such an attribution endorses or even bothers to argue in favor of it.5 It
might be worth considering the basis for attributing such a position to
Nietzsche, then; these views are what happens when one transposes some
of Nietzsche’s critical remarks about morality into the standard picture
of ethics. And yet it seems odd that these views, which no one endorses,
are widely taken to be endorsed by Nietzsche. The idea that Nietzsche was
advocating a different ultimate principle, and indeed different sets of ulti-
mate principles that pertain to some kind of hierarchical status, comes from
passages such as this one:6
None of all these ponderous herd animals with their unquiet

consciences [. . .] wants to know or sniff out that the “general
welfare” is no idea, no goal, not even a graspable concept, but
only an emetic—that what is suitable for one absolutely cannot
yet be suitable for another, that the demand of one morality for
everyone is precisely an impairment to high persons, in short,
that there is an order of rank between person and person, con-
sequently also between morality and morality. (BGE 228; cf.
BGE 221)7
This starts by seeming to be a repudiation of impersonal morality in favor of

a form of egoism, but quickly appears to be more radical than that. Nietzsche’s
claim is not that each should act according to his own self-interest; he
suggests that the problem lies with the subjection of everyone to the same
standard.8 The natural way to read this, perhaps, in light of Nietzsche’s con-
cern about “order of rank,” is that Nietzsche thinks that there should be
multiple ultimate standards, one for each “rank” of persons. Alternatively,
the one main concern should be for the flourishing of “high persons,” and
a host of subsidiary principles should apply to different persons differently,
all in the service of that end.
There are nevertheless some textual oddities that should lead us to
revise that initial reading. One oddity is that Nietzsche claims that what
is suitable for one “absolutely cannot” be suitable for another. It is hard to
make sense of this, first, because one might think that the same thing could
be suitable, if only coincidentally, in two very different cases, or for two very
different persons, in the same way that the same medicine might be suited
to treating two different ailments. The more perplexing element, however,
is that Nietzsche is not merely claiming that something suitable for one per-
son is not suitable for another; he is claiming that it absolutely cannot be. If
his position were that different fundamental principles pertain to different
ranks of persons, for example, it would be enough to claim that they do not
coincide—one kind of person has one standard, and another has another.
In that case, introducing the modal claim would at best imply an entirely
empty argument: they do not coincide because they cannot be the same, or
something like that.
The only way that it would be impossible for what is suitable for one to
be suitable for another is if the standard of suitability is inherently rela-
tional. That is, what Nietzsche is referring to is not some particular element,
such as a course of action, that could be the same in relevant respects for
more than one person, but something more like the criterion or ground,
and this criterion or ground must be inherently relational. If each individ-
ual simply had his or her own ground of suitability, then there would be
no point in arguing that the grounds must be different, not only because it
would be false, but because it would be irrelevant to understanding anyone’s
grounds. For Nietzsche’s modal claim to make sense, one person’s grounds
must inherently involve his or her position in relation to others: the basic
criteria of suitability are more like the conditions of participating in a com-
mon endeavor or a competition, or being someone’s friend.
Of course, Nietzsche’s modal claims might just be a bit of meaningless
hyperbole. But the other textual oddity in BGE 228 confirms, I think, my
reading of Nietzsche’s claim as concerning inherently relational grounds.
Nietzsche wrote that what is suitable for one absolutely cannot “yet” be suit-
able for another. This is strange: it seems to imply that at some impending
moment the criteria will shift so that they all coincide. A temporal reading
calls on us to imagine a future utopian moment in which the ethical stan-
dards of all classes, once divergent, suddenly converge. Although that is
possible, nothing else that Nietzsche wrote suggests it, so taking the “yet”
as rational rather than temporal might be better.9 The “yet,” that is, might
signify a provisional insufficiency in ground rather than an uncompleted
sequence in time, in something like the way that “All men are mortal” might
not yet imply that Socrates is mortal. A provisional insufficiency in ground
would indicate that identifying a consideration that is suitable for someone
is never, by itself, reason to think it applies to someone else; one always
needs to furnish the context or some other supplemental consideration. At
the same time, however, this suggests that suitability for someone could in
fact play a role in grounding a claim of suitability for someone else; it just
cannot function that way by itself.
One might think that the missing context that renders “suitability” for
one into a sufficient ground would just be relevant similarity or member-
ship in the relevant class. That might provide for a reliable inference—it
might furnish a good epistemic reason to infer something about an addi-
tional case. But it would not make the initial suitability itself relevant: there
would be a more basic principle that grounds the ethical claim in both
cases, and “suitability for one” at most provides some inductive evidence
without mattering for its own sake. What is suitable for one can matter in
another’s case, for its own sake but only partially or insufficiently, if there is
some relevant relationship between the two persons. The initial suitability
furnishes a ground only on some kind of social basis.
If we take Nietzsche as remaining within the standard picture of ethics,
then his critical remarks about morality seem to require an inverted, bifur-
cated anti-morality. What Nietzsche actually seems to be arguing, however,
is that we should understand ethics in relational rather than individualistic
terms. His criticism is of the idea that there are ethical criteria, whether per-
sonal or impersonal, that hold on individuals independent of their relations to
others; his favored position, by contrast, is that ethical grounds are mutually
interdependent such that they emerge when persons arrive at the appropriate
form of relationship with each other. Nietzsche provides the epigram for this
position in commenting on the “moralistic pedant’s” analysis of a situation:
“it is always a question of who he is and who that other one is” (BGE 221).
Of course, none of this settles anything about the character of the rel-
evant relationships. We could, for example, understand Nietzsche’s claims
about “order of rank” to call for at least some persons continually to assert
domination over others.10 The very idea of “will to power” might indeed
suggest both that ethical demands are inherently relational and that the
basic relationships consist of power struggles. Nietzsche calls the funda-
mental principle of morality “crassly false and sentimental [. . .] in a world
whose essence is will to power” (BGE 186). His position seems to be that
morality is false because it seeks a nonrelational first principle when the
power relations constitute the first principle of everything. So even if we
depart from the standard picture of ethics, this does little to provide us with
an attractive position or tell us much at all about the content of Nietzsche’s
views.
Filling out Nietzsche’s views requires looking at the specific notions that
he appeals to in order to explicate his position. These notions are fairly con-
ventional, although his use of them may not be. Responsibility is one of the
most fundamental notions that Nietzsche invokes: that is, Nietzsche thinks
that most of the contours of any possibly familiar ethical world—one at the
very least that involves claims on individual agents as such—depend on
a background notion of responsibility. Our other forms of ethical under-
standing would be inscrutable without an understanding of responsibility,
and, Nietzsche thinks, responsibility is fundamentally social in character.
To see how and why Nietzsche takes responsibility to be basic and
social, it helps to contrast his view of responsibility with a more typical
view.11 A perhaps more familiar view of responsibility is that it works back-
ward, starting with a particular event or outcome, and tracing the source of
that event or outcome back to a particular agent.12 In this view, the default
presumption is that responsibility can be assigned to any event connected
to (or identical with) some action; some special exculpation is required to
break the chain leading backward to an agent. Such a chain is typically a
causal one, at least in a rough sense that it links the present to some inciting
source, perhaps some feature in the psychology of an agent, and indeed
links all events together with some degree of connection. Other factors
besides the responsible source contribute to particular outcomes, but the
presumption is that it is always possible to identify the responsible party,
or at least allocate responsibility to several responsible parties according
to their level of contribution. And everyone capable of conscious activity
bears responsibility for something.
In Nietzsche’s view, by contrast, responsibility is not a relationship that

presumptively obtains between a person and a particular events or out-
comes.13 Establishing that relationship instead involves making an affir-
mative claim, and thus requires a background of social conditions for its
possibility. As Nietzsche sees it, responsibility requires both a shared under-
standing of one’s activity and placing oneself in a position of responsibility
for future results. Neither element need involve an explicit declaration on
anyone’s part, but they do demand that the meaning of relevant roles and
actions is recognized and that one’s standing is in some sense accepted.
In these ways, to be responsible is much more like being the sort of per-
son who gets called “responsible” in being recommended for a job or as a
potential mate than it is to be a distinctively originary source of an action.
Occupying such a role requires addressing oneself to another: very much
like promising, it is not something that one can do all by oneself, and it is
something that one can fail to do in a number of ways. There needs to be
an interpretation of one’s place in the course of events. One needs to be able
to anticipate the future and how things will matter to oneself and others,
some sense of what one is capable of accomplishing and how this might
change with contingent events, and an understanding of what will count as
a suitable response to possible future events. Overall, responsibility involves
occupying a social position in which one gives others guarantees, however
implicitly or vaguely, and Nietzsche marks it as a social standing by calling
it an “extraordinary privilege” (GM II:2). Indeed, Nietzsche suggests that
those who hold such a privilege would not want to “diminish” it (BGE 272)
by treating it as universal standing, and that this establishment of privilege
is what he means by “order of rank.”14
Nietzsche presents his social view of responsibility as part of a story
about changing the kind of being that humans are. His account arises not
specifically out of formal conditions on agency, but out of the “long his-
tory” of the “task of breeding an animal with the prerogative of making
promises” (GM II:2). This task is carried out by “society” or alternatively by
“the social straightjacket” (GM II:2), but it is social not merely in terms of
its origin. Nietzsche connects responsibility with the prerogative of making
promises, which thereby connects responsibility with the acknowledgment
of others, memory, and language. Memory indicates a different relationship
to time than with the other conception of responsibility. With the other
conception, identifying who is responsible is typically a matter of looking
backward into the past to find an overlooked source. With this conception,
memory extends into the future to make a “prolonged will” (GM II:2) pos-
sible. At stake in responsibility, that is, is extending the meaning of one’s
actions from the present into the future, so that what one does can be pub-
licly understood as an extension of past commitments.
So a number of factors combine in Nietzsche’s conception of respon-
sibility: the social development of the human capacity to relate past and
future, the shared understanding of what kinds of actions are performed,
and the engagement in accountability relationships with others. Randall
Havas offers a general summary of these features of Nietzsche’s conception
in this way:
For Nietzsche, however, the individual’s responsibility for him-

self is exercised primarily with respect to others. In this sense . . .
his notion of individuality embodies a conception of commu-
nity. Nietzsche’s sovereign individual is not a detached, punctual,
Cartesian self, but rather a human being bound by human com-
mitments to other human beings similarly so bound.15
To be responsible, on this picture, is to be responsible to someone, or per-

haps to a whole “community.” One needs, at the least, others to whom one
makes commitments. Without that social acknowledgment, one cannot be
properly “bound” by commitments, in the sense of there being any practical
import to maintaining them or even there being any particular content to
what counts as maintaining them. This is why Nietzsche takes responsibil-
ity to be fundamental in ethics: as Nietzsche understands the “individual’s
responsibility for himself,” it is this is the most basic way in which com-
mitments can be attributed to and sustained by individuals. These com-
mitments do not need to be specifically linguistic, as Havas suggests. He
writes, “only the responsible person shows himself to be answerable to the
meaning of what he said.”16 Some commitments can be made tacitly, or
accompany the rules and relationships we establish nondiscursively. But the
basic picture of responsibility is nevertheless that one makes oneself into an
ethical subject socially.
Nietzsche even makes this last point in scalar terms. That is, he char-
acterizes responsibility not only as a basic requirement for ethical sub-
jects; he also suggests that the extent of responsibility could itself provide
a scale of value. Nietzsche writes that a true philosopher, should one exist,
“would even determine value and rank according to how much and how
many things one could bear and take upon himself, how far one could
extend his responsibility” (BGE 212). This sounds almost Homeric, like
the heroes and gods whose greatest sign of strength was their standing
to make guarantees about the future.17 Nietzsche is recalling such an
idea, but at the same time he claims that philosophers as “person[s] of the
most widespread responsibility” (BGE 61) fill this role, at least accord-
ing to “free spirits.” Nietzsche’s account seems confused here: in the two
passages he switches between philosophers being the assessors and phi-
losophers being the assessed. Even if he never worked out an account,
several elements are nevertheless clear, however. The Homeric status is
made “widespread”: not everyone qualifies, and certainly not everyone to
the same degree, but the things about which one can assert responsibility
have been pluralized, and the social possibilities of taking responsibil-
ity are greater. Responsibility, indeed, must be “taken up”: it is a matter
of putting oneself in a position of accountability and not merely being a
causal source or being able to affect the future. “Taking up” is after the fact
in relation to something one claims responsibility for, but anticipatory in
relation to possible repercussions and subject to challenge or failure. That
philosophers are even remotely plausible candidates for having the most
widespread responsibility, furthermore, indicates that Nietzsche sees
responsibility not in terms of causal force, but as something more like an
oversight (or “legislative”) role.18 The role of the philosopher is to take up
everything for consideration or transformation (and this role is socially
recognized even if not widely acknowledged).
Nietzsche’s main treatment of responsibility presented it from two sides.
On one hand, Nietzsche was concerned to show that it is socially condi-
tioned: responsibility emerges only out of a social context, and its ongo-
ing possibility depends on others’ acknowledgment. On the other hand,
Nietzsche wished to show that the emergence of responsibility, and thereby
the possibility of understanding one’s own commitments, makes possible
the future “rank-orderings” of value that Nietzsche envisions. So his main
interest was in identifying ways in which ethics is socially conditioned, but
identifying these conditions also raises a deeper point. With the emergence
of responsibility, commitments are made by and answerable to individuals;
in this process the constitution of the self as an ethical subject takes place.
Nietzsche’s interests quickly move from the grounding of commitments to
the constitutive, and the social constitution of the self will be the topic of
the next section.
3. Equality
Nietzsche’s account of responsibility turns out to be an account of the con-

stitution of selfhood. In carrying out his relational account of grounds, in
which social life furnishes the conditions of ethical commitment, Nietzsche
offered an account of the development of individual selfhood. That is, the
social relations that Nietzsche identifies do not merely bring about situa-
tions in which individuals have certain opportunities for action; they con-
stitute what it is to be a self. This in turn introduces a substantive element
into his discussion of the self: constituting social relations furnish content
to Nietzsche’s view of ethics. My aim in this section is to relate Nietzsche’s
account of these matters. First I contrast hostile, extreme individualism
with Nietzsche’s treatment of the “noble” form of enmity. In Nietzsche’s
account, this form of enmity is productive of other kinds of relationships,
and can ultimately lead to its own “spiritualization.” The development of
enmity furnishes Nietzsche with one of his most basic normative standards,
namely equality. I explicate Nietzsche’s position on equality by contrasting
it with one in which formal equality plays a significant role. Nietzsche con-
ducts his discussion primarily in terms of enmity and equality, but he aims
at more general points: that we understand the authority of our commit-
ments through their relationships to conflict and that we understand our
relationships to ourselves through our relationships to others.
There is a common interpretation of how Nietzsche thinks of the nature
of ethics and its relation to the self. This interpretation is seldom if ever
articulated in any detail, and often comes attached to views about power
or existentialism. One element of this view makes domination to be ethi-
cally required or natural, so that it is praiseworthy, according to Nietzsche,
to exploit others. One establishes oneself as ethically superior by exerting
authority over others and making use of them for one’s own purposes. The
other element of this view is an extreme individualism. Nietzsche’s critique
of morality and modern social movements, on this view, is aimed at instill-
ing some kind of radical individualism that oscillates between antipathy
and indifference to all others. Such an individualism would take the form
of an inexplicable and probably inarticulable aesthetic consciousness that
treats everything it encounters as an object of imaginative play.19
I do not endorse this interpretation. Even suspending any question of its
textual accuracy, however, it is worth noting that it still includes significant
relations to others. Even purely unreflective, self-affirming masters, if we
could imagine such creatures, would be entangled in social relations. Most

basically, as Robert Pippin points out, “one’s status as a Master-Creator is
indeed confirmed from the ‘outside,’ by one’s success in avoiding absorption
in the concerns of the many, or dependence on the views of others, and
by one’s success in preventing the may from interfering with one’s pursuit
of one’s ideals.”20 Maintaining a sphere of noninterference might require,
furthermore, being able to exert authority over others in certain situations,
or distinguishing one’s own proper concerns from those of others. This
becomes more distinct in Nietzsche’s discussions of individuality. Nietzsche
frequently refers to individuality as a “luxury” (HH 473, GS 143, BGE 262)
and makes ontological claims about “the individual” like this one: “he is
nothing by himself [. . .] he is the whole line of humanity up to himself ” (TI
“Skirmishes” 33). Nietzsche has many other remarks about individuality,
but if we take just these two claims together, then we have an account in
which individuality is a highly articulated social role rather than an evasion
of social roles. As a “luxury” it is distinctive in that the role, unlike plumb-
ers or scientists or yentas, serves no obvious social function: it provides for
persons to define their own identities through differentiation.21 The con-
tent of this differentiation, as Nietzsche points out in his ontological claim,
depends on everyone else, not only at present, but in the ongoing story of
identity formation.
The idea of a possible escape from or evasion of sociality is itself
socially conditioned, Nietzsche frequently insists. This, however, still leaves
open the possibility that the relationship should be as hostile as possible.
Nietzsche’s position could be imagined as something like this. One depends
on engagement with others to assert oneself as dominant or as an individual
(or both), but the form that this engagement should take is the oblitera-
tion, whether metaphorical or literal, of the other. The proper response to
the misfortune of the inability to be without others is a resentful hostility
toward them, actively struggling against the dependence on the social that
does in fact obtain.
That view is nothing at all like Nietzsche’s, and the best way to see this
is to consider his discussions of enmity. This passage from the Genealogy of
Morals lays out the basic elements of Nietzsche’s views:
How much reverence has a noble person for his enemies—and

such a reverence is already a bridge to love. . . . For he desires his
enemy for himself as his mark of distinction, indeed he cannot
stand any enemy except those in whom there is nothing to

despise and a great deal to honor. In contrast to this the person
of ressentiment conceives of “the enemy” as “the evil one.” . . .
(GM I:10)
Nietzsche draws a contrast between two conceptions of enmity, one of

which he clearly favors. According to the “ressentiment” conception, one’s
enemies are “evil,” which entails that they are, in their very nature, incom-
parably worse than oneself, and thus deserving of whatever hostility is
directed toward them. Nietzsche seemed to think that the development
of morality compelled such a conception of enmity, or at least furnished
the metaphysical picture that allowed for such a conception. In any case,
he favors the “noble” conception, according to which enemies are wor-
thy opponents who simply have ends in conflict with one’s own.22 Not all
opponents, and certainly not all adversity, qualify as “enemy,” then. Conflict
here is not something that requires a metaphysical story, but something
that inevitably arises in the course of one’s life and that one seeks to handle
appropriately where one can.
There are three additional elements in that passage that summarize the
rest of Nietzsche’s discussion of enmity: that enemies provide one’s “mark
of distinction,” that the noble person has “reverence” for his or her ene-
mies, and that this reverence is a “bridge to love.”23 The first is what makes
enemies desirable: that one makes sense of oneself in terms of who one’s
enemies are.24 Of course, other relationships can contribute to that, too, but
Nietzsche claims here that conflict is productive rather than merely destruc-
tive and that even our inimical relationships can therefore be valuable. For
conflict to be productive—for these relationships to be valuable—one has
to find a “worthy enemy against whom to test one’s strength” (BT “Attempt
at a Self-Critique” 1) and be “proud of one’s enemy” (Z I: “On War and
Warriors” 10, Z III: “On Old and New Tablets” 21). These two conditions
connect an instrumental value, providing opportunities to prove oneself in
some way, with intrinsic values: with the right enemy, and the right kind of
conflict, one can find a relationship and an activity that are desirable and
enjoyable for their own sakes.
The connection that Nietzsche finds between the instrumental and
intrinsic conditions is, I think, what he means by the “reverence” that a
noble person has for his enemies. A noble person, according to Nietzsche,
“desires his enemy for himself ” (GM I:10); elsewhere he writes of “courage,
pride, the longing for a great enemy” (HH II P:7). The noble person’s rever-
ence, then, involves the seeking out of a valued relationship, even where the
only available relationship is a hostile one; such a relationship is sought out
for oneself, even longed for, despite the antagonism.25 So having an enemy
who can play this role is not merely for there to be someone with opposed
interests. Having such an enemy requires mutual engagement with the right
person, where the right person is one who can serve as a mark of distinc-
tion. Such a “mark” must be contingent on what stands out from a back-
ground of social relations and thus can contribute to the public self-shaping
of identity. Reverence, then, involves submitting oneself to public standards
of judgment, by showing whom one reveres and, in the case of enemies, how
one stands in relation to them. For a noble person at least, reverence is how
one participates in the social world in a way that both affirms one’s identity
and acknowledges another—indeed, affirms one’s identity by acknowledg-
ing another. It is by being able to affirm our relationships with others in this
way that we come to terms with who we are and what is important to us.26
The third element of Nietzsche’s conception of enmity is that it serves as
a “bridge to love.” The implicit suggestion is that Nietzsche devotes so much
attention to conflict because that relationship—opposing wills recognizing
each other as such—is somehow foundational for our other, more valued
relationships.27 Nietzsche never makes the case for that general point, but
his account of how the “bridge to love” is spanned supports such a read-
ing. There are two main ways: forgiving (GS 49) and forgetting (GM II:10,
GM I:10, BGE 219). There are (at least) two different ways because they rep-
resent different strategies for restoring a mutuality that has been damaged
or lost. Here is one passage from the Genealogy of Morals:
For a society to have such consciousness of power it would not

be unthinkable that it could allow itself the noblest luxury that
might obtain for it—letting its malefactors go unpunished [. . .]
this self-sublimation of justice [. . .] it remains, as the prerogative
of the most powerful. (GM II:10)28
This is what, according to Nietzsche, the complete realization of power

would amount to, and it turns out to involve not doing anything. The only
way to make sense of how that would count as the realization of power, I
think, is that power always aimed at the creation and maintenance of some
form of mutuality. In the case above, inimical competition would serve no
purpose, so pointless aggression would not count for much as an exercise

of power. The only thing to do then is to exercise the prerogative to let
the matter pass; other cases might call for some additional work of repair.
Either way, the fulfillment—or “self-sublimation”—of enmity lies in some
form of mutuality that retains the availability of “marks of distinction,” but
without engaging in destruction. This is how what started out as “reverence”
for one’s enemies turns out to be a “bridge to love”: the destructive elements
of one’s reverences are removed, while preserving them as self-identifying
reverences. And once there are forms of sociality that do not require antag-
onism and conflict does not have to be destructive, even “loving one’s ene-
mies” (BGE 216; cf. D 396, D 202) becomes possible.
This is perhaps what Nietzsche referred to as the “spiritualization of
enmity” (TI “Morality” 3). Enmity, by giving meaning to the hostile par-
ties, takes on new meaning until it is finally “self-sublimated.” This process,
moreover, repeats itself on the “inside”: “We comport ourselves no differ-
ently toward the ‘inner enemy’: there, too, we have spiritualized enmity—
there, too we have grasped its value. One is fruitful only at the price of
being rich in internal oppositions . . .” (TI “Morality” 3; cf. HH 141). Just as
Nietzsche suggested that the noble soul learned to relate to itself through its
inimical relations to others, Nietzsche is now suggesting that one learns to
relate to one’s own commitments in a parallel way, by internalized enmity.
Setting one’s commitments against all the other commitments one might
want to hold until fewer, at any rate, survive, is the way in which one comes
to identify with commitments—to take them as one’s own, as the result of
one’s own “fruitfulness.” The noble individual, by being able to sustain rev-
erence for his enemies, becomes able to relate to himself; by also sustaining
internal enmity such an individual can relate to the worthiness and author-
ity of his own commitments. According to Nietzsche, “the noble soul has
reverence for itself ” (BGE 287): once again, Nietzsche connects enmity, rev-
erence, and the ability to relate to oneself. The internal process of individual
acknowledgment is just an iteration of the social phenomenon.
This process furnishes Nietzsche with, at the very least, one of his most
basic normative standards. This standard is, perhaps surprisingly, equality:
Equality before the enemy—first precondition of an honest duel.

Where one despises, one cannot wage war; where one com-
mands, where one sees something beneath himself, one has no
war to wage. (EH “Wise” 7)
There are some subsidiary considerations: where the main consideration,

equality, does not obtain, certain actions or policies become unavailable
or inappropriate, and perhaps some kind of forbearance is called for. But
the main consideration is that, given that “waging war” in some sense is
required for self-constitution and self-understanding, and equality is
required for waging war in the relevant sense, then equality is important on
that basis. Nietzsche makes no effort to classify what this entails: whether
equality is a value to be promoted or whether its importance implies that
we agree to structure our own relationships in accordance with it. Despite
that lack of specificity, Nietzsche is nevertheless clear on the importance
of equality; the lack of specificity may indeed be part of Nietzsche’s point.
The reason for unclarity is that Nietzsche takes a fundamental interest
in the relationships we have: in the first instance, enmity, honor, and rever-
ence, but also friendship, gratitude, love.29 His conception of ethics is built
around not universal principles of action or impersonal ends or perfection-
ist ideals, but the importance of relationships.30 To be sure, other consider-
ations follow from this: if equality is important, then it will be important to
respect or possibly promote that importance in concrete ways. But which
particular imperative or reasons derive from this will always be contingent:
it will depend on how others might be inclined to respond or how the world
in general might be amendable to sustaining relationships. I take it that this
is what Nietzsche means when he claims that one “has duties only toward
equals” (BGE 260).31 This cannot be taken in a categorical manner, as if
we could independently identify general duties and which class everyone
belongs in, and then assert that each general duty applies only between
persons who are in the same class. The counterexamples come too easily:
even Nietzsche’s unreflective masters can incur duties of care or assistance
toward the immature or the helpless. Nietzsche’s claim, then, must function
more like a fundamental statement of mutuality: his point is that acknowl-
edging specific ethical claims on us depends on establishing the relation-
ships that let us figure out who each other are. We recognize duties when we
recognize persons. Our particular normative commitments are ultimately
derivative of our important relationships and the value that we set in and
through them.32
It might be a source of confusion that Nietzsche also has many unfavor-
able things to say about egalitarianism. For example, he refers to modern
humanity as a “dwarf animal of equal rights and claims” (BGE 203) and
opposes egalitarian social movements. Nietzsche opposes himself not to
equality, however, but only to certain forms of egalitarianism. In general, he

objects to what might be called a “formal” egalitarianism: one according to
which everyone is in some way on equal standing and specific deontic claims
follow from this. He finds such a view suspicious in part because he thinks
it stems from dubious metaphysical views about personhood, and in partic-
ular the Christian view of the soul. He has three interrelated objections to
formal egalitarianism, however, that are independent of its metaphysics or
origin. One is that formal equality is empty:33 it stipulates a nominal equality
when in fact equality does not obtain. Egalitarian relationships are desirable
on Nietzsche’s view, but a stipulation that unequal relations should be reg-
ulated on an egalitarian basis does not amount to much, unless it actually
changes the character of the relationship. A second and related objection is
that egalitarian claims are used ideologically.34 Nietzsche’s objection, that is,
is that since formal-egalitarian claims are empty, they can be and typically
are used not to bring about or enforce an egalitarian order, but to blame the
unfortunate. Nietzsche thinks that the idea of free will works in roughly the
same way: by starting from the assumption that everyone is equally capable,
it allows for the inference that bad outcomes must be the fault of those who
suffer from them. The third objection is that formal egalitarianism can be
an expression of anti-individualism and opposition to difference.35 This is
a familiar complaint in Nietzsche’s work, against forms of “leveling” that
improve no one’s standing but antagonize those who “dare to be different”
(BGE 262).
One might wish to hold an account similar to Nietzsche’s but still pre-
serve what I have been calling formal equality. That is, one could agree with
Nietzsche that self-constitution depends on relationships, that the most
important of these relationships must be substantively equal, and that the
importance of this form of equality must therefore inform one’s most basic
commitments, but also insist on the fundamental importance of formal
equality. Indeed, Hegel seems to have such an account. Hegel, one might
argue, viewed the process of self-constitution as a series of demands to be
recognized by others as independent. At each moment in the series, recog-
nition is demanded but not granted, or at most granted grudgingly: con-
ferring recognition on another is seen as an acknowledging of the other’s
authority and thus as a limitation of one’s own independence. All of these
one-sided, unequal forms of recognition fail, however, and finally they are
replaced by a new, shared standpoint from which diverse persons can con-
ceive of their own independence as reinforcing, rather than conflicting with,
that of others. With the attainment of this standpoint and the building of
relationships based on equality, recognition can now be fully mutual: each
recognizes another as recognizing oneself. The whole process must have
an “inherent practical teleology”36 that leads to full mutuality and which
ultimately guarantees equal standing for everyone. Insofar as Hegel’s claim
is that relationships among equals are valuable, this does not conflict with
Nietzsche’s view, but Hegel seems to claim that there is a sense in which
everyone has equal standing independent of any relationships that obtain.
As far as I can tell, there are two arguments in favor of full mutual-
ity. One, I take it, stems from Hegel’s claim that prior to self-constitution,
the other is oneself: that there is no significant difference between distinct
individuals.37 There seem to be two variants of this argument. One is that
this original sameness itself serves as the basis of the conferral of abstract
rights.38 The other is that this original sameness brings about a dependence
on recognition by the other, which in turn implies that mutuality is needed
for self-constitution. It is hard to see how the former variant could be
successful: that is, it is hard to see why original sameness would imply the
authority of abstract rights or anything else at present. The argument might
indeed succeed, but my present point is that it would not then be competing
with Nietzsche’s account, because self-constitution through one’s relation-
ships with others would be irrelevant. Equality would function as an inde-
pendent constraint on interactions with others rather than as a valued form
of relationship. The latter position, by contrast, seems more promising as an
account of self-constitution through one’s relationships with others, but it is
hard to see how it could imply full mutuality. Certainly if one becomes one-
self only through recognition by another, this involves a form of mutuality:
at least one would have to recognize another recognition-conferring ability.
This seems to be only a minimal mutuality, however; such a recognition
does not require equal standing.
The other argument for full mutuality of recognition is that only a full
mutuality of recognition is stable.39 Hegel never makes such an argument as
far as I can tell, but perhaps it is implicit in the dialectical movements that
lead to what Hegel calls “Spirit.” If we see Hegel’s developmental narrative
as structured around necessary failures that all turn out to be attributable
to attempts to establish a one-sided recognition, then the solution might be
the realization of forms of recognition that are not so internally fraught. The
instability in question might be political, as it were: disparities in recogni-
tive standing might inevitably lead to conflict. Or the instability in question
might be normative: disparities in standing might generate legitimacy

challenges that make it impossible for any normative order to sustain its
authority. Either way, from Nietzsche’s perspective, none of this is relevant.
The desire for a stable normative order should not serve as a constraint on
the possible identities or relationships that we might have. Stability might
indeed be valuable in its own right, but not every valuable way of relating
to one another depends on it. Relationships of passionate intensity, bonds
of revolutionary fervor, passing affinities, and the dependencies we outgrow
might all be important, and not just as defective forms of more perma-
nent relationships. For Nietzsche, there would be something pathological
about sacrificing all of these, as if for the sake of a stable social order our
ethical practice needed to take the form of a conclusive resolution to life’s
problems. Nietzsche, furthermore, expects that any normative order will
destroy itself through an act of “self-sublimation” (GM III:27); the burdens
of structuring practices make them all self-undermining eventually. So for
Nietzsche there are two problems with stability as a meta-level constraint.
40 A permanent, fully adequate solution to the problems of how we ought to
live with each other is impossible, and it likely expresses a deep insecurity
rather than ethical right.
Nietzsche acknowledges the importance of mutuality. His views on
self-constitution appeal to forms of mutuality, and indeed to equality as
the most important general form of human relationship. This importance,
furthermore, provides substantive content to Nietzsche’s ethical views.
Nietzsche does not, however, take the importance of mutuality to imply
that there are formal constraints that ought to govern all relationships,
or that mutuality could serve as the substantive basis for a way of life. In
Nietzsche’s picture there may be all sorts of egalitarian claims, obligations,
and even rights.41 But they are not the basis for our ways of relating to each
other; on the contrary, if they are to have any hold over us they must stem
from the character of our relationships and our shared identities.
4. Love and Other Ways of Belonging
In this section I shall discuss some of the ways in which Nietzsche charac-
terizes particular ethical claims as deriving from human relationships. This
involves considering a wider range of relationships than just friendship and
enmity, since we have a broader repertory of ways of relating to each other.
This also involves considering some of the stranger claims that Nietzsche
makes. The best points to examine are the ones that would resist explanation
in conventional terms, but fare better by appeal to the demands of relation-
ships. Nietzsche’s concern is to show that there are irreducibly social ethi-
cal concerns. I cannot even attempt to prove that Nietzsche’s analyses and
assessments are correct; my aim is to show that they represent a distinctive
and viable alternative in ethical thought. To that end, I contrast Nietzsche’s
approach with those of two others who have based ethical claims on inter-
subjective demands, Stephen Darwall and Jürgen Habermas. After making
that contrast, I discuss some of the implications of Nietzsche’s approach
for larger-scale social relations. Nietzsche’s interest in relationships expands
into interest in all the kinds of social affiliations we might have. In particu-
lar, Nietzsche is interested in culture as both an interpersonal relationship
writ large and the background for the kinds of more particular relationships
that we can have.
Nietzsche assigns a fundamental role to enmity, but other types of rela-
tionships have become more important. One could reconstruct something
like a full genealogy of relationships, starting from association based on
mutual advantage and familiar ties. Such a narrative would have three main
trajectories. One would be the increasing possibility of relationships out-
side of one’s immediate circle: outside of one’s family, community, class,
and so on, until substantive ties can potentially be built with almost any-
one. Another trajectory would move toward increasing possibilities for the
basis of relationships, from utility to affective ties to “love as passion” (BGE
260) and more complex ties such as trust and honor. Another trajectory
would run from face-to-face relationships between individuals to forms of
affiliation that encompass larger and larger groups that take on their own
significance.
I cannot hope to reconstruct such a genealogy here; indeed it might
be an impossible project. When all these trajectories intersect and over-
lap, however, there arise some novel social possibilities that Nietzsche takes
an interest in. Some of these social possibilities have no generic name:
part of the novelty is that we now have ways of relating to each other that
lack well-defined roles, but that are nonetheless laden with tacit rules and
norms. Nietzsche makes use of some of these social possibilities to illustrate
ethical commitments that are at least recognizable to us and that cannot be
understood except as rooted in social relationships. That is, Nietzsche does
not try to prove the correctness of particular judgments, but he does appeal
to extreme cases of familiar but usually inarticulate concerns to make gen-

eral points about the source as nature of our ethical concerns.
Nietzsche identifies a number of cases in which the extreme form of
some social virtue turns into something like its opposite. For example,
Nietzsche discusses paradoxical forms of praise (BGE 170), graciousness
(BGE 40), self-effacement (BGE 66), and kindness (BGE 184). Here is
one claim he makes about generosity: “There are acts of love and of such
extravagant generosity after which nothing would be more advisable than
taking a stick and clobbering the eyewitness: thus one clouds their mem-
ory” (BGE 40). Generosity, for Nietzsche, requires no special explanation.
It is not a moral imperative or distinctively moral virtue; it might even,
when extravagant, be considered a minor flaw. Nietzsche takes generosity
for granted, both as something valuable and as a source of motivation, but
takes it as something difficult to fit into ongoing social existence. Small bits
of generosity can fit easily into the stream of events, be mistaken for other
things or easily pass unacknowledged. But extravagant generosity is most
difficult to accommodate: it changes the nature of preexisting relationships
and calls for a response even as it makes any adequate one impossible. (One
cannot simply say “thank you” extravagantly loudly.) So Nietzsche’s recom-
mendation is that, in order to make extravagant generosity fit into the social
world, the generous one should thrash the beneficiary senseless, so that the
act of generosity can take place without any need for acknowledgment.
Nietzsche is not actually prescribing that generosity be accompanied by
beating with a stick. His point, I take it, is that even valuable forms of behav-
ior, when they take unaccustomed forms, reveal that social relationships
impose demands of their own. One does not need to endorse it, but the idea
that generosity would need to be accompanied by beatings makes sense at
all only if there are compelling concerns that stem from the requirements
of our relationships. Neither the ethics of generosity nor those of giving
beatings can account for the plausibility of Nietzsche’s analysis here.
So the point of Nietzsche’s analysis is not that, in certain weird circum-
stances, generosity takes on a paradoxical form, as one might have to be
cruel to be kind. His point, rather, is that in extreme cases of a wide range
of considerations what was already there becomes highlighted in paradox-
ical relief: that our social relationships independently impose demands
on us, into which considerations such as generosity must be made to fit.
The discussion of generosity in BGE 40 makes use, furthermore, of two of
Nietzsche’s key terms in his social ethics, “masks” and “love.” “Masks” is the
general terms that Nietzsche uses for the social identities that persons have
that give them their roles and responsibilities.42 Sometimes this has a per-
formative aspect to it, but Nietzsche’s consistent suggestion is that one lives
in light of how one appears to others and oneself, and that one must still
“have reverence for the mask” (BGE 270)—acknowledge the requirements
of our social relationships.43
The other key term that Nietzsche makes use of in BGE 40 is love. In
at least two other places, Nietzsche offers a specific conception of what,
according to him, “love” means.44 In yet other places, he seems more
inclined to both historicize the meaning of love and allow for a diversity
of different relationships—romantic, erotic, empathetic, reverential, and so
on—to fall under that rubric. The key usage in his social ethics is not any of
these specific conceptions, however, but the general social role into which
these conceptions fit. For Nietzsche, love in its diversity of forms func-
tions as the ideal of fully developed sociality, of what it means to reconcile
one’s independent self with others. Nietzsche makes this point by contrast
with the outlook of individualist morality. Love is inexplicable in terms of
individual interests and their abrogation; it can be understood instead as
primarily relational and only secondarily something that can give shape to
individual identity. Nietzsche explains this by way of an imaginary dialogue
with an advocate of “disinterestedness”:
“And love?”—What? Even an action from love is supposed to

be “unegoistic”? But you idiots! “And the praise of sacrifices?”—
But anyone who has really sacrificed knows that he wanted and
received something for it—perhaps something of himself for
something of himself. [. . .] (BGE 220; cf. BGE 201)
Nietzsche rejects the idea that love is either egoistic or unegoistic.

Although one expects love to be advantageous, this advantage is reck-
oned not in terms of costs and benefits, but in terms of gaining one-
self while giving up what one gains back anyway. Love, then, stands as
Nietzsche’s way of realizing oneself in one’s relationships. Although it
furnishes no imperatives, it nevertheless serves for Nietzsche as an ethi-
cal ideal: “whatever is done from love always happens beyond good and
evil” (BGE 153; cf. GS 363, GS 345). Love exemplifies a demanding orien-
tation to value that avoids morality’s tendencies to impossible imperson-
ality and blame.
There are, of course, alternatives to considering love as a basic ethical

relationship. That is, one could take ethics to be based on some fundamen-
tal aspect of or kind of intersubjective relationship but in some other way
identify what is basic to human relationships or what the implications of
this are. One might, for example, attempt to identify the basic relationships
as that between rational agents who address claims to one another; identify-
ing the necessary requirements or restrictions that hold on this relationship
could then furnish the moral requirements that hold on individual agents
as such. So in Stephen Darwall’s The Second Person Standpoint, obligation
in general can only be understood from the second-person standpoint,
that is, “the perspective you and I take up when we make and acknowl-
edge claims on one another’s conduct and will.”45 Moral obligation arises
because we enter this standpoint as members of the “moral community.”46
This basic relationship—making and acknowledging claims on others as
members of the moral community—is governed by the “principle of equal
accountability,”47 which anyone who addresses oneself to others necessarily
“presupposes.”48 For Jürgen Habermas, the basic relationship is similarly
a dialogical or “discursive” one in which persons “justify their normative
commitments to all possibly affected persons.”49 There are necessary condi-
tions that hold on participation in discourse. These conditions provide for
both an account of the validity of norms and an account of their substantive
content in terms of “universalizable interests” or “equal consideration.”50
I cannot give adequate consideration to these views or to any others
similar to these;51 my present interest is only to give Nietzsche’s reasons for
rejecting them in order to highlight Nietzsche’s own position. There are two
interconnected reasons why Nietzsche would reject these views: that they
appeal to intersubjective relationships as a tool to get back to agent restric-
tions, and they have too narrow and too slight a view of what relationships
serve as a basis for ethics. For Nietzsche, the importance of relationships
has implications for the individual participants, but the relationships are
important for their own sake, not as a way of generating moral claims.
Relationships may produce no general imperatives; the only way that they
would is if there were relationships that one cannot possibly opt out of and
these relationships have determinate rules for participants. But there are
no specific kinds of universal relationships to which everyone must belong,
and if there were, they would likely provide little normative guidance to
agents. At least on Nietzsche’s view, one has normative commitments after
one has substantive ties, not as a prior condition of participating in relation-

ships at all. Darwall’s view, that “the second-person perspective of the moral
community is as much one’s own as it is anyone else’s,”52 then, is compati-
ble with that perspective being no one’s at all. For Nietzsche, Darwall and
Habermas offer an ethics like his own, but for idealized relationships that
we do not have and would probably find inscrutable anyway. Such a basis
for allegiance is too thin; the practical reasons that we share come from a
thicker sense of belonging.
Darwall and Habermas, then, take the opposite path of ethical reflec-
tion from Nietzsche’s. Their views are, from a very high level of generality,
structurally similar to Nietzsche’s: they start from a set of essential intersub-
jective relationships, and derive ethical consequences from the character of
these relationships. Darwall and Habermas, however, base a set of moral
principles on a very abstract, idealized relationship, and let the substantive
sources of values fall into place as they may. Nietzsche’s approach, by con-
trast, starts by identifying the conditions for substantively valuable relation-
ships, and then reflects on how to support and sustain those relationships.
Nietzsche, I think, tries to avoid deriving prescriptions—or even proce-
dures for assessing validity claims—from abstract or idealized relationships.
His interest in relationships lies with the way that they themselves serve as
sources of substantive value. Most relationships, no doubt, involve deontic
norms for their maintenance, but most of Nietzsche’s additional reflection
is on the broader social conditions that make more personal relationships
possible, and the way these social conditions themselves manifest relation-
ships writ large. Just as more intimate relationships do, large-scale social
patterns make other relationships possible, give content to our expectations
of one another, and themselves provide a source of value.
As a way of arguing that our more personal relationships depend upon
a background of large-scale social relations, Nietzsche frequently points to
inconsistencies between social institutions and expressed moral commit-
ments. As Nietzsche saw his contemporary world, at least, certain values
were held in high regard as matters of individual morality, but had little
actual currency because the structure of social life rendered them empty
or impossible. For example, Nietzsche makes this claim about neigh-
bor love and “utility of the herd”: “As long as the utility reigning in moral
value judgments is solely the utility of the herd, as long as one considers
only the preservation of the community [. . .] there can be no morality of
neighbor love [. . .]” (BGE 201). According to Nietzsche, all contemporary

social relations are structured by “utility of the herd,” which gives overrid-
ing importance to public security. In this situation, the nominal importance
attributed to love of one’s neighbor cannot have any genuine weight. So
many practices and institutions are built around the possible dangers that
others pose that this becomes the default way in which persons relate to
one another. Neighbor love, then, is “always something secondary” (BGE
201) and thus not genuine—either an illusion or something more like a sus-
pension of suspicion. Nietzsche is not either lamenting or endorsing this so
much as claiming that there is no meaningful way that a substantive ideal
of neighbor love can operate in our social world.
Nietzsche makes this point by way of criticizing the gap between nom-
inal ideals and social reality. The constructive implication, however, is that
in order to have the kinds of relationships that we value, we need to arrange
our social life as a whole to make this possible.53 This is what he identifies
as the problem of culture. Nietzsche shares a common view of modern soci-
ety, that it has introduced a host of differentiated ranks and occupations so
that economic, political, social, and familial life are governed by different
considerations. The problem of culture as Nietzsche sees it, then, is not to
eliminate this differentiation, so that economic institutions and personal
friendships are inseparable from one another, but to somehow create a
“unity” out of these diverse relationships so that we might become “material
for a society” (GS 356; cf. TI “Skirmishes” 39). Modern social organizations
are filled with hierarchies but suppress the acknowledgment of them: sepa-
ration of roles into different spheres creates a lack of a forum for common
engagement. Modern institutions thus in Nietzsche’s view are regulated by
formal equality but undermine mutuality. Without mutuality, relationships
based in “respect, honor and trust” (GM II:2) become impossible.
Culture, for Nietzsche, is not just a forum for mutual engagement, how-
ever; it also provides new ways of belonging. Even when culture does not
serve its other functions well, it furnishes affiliations in terms of which per-
sons may make sense of who they are and what is important to them. These
affiliations are ways of participating in large-scale relationships: through
the acknowledgment that others have a hold on one, they provide a source
of value. Such relationships may not always be healthy ones, but at least
they have the potential to confer a place in the world for their participants.
Having a culture would, Nietzsche imagines, convey a sense that one’s per-
sonal concerns matter and that one shares in important ends.
5. Conclusion
Nietzsche’s overriding ethical hope is for a culture that allows for a range
of other human relationships, and itself provides a source of value. Such a
culture would convey a sense of belonging to persons separated by their
diverse roles and commitments, and at the same time furnish the context
in which more intimate relationships could be meaningfully pursued. The
most valuable of these relationships—the ones that contribute to individ-
ual development—are based in mutuality and free from resentment and
blame. A unified, healthy culture would facilitate human flourishing, and
itself stand as a general form of flourishing. Yet for Nietzsche, there are no
obvious implications of this hope. The importance of the social and of our
specific relationships does not generate a general obligation to bring about
these relationships, nor even restrictions against violating the conditions of
such relationships.
To see why this is so, a comparison with Michael Slote’s “care ethics”
might be instructive.54 One could read care ethics as parallel to Nietzsche’s
ethics, but with a singular focus on empathetic relationships. To be sure
there are problems with such comparisons. For Nietzsche, it is a horren-
dous mistake to restrict attention to a single kind of relationship, and in
particular to take care and empathy to be important; for Slote, who classifies
his theory as a version of “moral sentimentalism,”55 it is not clear that care
rooted in empathy even counts as a relationship to another. (One could
have the relevant sentiments about someone whom it would be impossible
to have a relationship with, such as someone ignorant of the other’s exis-
tence, or someone who does not exist.) The important contrast, however,
is that Slote offers his care ethics as a “total approach to ethics,”56 that is,
one that “makes sense across the whole range of normative and political
issues that philosophers have sought to deal with.”57 Slote does this by mak-
ing other evaluations in terms of their relation to caring: right action, for
example, would be that which is appropriately based in care, or that would
be done from the standpoint of someone who empathized appropriately. So
any question we might put to care ethics has an answer, and an answer of
the same form.
This can work only if there is a single kind of relationships that mat-
ters, and always in the same way; otherwise the approach produces contra-
dictory results. This alone makes it irreconcilable with Nietzsche’s ethics.
The main difference with Nietzsche is not about the risk of inconsistent
evaluations, however. For Nietzsche, ethical considerations are not a matter

of seeing everything from one particular standpoint. Ethical considerations
arise from within relationships, whether from participating in a culture,
maintaining a friendship, or possibly even relating to oneself. But the con-
siderations that arise from this take on their own independent meaning;
they become important for their own sake and not as reflections of some
other supremely important standard. Such considerations might have no
weight with someone outside the relevant relationship; but this can change,
too, as relationships open up, are extended, or change. Nietzsche’s view is
that our ethical commitments are connected to our relationships so that
when we argue about justice or generosity, for example, we are arguing both
about what these things are and at the same time about what the nature of
our relationships is. To resolve disputes, or to gain clarity about an ideal,
then, sometimes amounts to changing the character of a relationship rather
than solving a theoretical problem. Or, to look at it in another way, avoid-
ing a problem sometimes means becoming a different person by leading a
different kind of life.
Relationships, then, have their imperatives, but cannot sustain the aspi-
rations of a “total” moral theory for a number of reasons. One reason is
that one just mentioned, that relationships do not have the requisite stabil-
ity. When faced with some demand, one always has the option to change
the nature of the relationship, or abandon it. Often one cannot even tell
what a relationship demands until one has lived through it and seen how
it is working out. Another reason is that one is always involved in a lot
of relationships, each with its own demands, and it is never clear how to
prioritize among them. There is no single solution—in fact, there might
not be any solution—as to how to be the right kind of friend and child and
parent and citizen and lover and enemy. A third reason why relationships
cannot sustain the aspirations of a “total” moral theory is that relationships
typically depend on others.58 Since one cannot be a friend or a citizen all by
oneself, it becomes very hard to parcel out individual responsibility, espe-
cially when things go poorly (hence the hackneyed phrase, “it’s not you, it’s
me”). If moral theory needs to tell individual agents what to do, it will fare
poorly, then, in relationships, where no single party can make things go
well. A fourth and most general reason is that relationships do not always
have clear implications in some of the other terms of ethics. That there are
relationships that are valuable and that we seek to have does not, I think,
impose obligations on anyone to participate in them or to cultivate the
virtues appropriate to them, or even to bring about the state of affairs in

which they obtain. Relations are not—they cannot—be built in that way.
Nietzsche would concede that there are ethical questions that have
answers in familiar forms. When all of our relationships are settled, then
the path to figuring out how to regulate them and what ends they ought to
promote becomes easier. For Nietzsche, however, taking that path is always
subsequent to creating the kinds of communities and friendships that we
might want. Ethical reflection, then, bears little resemblance to theory: it
does not solve any problems, or even admit that solutions might exist. And it
always starts out as embedded within one set of relationships, contemplating
other ways someone might get along with or try to detach themselves from
others. There are criteria for judgment—the problem is not that these are
lacking—but there are as many of these as there are different relationships,
and few of the criteria are ever explicit or mandatory. An ethics of relation-
ships can offer a way of reflecting on questions, but seldom offers answers.
Binghamton University
rguay@binghamton.edu
N OT E S
I am indebted to many friends, especially Christa Acampora, Jenn Dum, Richard

Eldridge, Randall Havas, and Melissa Zinkin, for thoughtful comments and dis-
cussions about this article. Unfortunately I was not able to incorporate all of their
insights or respond to all of their criticisms.
1. One can find a similar point in Alexander Nehamas, “Nietzsche, Modernity,
Aestheticism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Bernd Magnus and
Kathleen M. Higgins (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 238.
2. For the purposes of this article, I will neglect various forms of skepticism
about morality, noncognitivism, error theory, and so on, although one could of
course attribute these to Nietzsche.
3. See, for example, Philippa Foot, “Nietzsche’s Immoralism,” in Nietzsche,
Genealogy, Morality, ed. R. Schacht (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994),
3–14.
4. See, for example, Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2004), 467, and Bruce Detwiler, Nietzsche and the Politics of
Aristocratic Radicalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 128–33.
5. There are probably the proverbial rule-proving exceptions to this, but the
likely candidates tend to eschew arguments. See, perhaps, George Bataille, On
Nietzsche, trans. B. Boone (London: Paragon House, 1998), and Anthony Ludovici,
Nietzsche and Art (New York: Haskell House, 1971).
6. This passage is cited, for example, by John Richardson, Nietzsche’s New
Darwinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 145.
7. Translations are my own from Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe,
ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (New York: de Gruyter, 1988).
8. That claim had appeared earlier in BGE: “because they address themselves to
‘all,’ because they generalize, where one may not generalize” (BGE 198).
9. Walter Kaufmann offers such a reading of “noch nicht” with a somewhat
heavy-handed translation: “for that reason alone” (p. 157). Judith Norman, by con-
trast, simply ignores the “noch”: the relevant phrase is simply translated “what is
right for someone absolutely cannot be right for someone else” (p. 119—Cambridge,
2002). Kaufmann’s translation: New York: Vintage, 1989.
10. I offer a very different account of “order of rank” in “Order of Rank,” in the
Oxford Handbook to Nietzsche, ed. K. Gemes and J. Richardson (New York: Oxford
11. There are of course other ways of making a similar distinction—see, e.g.,
Bruce Waller and T. M. Scanlon. In Against Moral Responsibility (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2011), Bruce Waller distinguishes between “take-charge” responsibility
and moral responsibility. In Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, and Blame
(Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2008), T. M. Scanlon distinguishes
instead between different kinds of moral responsibility. What matters for present
purposes is not precisely how these distinctions are drawn but rather the import
that Nietzsche takes from it.
12. Nietzsche seems to take such a backward-looking orientation as always
problematic: see, for example, his account of “revenge” as “the will’s ill will against
time” in Z II: “On Redemption” 2.
13. These two notions of responsibility are not mutually exclusive, of course.
Even on Nietzsche’s view, both may be valuable in their own proper domains—
for example, one might be suited to application in criminal law, and the other
to ethical reflection. It is perhaps worth noting that in German responsibility is
Verantwortlichkeit for the abstract universal (and sometimes the particular) and
Verantwortung for the particular, neither of which has the “-ability” of “responsi-
bility.” Perhaps the different conceptions may be already implicit in language: the
German suggesting a standing property, the Latinate suggesting a latent potential.
14. See BGE 61, BGE 212, and the discussion below. See also Randall Havas,
“Nietzschean Equality,” Philosophical Topics 33.2 (2005): 89–117, 110–11.
15. Havas, “Nietzschean Equality,” 104.
16. Havas, “Nietzschean Equality,” 107.
17. See, for example, Achilles’ promise to Kalchas in Iliad 88–91 and Zeus’ to
Thetis in Iliad 524–27.
18. See, for example, BGE 211: “genuine philosophers are commanders and leg-
islators.” On responsibility, see Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), chap. 3, and Christa Davis Acampora,

Contesting Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 179–86.
19. See, for example, Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity,
trans. F. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 93, and Philippa Foot,
“Nietzsche: The Revaluation of Values,” in Oxford Readings in Philosophy: Nietzsche,
ed. J. Richardson and B. Leiter (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 210–20.
20. Robert Pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem (Malden, MA:
Blackwell, 1991), 108.
21. See BGE 262: “the individual dares to be different. . . .”
22. “Noble” here translates “vornehm,” which does not indicate a status based
on birth, but is rather more like refinement or cultivation. The distinctiveness and
possibility of nobility in this sense was a prominent issue for Nietzsche, as it was
for Goethe. For an example of Goethe’s concern, see J. W. Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre (Munich, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1991), V.xvi, 378–81.
23. D 113, D 458.
24. Bernard Reginster explicates this aspect of Nietzsche’s thought in terms of
“overcoming resistance”; see The Affirmation of Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
25. This is a theme of Z I: “On the Friend.”
26. Nietzsche also expresses this point by equating the “pathos of distance” with
the “will to be oneself ”: see TI “Skirmishes” 37.
27. Cf. EH “Books” 5: “Love . . . in its means, war; at bottom, deadly hatred of
the sexes.”
28. On this passage, see Robert Pippin, Nietzsche, Psychology, and First
Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 119n12, and Acampora,
Contesting Nietzsche, 146.
29. These all appear together in BGE 260, where Nietzsche links them to the
creating of values; they appear separately throughout Nietzsche’s works.
30. Michel Foucault makes a similar point with the story of Nicocles of Cyprus:
one can justify ethical restrictions by appealing to the character of relationships,
without appealing to a universalized requirement. See “On the Genealogy of Ethics:
An Overview of Work in Progress,” in Ethics, Subjectivity, and Truth, ed. P. Rabinow
(New York: New Press, 1997), 254–80, 264.
31. On this point, see Havas, “Nietzschean Equality,” 105.
32. I should add that Nietzsche does not indicate that duties are the only kind of
ethical claim that might apply.
33. See Mark Warren, “Reply to Ruth Abbey and Frederick Appel,” Political
Theory 27.1 (1999): 126–30, 129.
34. See Mark Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1988), 72.
35. See Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought, 72.
36. Robert Pippin, Hegel on Self-Consciousness: Desire and Death in the
Phenomenology of Spirit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 88. See
also Ludwig Siep, “Mutual Recognition: Hegel and Beyond,” in Recognition and
Social Ontology, ed. H. Ikaheimo and A. Laitinen (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 117–44,
127, and Ludwig Siep, “Recognition in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit and in
Contemporary Practical Philosophy,” in The Philosophy of Recognition: Historical
and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. H.-C. Schmidt am Busch and C. Zurn (New
York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 107–27, 107.
37. See, e.g., Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1977), §180 (p. 111).
38. See Allen W. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1999), 37, 77, 86.
39. Cf. Pippin, Modernism as a Philosophical Problem, 109: “And as Hegel
pointed out, such a pathos of distance is a profoundly unstable notion.”
40. Another parallel to Hegel’s insistence on stability as a metalevel normative
consideration, perhaps, is Rousseau’s insistence that amour propre must be ren-
dered completely salutary or it will cause human misery, corruption, and enslave-
ment. Amour propre, the kind of self-love that seeks the esteem of others, is the most
fundamental source of human corruption, and thus its effects can be redeemed in
social life only if it is completely “transfigured” (Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s
Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition [New York:
Oxford University Press, 2008], 3; cf. 189n4, 265) into a source of harmony and
freedom; there is no possibility of living with corruptible human beings or with
passions that might be ambiguously valuable and dangerous.
41. See Warren, Nietzsche and Political Thought, 72.
42. See, for example, BGE P, BGE 25, BGE 40, BGE 270, BGE 278.
43. This importance of masks also explains the limited place of agonism in
Nietzsche’s thought. According to an “agonistic psychology,” persons are noth-
ing more than temporary arrangements of drives struggling against one another,
and the same struggles are repeated at the interpersonal level (Lawrence Hatab,
Nietzsche’s Life Sentence: Coming to Terms with Eternal Recurrence [New York:
Routledge, 2005], 53). Nietzsche’s notion of masks suggests, however, that relation-
ships other than competitive ones are important even for a person’s own self-iden-
tification, and social identities are as important as conflicting drives. One might
think that the masks are merely superficial, and that the underlying content of
drives is what really constitutes persons, but Nietzsche insists that what underlies a
mask is “another mask” (BGE 278) or, in an alternative metaphor, “another, deeper
cave” (BGE 289). There is nothing more fundamental than social relationships that
explain the demands of social relationships.
44. CW 2, EH “Books” 5.
45. Stephen Darwall, The Second Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and
Accountability (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 3.
46. Darwall, Second Person Standpoint, 20.
49. Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. C.

Lenhardt and S. W. Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 103 and Jürgen
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law
and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 107.
50. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 178 and
Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, 108.
51. One notable omission is Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay
on Exteriority, trans. A. Lingis (Norwell, MA: Kluwer, 1991). esp. sec. III.
53. I take Todd May to be making an analogous argument about the compatibil-
ity of friendship and “neo-liberal” economic institutions in Friendship in an Age of
Economics: Resisting the Forces of Neo-liberalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,
2012).
54. See, e.g., Michael Slote, The Ethics of Care and Empathy (New York: Routledge,
2007).
55. Slote, Ethics of Care and Empathy, 4.
58. This is one of the main reasons that Raymond Geuss situates Nietzsche’s
thought “outside ethics.” Of course, the questions that remain are still recognizably
ethical; they just do not—indeed, cannot—respond to what Geuss identifies as the
“central ethical question” of philosophical ethics. See Raymond Geuss, “Outside
Ethics,” European Journal of Philosophy 11.1 (2003): 29–53, 40.
Nietzsche’s Orientation toward the Future
WERNER STEGMAIER
Abstract: Nietzsche assumed that the time to understand him was yet to come,
perhaps after one or two centuries. We cannot say whether this time has come
yet because nobody can say that he or she understands Nietzsche as he wanted
to be understood. But we can track what he wrote about his future and then
draw our own conclusions. Although he often spoke about it, Nietzsche’s future
has rarely become a topic in Nietzsche research. It might however be especially
important for younger generations. After a short review of Nietzsche’s future in
the twentieth century, which is already behind us, I thus unfold his semantics
of the future and orientation toward the future. Then, I outline the future
of thinking as announced by him in the fifth book of the Gay Science. Here,
he speaks of the “music of life,” which philosophers and especially those
philosophers committed to or fully lost in idealism are no longer able to hear.
In a subsequent note, he expands the horizon of this music of life to a “music
of the future” in “labyrinths of the future,” in which we have to learn to orient
ourselves. The future of Nietzsche’s thinking in the twenty-first century might
be decided depending on Nietzsche’s utmost enhancement of value orientation,
with which he eventually breaks in his amor fati sign that no longer needs or
wants a future.
Keywords: future, orientation, music of life, labyrinth of future, value

orientation, amor fati
1. The Future of Nietzsche’s Thinking in the Twentieth Century
In the twentieth century, Nietzsche became famous but remained infa-

mous. No matter how popular his catchwords became, his thinking never
acquired the status of a common philosophical ground like that of Aristotle,
Descartes, or Kant. Most of our academic colleagues outside of Nietzsche
research still hesitate to accept his ideas, not to mention adopting them. Our
philosophical colleagues are primarily—and now more than ever—looking

Nietzsche’s Orientation toward the Future | 385
for secure logical and ontological, sometimes even metaphysical reasons,

which Nietzsche impedes, if not entirely refuses. As far as he was philo-
sophically adopted and further developed—which happened primarily in
France for a long time—such attempts were again reduced to narrow “-isms,”
like structuralism, deconstructionism, and postmodernism, which were in
turn anxiously rejected with labels such as “anything goes” and relativism.
However, the horizons of Nietzsche’s thinking are far from having been fully
explored. He certainly emphasized the nature of signs, their autonomous
structures, and their ongoing self-deconstruction. However, he started on
a much deeper level: not with a philosophy of foundational reasons, which
in turn always has to presuppose further reasons, but with a descriptive
philosophy. The most influential descriptive philosophies in the twentieth
century stem from Husserl, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein; and all of them
have to do with Nietzsche. Husserl, in his description of Being as based on
its appearance in consciousness, insisted on the self-givenness of the sub-
ject, which Nietzsche had already rejected—and therefore Husserl regarded
Nietzsche’s thinking as an untenable philosophy of life.1 Heidegger took
Nietzsche’s thinking as serious as only few did—but exploring the question
of Being, he pushed it back into old metaphysics.2 Only recent research has
revealed the proximity of (particularly) the late Wittgenstein to Nietzsche
especially with regard to the concepts of language games, life forms, signs,
and family resemblance—Wittgenstein himself hardly cared for his pre-
decessors in the history of philosophy.3 In this respect, Nietzsche’s future
could still be ahead of us.
The future of Nietzsche’s thinking does not crystallize in his famous
formulas of the “Übermensch,” “the will to power,” and the “eternal
recurrence” from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Having witnessed for what
mischief they were used, they have become rather alien to us and are
in need of new interpretations. For me, Nietzsche became plausible in
a much more basic and at the same time more radical way: by means
of his disclosing of what we commonly and inconspicuously call orien-
tation. In living beings, orientation precedes everything else and every-
thing runs within its structures, including consciousness, thinking, and
speaking. Orientation, which animals and plants have in their own way,
includes—as vigorously emphasized by Nietzsche—not only corporeality
and its “great reason [grosse Vernunft],” but also “discourse [Verkehr]” as
interaction and communication with others, and in both cases it involves
the whole “music of life.”
Orientation is—as we can see with Nietzsche—always already future

orientation. Although he uses the term orientation in his letters, the fact that
Nietzsche avoided using it in his texts and notes can easily be explained:
he did not want to be confused with the then famous popular philoso-
pher Eugen Dühring, who extensively made use of the term “orientation.”
But terms germane to the semantics of orientation, such as perspective,
standpoint, horizon, point of view, leeway, world abbreviation in signs,
and so on, are everywhere in Nietzsche’s texts. He explicitly professed to
“perspectivism” in the fifth book of the Gay Science (GS 354). We still use
the semantics of orientation today—which has hardly been noticed—for
the very reason that it keeps open the contingency, evolution, and complex-
ity of life and thought, for which Nietzsche decidedly stood up for as the
first among the big philosophers. Orientation is contingent, evolutionary,
and far more complex than what is traditionally understood as cognition,
which is accounted for by epistemologies, which Nietzsche made fun of.
The question for him is how we deal with cognition and how we live with it;
this is comprehended best in terms of orientation. Let us thus try to under-
stand Nietzsche’s thinking of the future as orientation toward the future.4
2. Nietzsche’s Semantics of the Future and Orientation

toward the Future
From his youth onward, Nietzsche engages remarkably often and pas-
sionately with the future: his own future, the future of his friends, and his
sister, the future of his scholarship, philology, and then—expanding his
horizon more and more—with Wagner about the future of music and art,
with Schopenhauer about the future of educational institutions, with Jacob
Burckhardt about the future of culture, and eventually—having become
independent and free in his own thinking—about the future of humanity
and philosophy. He connects the future of humanity and philosophy closely
with each other. It is, he writes in Human, All Too Human, the “fortune” of
his age that “with respect to the future, there opens out to us for the first time
a mighty, comprehensive vista of human and ecumenical purposes engir-
dling the whole inhabited globe” (AOM 179). Since “the various views of the
world, customs, and cultures can be compared and experienced simultane-
ously” (HH 23), it is, Nietzsche continues, the “task” of his time “to develop
towards a new culture” and to “create better conditions for the rise of human
beings, for their nourishment, education and instruction, for administering
the earth economically as a whole, and for generally weighing and using
the powers of man” (HH 24). Nietzsche already sees the future of a global-
ized world. Preparing humanity for this “enormous task” is what he expects
from “the great minds of the next century” (HH 25) and—what we usually
smile about today—from philosophers. They are responsible for the “future
of humanity” and are to be the “lawgivers of the future” (Note from 1884,
KSA 11:26[407]). He most likely did not mean that in a way that they were
to give judicial laws to the world society and supervise their government.
Instead, he relied on the long-term influence of philosophical insights as
it has repeatedly been observable especially in European history. In this
sense, he noted, “My task: to push humanity to decisions that decide about
all future!” In doing so, there ought to be “greatest patience” and “caution.”
At first, one is to “show the type of such humans that may take the challenge
of such tasks!” (Note from 1884, KSA 11:25[405]).5 He was dealing—as we
are now familiar with in the language of orientation—with decisions about
orientation for the world society and with a type of human being that may
make such decisions.
Let us first clarify philologically and methodologically how Nietzsche
speaks about the future: in his texts, his letters, and his notes. First, he forms
a number of future-oriented compound words, such as “future dreams
[Zukunftsträume],” “future intentions [Zukunftsabsichten],” “future writ-
ings [Zukunftsschriften],” “future position [Zukunftsstellung],” “future
human [Zukunftsmensch],” “future order [Zukunftsordnung],” “future
institute [Zukunftsanstalt],” “future struggles [Zukunftskämpfe],” and so
on.6 Second, he deals with the future of certain institutions, for example of
the “future of art,” the “future of the doctor,” the “future of marriage,” the
“future of scholarship,” the “future of Christianity,” the “future of nobil-
ity,” and so on. Third, he outlines future types such as the “future work
of art,” “future culture,” “future intelligence,” “future humans,” “future
genius,” “future morality,” “future city,” and “future philosopher.” And
fourth, he addresses the future in the sense of everything that is to come
and is expected or not expected to come. But what comes remains for
him—despite all future predictions—uncertain as well;7 “posted between
today and tomorrow, stretched in the contradiction between today and
tomorrow,” he writes in the beginning of the fifth book of the Gay Science,
we cannot be more than “guessers of riddles” (GS 343, trans. Walter
Kaufmann).8
Here too he makes use of river and ocean metaphors, such as the “ocean
of the future” or the “sea of the future.” To make predictions about the
future all one can do—this is clear, and Nietzsche dealt with it in detail in
his Second Untimely Meditation, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life—
is to extrapolate lines of development into the future based on what one
believes to perceive in the past, and in doing so, however, one is always
dependent on one’s present situation. Therefore, future predictions turn out
to be different every time. Nietzsche often speaks of “visions,” by means
of which only “a corner of the veil of the future” can be lifted (AOM 180);
“seers” tell us something “about what might possibly happen” (D 551); and
his Zarathustra he has often speak of “futures” in the plural.9
Such future presumptions make up the very nature of orientation.
This accounts for every individual as well as for society as a whole. When
working on his Zarathustra, he notes that we have to “guess the conditions
under which future humans live—because such guessing and anticipating
has the power of a motive: the future as that what we want affects our now”
(Note from 1883, KSA 10:7[6], our translation). Orientation is always about
exploring a situation with respect to how one can act in it in order to mas-
ter it, instead of being mastered by it. Orientation is much more oriented
toward the future than toward norms. “Guiding thought: we have to take
the future as binding and decisive [maaßgebend] for all our value judg-
ments—and not look for the laws of our actions behind us!” (Note from
1884, KSA 11:26[256], our translation, emphasis in the original). Norms
restrain the future, instead of opening it. And since there is not only one
future, one usually orients oneself in multiple factual and temporal future
horizons at the same time; one can reduce or expand them as needed; one
can hold them in place and shift them; one time, Nietzsche notes, one can
open up to the widest horizons and then “again close the curtain and turn
the thoughts to solid and nearest goals!” (Note from 1883, KSA 10:21[6],
our translation). Orientation is driven by our continual concern about our
multiple futures; only if we manage to make presumptions and have reliable
expectations about them do we remain fairly calm. Then, one has confi-
dence, in German Zuversicht (not hope because hope refers to uncertainty);
and only confidence allows for freedom—many times Nietzsche speaks of
“gay confidence.” It is freedom in the shape of leeway for alternative orien-
tation decisions, for Nietzsche, “the ability to master his ‘pros’ and ‘cons’
and to engage and disengage them [Vermögen, sein Für und Wider in der
Gewalt zu haben und aus- und einzuhängen] by using just the difference in
perspectives and affective interpretations for knowledge” (GM III:12, trans.
Carol Diethe, revised).10
Nietzsche’s methodological attitude to the future is therefore, as he

notes in 1881,
My thoughts are to show me where I stand, but they are not to tell
me where I am going to—I love the ignorance about the future
and I do not want to perish in light of impatience and the antici-
pation of augured things. (KSA 9:12[178], our translation)
He often emphasizes this love for ignorance or uncertainty (in spite of

his confidence) and proclaims it publicly in a similar way under the title
“Delight in Blindness” in the fourth book of the Gay Science (GS 287). In the
preceding note, however, he added, “I am falling until I reach the ground —
and do not want to say anymore: “I am seeking for the ground!” (KSA
9:12[178], our translation) This characterizes the radical methodology of his
orientation toward the future: to tentatively let go of all apparent hold in
orientation not in order to reach a final ground, but in order to see how long
one can bear without a final ground and how far one can go in doing so.
It is a test, Nietzsche continues, how “far-seeing and wide-reaching” one’s
own “invisible nature” and how shortsighted one’s own “spirit” is: “it gathers
with a quick glance [on that nature] some of its last tips and does not get
fed up with wondering about their colorfulness and apparent foolishness”
(KSA 9:12[178], our translation).
With this will and this art of looking deeper and of seeing more of the
conditions of orientation while discovering new possibilities of orienta-
tions toward the future, one risks more and more not being understood
by the present. Nietzsche deliberately takes this risk: “I do not want to be
understood for a long time” (Note from 1883, KSA 10:7[155], our transla-
tion). In the fifth book of the Gay Science he calls himself in this respect a
“posthumous” human (GS 365).
3. The Future of Thinking According to the Fifth Book of the

Gay Science: Transition Period of Cheerfulness
Nietzsche expected from the insight into nihilism—i.e., the loss of hold of
orientation beyond the hold that it finds in itself—a period of “a gloom and
eclipse of the sun whose like has probably never yet occurred on earth,” as
he says in the beginning of the fifth book of the Gay Science (trans. Walter
Kaufmann). But this insight has not come through yet; it is still—according
to Nietzsche’s metaphor—on its way like the last light of a dead star. As
long as it has not come through yet and as long as the “long plenitude and
sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin and cataclysm,” which it trig-
gers, has not begun yet, will those who already see more be able to face a
gay future: a transition period of “cheerfulness [Heiterkeit],” in which the
“horizon appears free to us again,” free from the old belief in an already
dead God—who was to guarantee a morality which strongly delimited
thinking—and free for engaging in any “daring of the lover of knowledge
[Wagniss des Erkennenden]” (GS 343). The fifth book of the Gay Science is
in this respect a book for the near future, after which—in a remote future—
that “monstrous logic of terror” is to follow, which, if we may connect
Nietzsche’s expectations directly with real historical events, was to follow in
Europe in the twentieth century. After the conclusion of the fifth book of the
Gay Science, he characterizes this with astonishing accuracy in his famous
Lenzer Heide note, where he speaks of a “crisis,” which has to trigger in
“underprivileged [Schlechtweggekommenen]” a “will for destruction” and
the “even deeper instinct” to “coerce the powerful to be their hangmen.”11
He finished the fifth book of the Gay Science itself—before adding the satyr
play of aphorism 383 and the Songs of Prince Vogelfrei—with the formula
“the tragedy begins . . .”—the word “begins” is highlighted: the beginning
of this future of the permeating insight into nihilism. For this expected
future, however, Nietzsche still—after all his criticism of European meta-
physics and morality—keeps open an alternative decision of orientation.
He announces it in the new preface of the Gay Science, which appeared at
the same time as its fifth book:
“Incipit tragoedia”—we read at the end of this awesomely awe-

less book. Beware! Something downright wicked and malicious
is announced here: incipit parodia, no doubt [. . .] (GS P:1)
Therefore we cannot simply believe the tragic interpretation—or the

parody of it: “incipit tragoedia” might equally refer to the end of the fifth
book from 1887, as well as to the end of the forth book from 1882, where it
initiates the book in between: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. What, then, is the
tragedy? What is the parody? Nietzsche deliberately presents a riddle, keeps
the readers in uncertainty, and urges them to make their own decisions of
orientation.12
Before the concluding satyr play he also proclaims “another ideal,” which
is different from the notoriously idealizing European metaphysics and
morality, which are alien to the world and hostile to life: the “ideal of a spirit
who plays naively—that is, not deliberately but from overflowing abundance
and power with all that was hitherto called holy, good, untouchable, divine”
(GS 382, trans. Walter Kaufmann, revised). This is the ideal of a masterful
and sovereign orientation, which has grown more and more confident after
many trials and successes of decisions in always new situations so that it may
“promise” as Nietzsche then puts it in the Genealogy of Morality (GM II:1).
“Certainty of life” is “the certainty as to the future” (GM III:25, trans. Carol
Diethe); the “type of men” that Nietzsche wants to grow is the “man who is
sure of his future, who guarantees the future [zukunftsgewisse, zukunfts-
verbürgende]” (EH “Why I Am a Destiny” 8, trans. Thomas Wayne).13 This
human being is somebody who no longer believes in truths, but who is in
“great seriousness,” which is “great” insofar as he or she is able to distance
from himself or herself in a deeply serious and at the same time gay way (GS
382).14 The different, new ideal is an ideal of a reflective and self-referential
orientation, which manages to assess the reach and tenability of its decisions
case by case and depending on the s ituation. This kind of orientation we see
in Nietzsche’s own texts; therefore one reads him without necessarily adopt-
ing his decisions of orientation. For him philosophical thinking becomes—
using Kant’s formula in a new way—an orienting oneself in thinking, and
the fifth book of the Gay Science describes this most precisely.
4. The “Music of Life” in “Labyrinths of the Future”:

A New Attempt at Orientation
The later his works, the more reflective Nietzsche develops an orientation
about his own philosophical orientation. Planning to write his “main work
[Hauptwerk],” he keeps composing new surveys of his thinking. One of
them from 1887/88 is especially interesting. Connecting the topic of the
“music of life” with the topic of the “music of the future,” Nietzsche arrives
at the “complete nihilism [vollkommenen Nihilismus],” which “will be
replaced” by “a counter movement [Gegenbewegung]” “in some future [in
irgendeiner Zukunft].”15
This note was designed as the “preface” of the planned main work: here,
under the title “The Will to Power. Attempt at the Transvaluation of all Values
[Der Wille zur Macht. Versuch einer Umwerthung aller Werthe].” Nietzsche,
as is well known, designed many more such titles.16 Feeling certain about
the “history of the next two centuries,” he speaks about the “rise of nihilism”
from a future standpoint. He is certain of it based on “a hundred signs,”
or in the language of orientation, based on clues (Anhaltspunkte). If such
clues, which may strongly differ in character and importance, have densely
accumulated around a conclusion, then this conclusion will be regarded as
a proven matter of fact, from which one may further proceed. Orientation
can never start from more than such dense, plausible, and fitting clues, even
in cases of best knowledge.17 Nietzsche calls this orientation toward the
future now—in obvious connection with the fifth book of the Gay Science—
the “music of the future [Musik der Zukunft].” Like sounds in music, they
cannot be logically deferred or justified; but they create their own orders
with their own logics. If an orientation finds a solid and initially unques-
tioned foothold, then such logics are experienced as a “destiny [Schicksal]”
occurring with “necessity [Nothwendigkeit].” Nietzsche insistently argued
that such necessity cannot be conceived of by a logic of linear chains of
causation; instead it emerges from manifold and innumerable influences.
Altogether, they may generate an inexorable force: All our European Culture
has been moving for a while; with a torture of tension, which grows from
century to century; like a current aimed at a catastrophe: restless, violent,
rash: like a current that wants to reach its end; that no longer recollects
itself; which is afraid of recollecting itself.18
This is not the logic of progress that seems to lead into a safe future, but
it is the logic of chaos, which leaves room for any possible surprise.
The “music of the future”—if one has “ears” to hear it—leads into “every
labyrinth of the future.” Nietzsche conceptualizes these labyrinths in the
plural, too. They are not noticeable as such, but one “goes astray” in them,
and if one has gone astray in them, one does not overlook them, but one
merely sees the limits of one’s own view. Precisely this is the primal sit-
uation of orientation. All one can do in such a situation is “to recollect
oneself ”: this is precisely how Moses Mendelssohn introduced the geo-
graphical term of orientation into philosophy.19 A philosopher dealing with
the future of humanity in the next centuries can recollect himself or her-
self in the best way,20 if he or she keeps distance from his or her society
with its set o rientations—like “homeless ones” and “children of the future”
in “this fragile, broken time of transition [zerbrechlichen zerbrochenen
Uebergangszeit],” as Nietzsche calls it in the fifth book of the Gay Science
(GS 377, trans. Walter Kaufmann). He knows that he always already lives
within uncertainties and that he cannot escape them but merely live through
and “to the end” of them, being—as Nietzsche regards himself—“Europe’s
first complete nihilist who has lived nihilism as such in himself to its very
end—who has it behind him, under him, outside of him. [. . .]”21 He is
then able to live with nihilism and to sufficiently orient himself in it. His
orientation no longer fails when looking into its abysses; he no longer
falls into despair or paralysis. In the following passage, Nietzsche does
not say—as is often ascribed to him—that “in some future” he will over-
come (überwinden) “that complete nihilism”; instead he is going to leave it
behind him and “replace” (ablösen) it.22 The fear of nihilism—of complete
disorientation—will pass if one has eventually adjusted to “the questionable
character of things,” of which Nietzsche speaks in aphorism 375 of the Gay
Science. Here, he conceives of such a reflective, self-referential, sovereign,
and future-guaranteeing orientation, which “rejects all crude, four-square
opposites,” which is “proudly conscious of its practice in having reserva-
tions,” and which deals confidently with certainty and uncertainty, in the
picture of a venturous and skilled rider on “mad and fiery horses”:
For this too constitutes our pride, this slight tightening of the
reins as our urge for certainty raises ahead, this self-control of
the rider during his wildest rides: for we still ride mad and fiery
horses, and when we hesitate it is least of all danger that makes
us hesitate. [. . .] (GS 375, trans. Walter Kaufmann)
The final passage of the note we deal with delves even further into the
labyrinths of orientation toward the future. Nietzsche announces a “future
Gospel,” new Good News, which one nevertheless has to believe in for the
very reason that “we do not have the truth” (Note from 1880, KSA 9:3[19]).23
In an orientation that always depends on a temporary standpoint, one
can never expect absolutely true knowledge, not even about this orienta-
tion itself. Instead, it is always a matter of belief, not only in religion but
also in the sciences and scholarship—as Nietzsche also emphasizes in the
fifth book of the Gay Science (GS 344). But there is a naïve and a reflective
kind of belief. Reflective belief includes “distrust” toward oneself: “So much
distrust, so much philosophy!” (GS 346, our translation). Nietzsche does
not seek reassurance (Beruhigung) in allegedly true knowledge, but he
risks—wherever useful—newly disturbing (“beunruhigend”) uncertainty
by always new scrutiny (GS 355). He remains aware that all he has and can
hold onto are his own orientation decisions.
This is precisely what he aims at—as one can see in this note better than
elsewhere—with his “formula [Formel]”—as he explicitly calls it here—of
“the will to power.” It is to “express a counter movement with the purpose of
principle and task” not to denote, but in order to trigger something. Will
to power is—as Nietzsche notes later—a “counter term [Gegen-Begriff]”
also (Note from 1888, KSA 13:23[3], 3). It allows us to think that everything
forms itself by continually engaging with each other, and that nothing per-
sists eternally; that is, it is not a priori connected by any preexisting entity,
such as Being, reason, truth, consciousness, subject, system, and so on. The
term of the will to power opens the future in all directions. “Nihilism” is
equally a counter term as far as it amounts to how the highest values, which
one believed in, are “nihil,” nothing and meaningless; it negates their value
but does not replace them with new values. The counter movement in the
name of the formula of the will to power replaces the old values as well as
their negation with an awareness of the decidability of all things in dif-
ferent orientations. Orientations may decide agreeing or disagreeing with
other orientations—just like wills to power that neither have nor require
anything they a priori share with other wills to power. In this respect, “will
to power” may be taken as a formula for the orientation process itself, as
far as it—as mentioned—is always about “coping” or “mastering” a situa-
tion (of orientation).24 The orientation process is a will-to-power process in
Nietzsche’s sense. Only since Nietzsche have we been able to conceive of it
in this way; this understanding continues into the future, where we might
even be required to think of orientation in such terms.
5. The Future of Nietzsche’s Thinking in the Twenty-First Century:

Enhancement and Questioning of the Semantics of Values
At the end of his attempt to orient himself about his orientation (in the Note
from 1887/88, KSA 13:11[411], 189–190 / KGW IX 7: W II 3, 4–5 [note A]),
Nietzsche deals with “values.” The semantics of values—which dominates
today’s philosophical, political, and journalistic discourses—was young
at the time; it spread only in the nineteenth century.25 With his forceful
formula of the “transvaluation of values,” or—even stronger—“the transval-
uation of all values,” Nietzsche produces the greatest emphasis for it and even
“hammers” it into his readers’ minds with his works from 1888, e specially
The Antichrist and Ecce Homo. Value orientation is part of the orientation
toward the future. Values are judging aspects or c riteria, according to which
one decides for an action or—in the case that an action happened for other
reasons—justifies an action subsequently. The newer semantics of values,
which spread widely in moral and ethical discourses, is characterized by
the fact that it creates greater leeway for actions compared to the older
semantics of norms. It is more complex. While the semantics of values
indeed requires adhering to values, it leaves it open which values they are.
Since values clearly differ from nonvalues by being preferred without ques-
tion—e.g., peace over war, prosperity over poverty, freedom over slavery,
happiness and fortune over unhappiness and misfortune—they are always
already regarded as good. If one adheres to them when acting or when jus-
tifying one’s actions, one is already on the morally good and safe side. But
acting is not in itself valuable or reprehensible: “There is no such thing as
moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of p henomena [. . .]”
(BGE 108, trans. Marion Faber).26 Since actions are only interpreted as
valuable in the first place, they can be interpreted in one way or another.
The same actions by different people—as far as this is possible—can be
interpreted by means of different values. Thus the same actions of different
people (as far as they can be the same) can be judged by means of differ-
ent values; one can act in different ways according to the same values (as
far as they can be the same); and if performed skillfully, the same actions
can be justified to different people by different values. We all know this. In
doing so, values do not have to contradict each other because their amount
is neither defined nor organized. Contradictions between values emerge
only when they are classified within a clear and defined system of values.
Therefore, to put it simply, nearly everything can be justified by values.
Demonstrating this in his complex studies, the sociologist Niklas Luhmann
therefore called the semantics of values a “hypocrisy of a second order”
and “a hypocrisy with integrated ‘dehypocrization’ [eine Heuchelei mit
eingebauter Entheuchelung].”27 Values may coexist; if they are challenged,
they may again be justified and protected by other values. But there is the
other side of the coin: in modern societies, values always leave leeway to
justify completely different actions by different values—moral freedom
thus proves to be moral leeway. And this is what Nietzsche believed in and
intended to expand on. But this however comes at a cost: value orientation
seems to provide security for future orientation; but at the same time it
conceals its insecurity. This makes values questionable, if not even nihilistic
as well.
Nietzsche seems to have been aware of this when referring values

to themselves, that is, when asking about the value of values altogether.
Values devalue themselves, if one realizes how “value preferences”—i.e.,
preferring one value over another—depend on the situation and thus how
“opportunistic” they are in moral terms.28 Surely, at the end of the note we
deal with, Nietzsche only speaks of “past” or “established [bisherige]” values
while adding that we are “one day, in need of new values . . .” (KSA 13:11[411],
190). But our note A is preceded by another attempt of Nietzsche’s to ori-
ent himself—in the same notebook W II 3, from which he clearly developed
the later one (we call it note B).29 As becomes evident by the new edition
of Nietzsche’s late notes in the KGW IX, Nietzsche thoroughly worked on
this note, made additions, corrected it, and rewrote it on the opposite page,
which he usually kept blank for such cases. He eventually rewrote it another
time as almost finished note A.30 It equally begins with initially careful
phrasings about the “emergence of nihilism,” which Nietzsche describes here
as “one of the greatest crises,” that is, as a crisis of values. The formulas of the
“music of the future” and the “labyrinths of the future” appear only in later
versions. But here too the question is not whether nihilism will be overcome,
but “whether humanity will recover from it and whether it will master this
crisis,” that is, if it simply no longer suffers from it. The passage that follows,
and which Nietzsche did not adopt for the planned preface of his planned
main work in note A, might be the most interesting one for the future of
value orientation:
the modern man tentatively believes in one value, then in another

one, and drops it again: the range of the survived and dropped
values fills up more and more; the vacuum [Leere] and scarce-
ness [Armut] of values is felt more and more; the movement is
unstoppable—although its delay is attempted on a large scale—
In the German original:
der moderne Mensch glaubt versuchsweise bald an diesen,

bald an jenen Werth und läßt ihn dann fallen: der Kreis der
überlebten und fallengelassenen Werthe wird immer voller;

die Leere und Armut an Werthen kommt immer mehr zum
Gefühl; die Bewegung ist unaufhaltsam—obwohl im großen Stil
die Verzögerung versucht ist—
This is very close to Luhmann’s terms. The semantics of values in itself

devalues values as such and reduces both their binding force and their
reliability.31 Precisely in doing so it creates new leeway for their transvalua-
tion; but it also devalues them with respect to their orientation toward the
future. Nietzsche explicitly affirms this:
Finally he [the modern man] dares a critique of values as such;

he recognizes their origin; he sees enough to no longer believe in
any value.32
The crisis of values is followed by the critique of values; and the critique of
values is followed by the crisis of the semantics of values:
das Pathos ist da, der neue Schauder . . .]33
there is the pathos, the new shudder [. . .]
If the semantics of values altogether plunges into a crisis, then speaking of

a creation of new values becomes questionable too.34 The “pathos” could
refer to the shudder before it; but it could also readopt the formula of the
“pathos of distance” (BGE 257) in the sense of a pathos of distance for
value orientation altogether. For as much as he keeps calling for the trans-
valuation of all values, Nietzsche had already experienced the future in a
different way, namely that he no longer needs an orientation toward the
future—and that he therefore no longer needs a value orientation either.
He sketches for himself a future without wishing or wanting in terms of
his amor fati, that is, of wanting-nothing-to-be-different [Nichts-anders-
haben-Wollen]. He already professed to it in the fourth book of the Gay
Science, but here still in the sense of a not-wanting-to-accuse, and thus
a not-wanting-to-value: “I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to
accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation!” (GS
276, trans. Walter Kaufmann). Eventually, in his Ecce Homo, this becomes
a wanting-nothing-anymore [Überhaupt-nicht-mehr-Wollen]; the evalua-
tions as well as the values are now left behind:
To “want” something, to “strive” for something, to have an

“end,” a “desire” in mind—I know none of this from my experi-
ence. Even at this moment I look out upon my future—a broad
future!—as upon a smooth sea: no desire ripples upon it. Not

in the least do I want anything to be different from what it is; I
myself do not want to be any different. But thus I have always
lived. Not a thing have I wished for. (EH “Why I Am So Clever”
9, trans. Thomas Wayne)
Prior to that, in May 1888, Nietzsche writes to Georg Brandes that in him
“a main concept of life has literally been erased [. . .], the concept of ‘future.’
No more wishing, not a cloud of wishing from me! A smooth surface!”35
This kind of orientation that has completely come to terms with itself has
grown certain of future, future-guaranteeing; it no longer needs an orien-
tation toward the future. It comes to rest in a life without a wish; it is no
longer a will to power, too. . . .36
. . . Until new situations urge to be coped with and until new needs and
wishes ask for fulfillment. Of course, Nietzsche still had needs and desires
in life. For example, he would soon give thanks to his mother: “The ham
looks extremely delicious and splendid: I look ahead into the future with
confidence—and this is something!! For I have undergone an evil and diffi-
cult time.”37
Even the desire to have no desires and the desire to be in peace and quiet
from the needs of orientation are still desires. But within the pathos of the
amor fati they can be regarded as situational coercions, from which one can
gain philosophical distance to see that they narrow down the horizons of
orientation, which can be widened again when the coercions have passed.
What remains is the flexibility of orientation, that is, its ability to orient itself
in this way or another depending on the situation. This could be the best
promise for the future. As far as Nietzsche’s thinking makes this comprehen-
sible and plausible like no other, it has good prospects for an open future.
University of Greifswald, Germany

stegmai@uni-greifswald.de
N OT E S
This article was initially presented at the Nietzsche colloquium at Hotel Waldhaus
in Sils Maria, Switzerland, on September 24–27, 2015. The key issue was the “‘Music
of Life’: Nietzsche’s Expansion of Philosophical Horizons in the Fifth Book of the
Gay Science.” It has been translated here by Reinhard Müller.
1. Cf. Stephan Günzel, “Zur Archäologie von Erde, Leib und Lebenswelt.
Nietzsche–Husserl–Merleau-Ponty [O arheologiji zemlje, telsa in ivljenskega sveta.
Doloitev meja Husserlove in Merleau-Pontyjeve fenomenologije po Nietzscheju,
in Slovenian translation by Alfred Leskovec], 6–9,” phainomena. Journal of the
Phenomenological Society of Ljubljana 12.43–44 (2003): 283–307, in German at www
.stephan-guenzel.de/Texte/Guenzel_HusserlNietzsche.pdf.
2. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2 vols. (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), and with regard
to this topic, Werner Stegmaier, “[Heideggers] Auseinandersetzung mit Nietzsche
I–Metaphysische Interpretation eines Anti-Metaphysikers,” in Heidegger-Handbuch.
Leben–Werk–Wirkung, ed. Dieter Thomä (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003), 202–10.
3. Cf. Marco Brusotti, “Il mio scopo è una ‘trasvalutazione dei valori.’
Wittgenstein e Nietzsche,” Rivista di estetica 45.1 (2005): 147–64; Marco Brusotti,
“Wittgensteins Nietzsche. Mit vergleichenden Betrachtungen zur Nietzsche
Rezeption im Wiener Kreis,” Nietzsche-Studien 38 (2009): 335–62.
4. Cf. Werner Stegmaier, Philosophie der Orientierung (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2008), and Werner Stegmaier, “Die Freisetzung einer Philosophie der Orientierung
durch Friedrich Nietzsche,” in Was sich nicht sagen lässt. Das Nicht-Begriffliche in
Wissenschaft, Kunst und Religion, ed. Joachim Bromand and Guido Kreis (Berlin:
Akademie Verlag, 2010), 355–67. The orientation for the future was still hardly
addressed in these two publications.
5. Cf. letter to Malwida von Meysenbug, first week of June 1884, no. 516, KSB
6.510.
6. At one point he speaks ambivalently of “Zukunftsspinnereien” (“future spin-
nings”) (letter to Heinrich Köselitz, September 30, 1879, no. 887, KSB 6.449).
7. Cf. Werner Stegmaier, “Nietzsches Prognosen,” in Der Erste Weltkrieg. “In
Europa gehen die Lichter aus!”, ed. Bernd Rill (Munich: Hanns-Seidl-Stiftung e.V.,
2014), 9–17.
8. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an
Appendix of Songs, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 279.
9. Michael Skowron, “‘Schwanger geht die Menschheit’ (Nachgelassene
Fragmente 1882/83). Friedrich Nietzsches Philosophie des Leibes und der Zukunft,”
Nietzscheforschung 19 (2012): 223–44, connects Nietzsche’s (and Zarathustra’s)
thoughts about the future to the topics of procreation, pregnancy, birth, and death.
Philippe Granarolo, Nietzsche: cinq scénarios pour le futur (Paris: Encre Marine,
2014), draws a connection to Nietzsche’s early work on the Greek oracle and the
Roman haruspex, and then to an imagined future with Wagner (1), to a future of
the free spirits as the lords of the world (2), to the expected future décadence (3), to
the artistic and natural production of evolution (4), and to Nietzsche’s “grimaces de
la grandeur” (5). Both compile the relevant texts.
10. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson,
trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 87.
11. Note from 1886/87 (dated June 10, 1887), KSA 12:5[71], our translation.
12. Werner Stegmaier, Nietzsches Befreiung der Philosophie. Kontextuelle
Interpretation des V. Buchs der “Fröhlichen Wissenschaft” (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012),
619–29. For a thorough rhetoric and literary explanation of this passage, cf.
Christian Benne, “The Philosophy of Prosopopeia,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 47.2
(2016): 275–86, 280–84.
13. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo. How One Becomes What One Is &
The Antichrist. A Curse on Christianity, trans. Thomas Wayne (New York: Algora,
2004), 98.
14. Cf. Stegmaier, Nietzsches Befreiung der Philosophie, 614–19.
15. Note from 1887/88, KSA 13:11[411] / KGW IX 7: W II 3, 4–5 (= note A).
16. The introductory phrase “Great things require that one remains silent about
them or speaks greatly: great means cynically and innocently,” Nietzsche added
later. Even later, he would let this phrase stand for itself (Notes from 1888, KSA
13:18[12]; KSA 13:15[118]).
17. Cf. Stegmaier, Philosophie der Orientierung, 256–63.
18. Note from 1887/88, KSA 13:11[411 / KGW IX 7: W II 3, 4 f. (our translation).
Up to this point, Nietzsche made primarily stylistic changes but added the term
“catastrophe.”
19. Stegmaier, Philosophie der Orientierung, 74.
20. Nietzsche added “philosopher” at a later point.
21. Note from 1887/88, KSA 13:11[411] / KGW IX 7: W II 3, 4. The words “under”
and “outside” were added at a later point. Nietzsche erased “who anticipated as his
experience this long logic of what will happen, knows what is going to follow.” It
seems that he tried to avoid connotations of something that can be proven logically
in this matter.
22. Cf. Werner Stegmaier, Orientierung im Nihilismus—Luhmann meets Nietzsche
(Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 33–36. Also see Hans Ruin, “Nietzsche and the Future:
On the Temporality of Overcoming,” Nietzsche-Studien 43 (2014): 118–21, adheres to
the topos of overcoming with regard to Zarathustra’s problem of “salvation” from
the past to liberate for a new future (cf. the following discussion, 121–31).
23. At first, he writes “future book [Zukunfts-Buch],” then he considers “future
dysangelium [Zukunfts-Dysangelium].”
24. Cf. Stegmaier, Orientierung im Nihilismus, 204–5, 277–78.
25. The semantics of values goes back to the Stoics, revives in the second
half of the eighteenth century, and becomes a central philosophical topic for
Hermann Lotze in the middle of the nineteenth century; Nietzsche then made it
famous. Cf. A. Hügli, S. Schlotter, P. Schaber, A. Rust, and N. Roughley, “Wert,” in
Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 12 (Basel: Schwabe/Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 2004), 556–83. However, this article hardly deals with Nietzsche
and mainly from the viewpoint of Heidegger, who opposed the semantics of val-
ues. For Lotze, cf. Herbert Schnädelbach, Philosophie in Deutschland 1831–1933
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), chap. 6: Werte, 198–234. After completing
this paper, Andreas Urs Sommer’s essay Werte. Warum man sie braucht, obwohl es
sie nicht gibt (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2016) was published. However, he goes in a similar
direction and without connecting to Nietzsche.
26. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Marion Faber, intro. by
Robert C. Holub (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
27. Niklas Luhmann, “Politik, Demokratie, Moral” (1997), in Luhmann, Die
Moral der Gesellschaft, ed. Detlef Horster (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008),
175–95, 183. In his research on the social formation of values, the sociologist Hans Joas
remains however bound to values and therefore completely dismisses Luhmann’s
study (Hans Joas, Die Entstehung der Werte [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997],
17). Similarly, most philosophers adhere largely and uncritically to values.
28. Luhmann, “Politik, Demokratie, Moral,” 182.
29. Note from 1887/88, KSA 13:11[119] / KGW IX 7: W II 3, 146–47 (= note B).
30. Nietzsche’s insertion into note B, which remains incomplete and is not
really adjusted, is not yet included in Montinari’s edition and commentary: “nichts
mehr anderes kommen kann Das ungeheure Schicksal kündigt sich seit langem in
Zeichen an: Europa, bewegt sich ihrem mit der Unruhe.” It is then implemented in
note A.
31. This is not to agree with Heidegger. In his detachment from Neo-Kantianism,
which praised the semantics of values, Heidegger developed a strong aversion
against it by arguing that the mere valuing already devalues the valued—instead
of leaving it in its being (Martin Heidegger, “Brief über den ‘Humanismus,’” in
Wegmarken [Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1967], 145–94, 179). Nietzsche and
Luhmann are no longer dealing with the question of being.
32. Between notes A and B is another draft—full of edits and additions—which
Montinari did not include. It is at the end or rather at the beginning (for Nietzsche
used to write in his notebooks starting with the final page) of notebook W II 7:
KGW IX 9, W II 7, 2–4. Nietzsche later wrote a budget calculation over it. It shows
another illuminating detail. Where it says in the first draft W II 3 “er erkennt genug,
um an keinen Werth mehr zu glauben,” the second one (W II 7) says “den N.
[Nihilismus] erst erlebt haben müssen, um zu {argwöhnen}, was {eigentlich} der
Werth dieser Werthe ist [. . .],” and the third one (the second one in W II 3) “weil
wir den Nihilismus erst erleben müssen, um dahinter zu kommen, was eigentlich
der Werth dieser “Werthe” ist {war [. . .]}.” Nietzsche shifts from cognition to expe-
rience and from belief to suspicion—he abolishes comprehension [Begreifen] right
away—and then shifts to a getting-behind: i.e., to do research on. The knowledge
claim decreases, but the research claim increases.
33. Note from 1887/88, KSA 13:11[119] / KGW IX 7: W II 3, 146.
34. Cf. the controversy about the topic “What Does It Mean and How Is It Possible
to ‘Create Values’? [Kontroverse: Was heißt und wie kann man, ‘Werte schaffen’?],”
Nietzsche-Studien 44 (2015): 5–175.
35. Letter to Georg Brandes, May 23, 1888, no. 1036, KSB 8.318.
36. Cf. Werner Stegmaier, “Nietzsches Kritik der Vernunft seines Lebens. Zur
Deutung von Der Antichrist und Ecce Homo,” Nietzsche-Studien 21 (1992): 163–83.
37. Letter to Franziska Nietzsche, June 25, 1888, no. 1051, KSB 8.341.
Editorial Note
JESSICA N. BERRY
On behalf of the Program Committee of the North American Nietzsche

Society (NANS), I am pleased to be able to introduce in this issue three papers
from an Author-Meets-Critics session devoted to Paul Katsafanas’s recent
book, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). In a group meeting chaired by
R. Lanier Anderson and held on December 28, 2014, in conjunction with
the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting in
Philadelphia, Professors Bernard Reginster (Brown University) and Jorah
Dannenberg (Stanford University) addressed their comments and crit-
icisms to Professor Katsafanas (Boston University), whose thoughtful
replies are included here. The Society also invited Dr. Andrew Huddleston
(Birkbeck) to contribute a critical article on Nietzschean Constitutivism,
which he originally presented not to NANS but at a workshop on “Nietzsche,
Value, and Self-Constitution” (May 17–18, 2014) at the University of Oxford.
Professor Katsafanas’s replies include responses to the insightful questions
and objections raised by all three critics.

Comments on Paul Katsafanas’s Agency and the
Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism
BERNARD REGINSTER
Abstract: In the article, I raise two issues for Katsafanas’s “Nietzschean

constitutivism.” First, I question the claim that constitutivism is the best way to
make sense of an assortment of metaethical views Nietzsche advocates; in the
process, I also question the claim that “Nietzschean constitutivism” is actually a
form of constitutivism. Second, I challenge the claim that power may plausibly
be understood as a “constitutive aim” of action.
Keywords: constitutivism, action, will to power, drive
Paul Katsafanas’s book, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean

Constitutivism, is in many respects a remarkable achievement.1 In recent
years, more and more philosophically rigorous scholarship has been pro-
duced on Nietzsche’s thought, particularly on his theory of value. Katsafanas’s
book not only holds its own when compared to the best of that scholarship,
but also manages to articulate an original interpretation of central issues in
Nietzsche’s metaethics. This alone is quite a feat, since, even before Katsafanas’s
book, it was hard to think of an existing metaethical view that had not been
attributed to Nietzsche. The book also contains insightful and original anal-
yses of important and too often neglected aspects of Nietzsche’s philosophy
of mind and philosophy of action, but these are ordained to the overarching
objective of developing a Nietzschean account of normative authority.
The motivating problem of the book is an apparent tension in an
assortment of claims Nietzsche makes about value:
1. Power has a privileged normative status.

2. There are no objective values, or there are no objective facts
about what is valuable.
3. All values are created by human activities.

To say that power has a privileged normative status is to say that it is a

universally binding norm. This claim seems to be in tension with the other
two claims, that values are not objective, but rather are human creations.
Most interpretations of Nietzsche’s value theory propose to escape the
tension by denying one or another of the three claims. Since Nietzsche
appears to make all three claims, however, the tension is inescapable.
Katsafanas proposes to resolve this apparent tension by arguing that
Nietzsche develops a version of (ethical) constitutivism. This is the view
that action has a constitutive aim, which defines standards of success for it.
An aim is constitutive of action by defining it as action: it is in virtue of
having that aim that a doing counts as an action. Since an agent cannot
act without having this aim (and since, as Katsafanas also argues, an agent
cannot not act), the standards of success it underwrites constitute practical
norms by which every agent is inescapably bound.
The distinction of Nietzschean constitutivism lies in its conception of
the constitutive aim of action. Katsafanas argues that action has not one,
but two constitutive aims in Nietzsche’s view: agential activity and power.
Since agential activity generates very little normative content, power is the
more fundamental aim, and I will restrict my comments to it. According to
Nietzschean constitutivism, a doing counts as an action in virtue of aim-
ing at power. If power is a constitutive aim of action, then no agent can
act w ithout aiming at power, and therefore without being bound by the
normative standard this aim establishes. If we can show that power is a con-
stitutive aim of action, we can show that power has a privileged normative
status in a manner compatible with the other claims Nietzsche makes about
value, namely, that values are not objective (at least in the sense of being
independent from facts about the agent herself), and somehow the cre-
ations of human activity (at least in the sense that the normativity of power
is built into the very structure of action itself, rather than outside of it).
As an account of normativity, constitutivism is a contested view, and
Katsafanas devotes a full chapter to its defense. I will not challenge con-
stitutivism as such here, but I will challenge Nietzschean constitutivism,
or Katsafanas’s claim that Nietzsche argues for the normative privilege of
power by showing that it is a constitutive aim of action. We should first
note that he produces no direct evidence for this interpretation. The termi-
nology, and indeed the concept, of constitutivism is nowhere to be found
in Nietzsche’s writings. It is rather that “the premises, the argument form,
and the conclusion are all just what we would expect, if Nietzsche were
Comments on Paul Katsafana’s Agency and the Foundation of Ethics | 405
a constitutivist.”2 While a thinker may form a rough, intuitive sense of a

philosophical view without having the full conceptual resources to give
it explicit articulation, the lack of direct evidence for constitutivism in
Nietzsche’s writings should give us some pause. Moreover, the grounds on
which Katsafanas attributes constitutivism to Nietzsche are not so much
textual as they are philosophical. First, Katsafanas argues that Nietzschean
constitutivism would make better philosophical sense of the assortment
of claims Nietzsche makes about value than other existing interpretations.
Second, he argues that Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power may be
interpreted as a highly plausible conception of the constitutive aim of
action. In what follows, I raise questions about both.
Is Constitutivism Nietzsche’s Best Chance to Achieve Coherence?
According to Katsafanas, the only existing interpretation that explicitly

attempts to come to terms with the tension in the assortment of claims
Nietzsche makes about value is the “non-justification” view he attributes to
Brian Leiter.3 According to this interpretation, the claim that power has a
privileged normative status is intended only as an expression of Nietzsche’s
personal evaluative taste, and so it neither needs, nor has, a justification. This
interpretation dispels the apparent tension among Nietzsche’s claims about
value, for the manner in which it proposes to understand the privileged
normative status of power no longer implies that some values should be
objective, and not human creations.
Katsafanas rejects this view by pointing out that Nietzsche spends more
time and energy arguing (seemingly) for his own valuations and against
conflicting valuations than we would expect from someone who regards
them as mere expressions of his taste. Moreover, Katsafanas also observes,
Nietzsche criticizes evaluations incompatible with his own as “false,”
which certainly suggests that he regards his own evaluations, including his
valuation of power, as justified, or even true. Even if we grant Katsafanas’s
misgivings about the non-justification view, we might still object that
he is too quick to suppose that this view is the only viable alternative to
constitutivism.
Consider two forms of subjectivism that have recently been attributed
to Nietzsche: Bernard Williams’s motivational internalism about practical
reasons;4 and a version of the constructive sentimentalism about value
developed by Jessie Prinz.5 In Williams’s view, an agent has a reason to act

in a certain way if so acting serves or furthers motivations in his existing
subjective motivational set. In Prinz’s constructive sentimentalism, a value
judgment reports on the propensity an action or state of affairs has to elicit
a certain affective response in the agent who makes it. In both cases, the
agent may have to engage in extensive reflective introspection in order to
determine whether her judgment that she has a reason to act in a certain
way, or her judgment that a certain action or state of affairs is good, is true.
Even though making a judgment about what she has reasons to do is a
matter of determining whether she has a motivation that the action would
serve or further, and making a value judgment is a matter of determining
how something makes her feel, she could still get it wrong, for example by
failing to recognize or to appreciate the significance of some of her own
motivations or affects.
In either of these views, Nietzsche’s own valuation of power is a j udgment
that can be, and needs to be, justified. So, these interpretations can account
for Nietzsche’s claiming that his own valuations are “true” while Christian
valuations are “false.” The worry is that such interpretations do not seem
able to account for the privileged normative status of Nietzsche’s own valu-
ations, particularly his valuation of power. In these interpretations, reason
judgments are dependent on the motivations the agent happens to have,
and value judgments are dependent on the affects she happens to have.
Since both these motivations and affects are subject to variation among
individual agents, or at least among different groups of agents (such as cul-
tures), no reason or value could be regarded as universally binding, and
therefore as enjoying privileged normative status.
Some subjectivists have proposed to ground the normative privilege of
certain values in the empirical fact that some motivations or affects are uni-
versal. They typically have in mind a strong form of empirical universality:
the relevant motivations or affects are universal because they are parts of
the natural constitution of human beings. For example, some philosophers
argue on evolutionary grounds that a sympathetic concern for the welfare
of one’s fellow human beings is a part of the natural constitution of human
beings. Nietzsche, who maintains that the will to power is essential to life
and psychology (e.g., BGE 13, 23, 259; GM III:7),6 might be thought to fol-
low a similar line of argument. This implies that the norms underwritten
by these affects are binding only contingently in that we could imagine
agents with a different psychological constitution, who lack the relevant
motivations and affects, and are therefore not bound by the norms they
underwrite. But constitutivism seems to have the ambition to show that
certain norms are inescapably binding, by revealing that they are rooted in
the very nature of action.
In Katsafanas’s construal, Nietzsche’s argument for the claim that power
is a constitutive aim of action proceeds in three steps. In the first step, he
offers an analysis of the nature of drives. In the second step, he argues that
actions motivated by drives so conceived aim at power—that is to say, such
actions aim not so much at the realization of the distinctive end of the drive
as at the activity of confronting and overcoming resistance to it. In the
third and final step, he takes Nietzsche to claim that all actions are drive-
motivated. Katsafanas presents this as an “empirical claim,”7 and this may
spell trouble for Nietzschean constitutivism.
To see this, we need to look at the structure of this argument in a little
more detail. Katsafanas defines a constitutive aim of action as follows: some
goal G is the constitutive aim of some type of doing or event A if, and only
if, two conditions are met: (i) each token of A aims at G, and (ii) aiming at G
is part of what constitutes a doing or event as a token of A. Katsafanas spec-
ifies that (i) is in fact superfluous: we can do with (ii) alone. This is because
(ii) implies (i) and because (i) matters only insofar as it is a consequence of
(ii).8 The distinction is nevertheless useful: while (ii) implies (i), (i) does not
necessarily imply (ii), and so it cannot suffice to establish G as a constitutive
goal of A.
The most intuitively compelling way to illustrate the argument is to focus
on a particular type of action, rather than on action as such: for example,
chess playing as the type of action with checkmate as its constitutive aim.
Every token of chess playing aims at checkmate, and aiming at checkmate
is part of what constitutes a stretch of behavior as playing chess. As I noted,
these two conditions must be combined in a specific way: every token of
chess playing aims at checkmate because aiming at checkmate is part of
what constitutes a stretch of behavior as playing chess. So, it would not suf-
fice to show that every token of chess playing aims at checkmate to establish
checkmate as its constitutive aim. We could discover that every token of
chess playing is also motivated in such a way that it aims at demonstrating
intellectual superiority, but this would not establish the demonstration of
intellectual superiority as a constitutive aim of chess playing. Checkmate is
a constitutive aim of chess playing because it defines what it is to be playing
chess. We cannot conceive of an instance of chess playing that does not aim
at checkmate, but we can conceive of an instance of chess playing that does

not aim at demonstrating intellectual superiority.
Nietzsche’s claim that all human actions are motivated by drives is,
Katsafanas tells us, an empirical discovery. It has long been believed that
human actions may be motivated by pure rational considerations, or by
the intuition of objective value, or simply by unmotivated desires that do
not have the motivational character of drives. It turns out, however, that
all human actions are rather motivated by drives, a motivational state also
found in animals. If human actions had these other kinds of motivation,
they would presumably still count as actions. So, even if we concede that
every action is motivated by a drive, and therefore has the characteristic
aim of all drives (power), it does not necessarily follow that power is a
constitutive aim of action. For we can conceive of doings we would count
as actions even though they are not motivated by drives and so do not aim
at power.
I concede that at this level of abstraction—the nature of action itself—
matters become inevitably murky. But it remains unclear why the fact that
all human actions are motivated by drives could not simply be an interesting
fact about human motivational psychology, rather than a fact about the
nature of action itself. In this perspective, Katsafanas’s argument could still
show that human agents are normatively constrained by what turns out to
be a universal feature of the character of their motivation. But it would be a
variant of the subjectivist strategies I have sketched out earlier,9 rather than
a distinct constitutivist strategy.
Is Power a Constitutive Aim of Action?
I have raised questions about Katsafanas’s claim that the view that all actions
are drive-motivated reveals something about the nature of action itself, par-
ticularly about its constitutive aim. Let us now set aside these questions and
take the claim for granted in order to raise a different question: does the fact
that all actions are drive-motivated imply that power is a constitutive aim of
action? Katsafanas defines power and specifically what Nietzsche means in
claiming that we will power—or, in constitutivist parlance, that we aim at
power when we act—as follows: “by claiming that we will power, Nietzsche
means that we strive not only to bring about determinate ends, but also to
encounter and overcome resistance in the pursuit of these ends. Indeed,
Nietzsche means that, without quite realizing it, we select determinate ends
partly in terms of how much resistance they enable us to encounter and
overcome.”10 He concedes that this is a “surprising and counterintuitive
claim.” What is surprising and counterintuitive here is not just the claim
that we have a peculiarly complex desire to pursue difficult or challenging
ends, that is to say, to pursue ends in part because they are difficult. Upon
reflection, this is neither surprising nor counterintuitive. The problematic
claim is that aiming at the encountering and overcoming of resistance is
a constitutive feature of action as such. I suspect that this claim is not just
surprising and counterintuitive, but also implausible.
Let us consider the steps of Katsafanas’s argument in some detail. The
first and most crucial step is a claim about the nature of drives. Katsafanas
has received well-deserved acclaim for his work on this important yet
neglected notion in Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology. He argues that
drives have two central features: “First, drives are dispositions that induce
affective orientations. Second, drives do not dispose the agent to bring
about any determinate end, but instead dispose the agent to engage in par-
ticular forms of activity.”11 I focus here on the second feature, which is most
relevant to the present discussion. Katsafanas supports this conception of
drive mainly by claiming that it is widespread in the intellectual landscape
of Nietzsche’s time and culminates in Freud’s explicit articulation of it.
According to Katsafanas, Nietzsche is already, if implicitly, committed
to the famous Freudian distinction between the aim and the object of a
drive.12 As he understands the Freudian distinction, the aim of a drive is its
own expression in a “characteristic form of activity.” The object, by contrast,
is simply that which provides the drive with a target and an opportunity to
express itself in its characteristic activity. While the aim is a relatively con-
stant and defining feature of a drive, the object is a highly contingent and
variable feature of it. Thus, the aggressive drive will vent itself on whatever
object presents itself as an appropriate target of aggression, and this object
may be quite variable. But what the drive “seeks,” or aims at, is “the manifes-
tation of some characteristic form of activity”—aggressive activity.
I first want to highlight a telling terminological shift in Katsafanas’s
analysis of the concept of drive. He begins by describing drives as seeking
“discharge”—a term Freud uses—but then shifts to describing them as
seeking “expression”—a term that Freud, to my knowledge, does not use.
It is a telling shift because it motivates the thought that, if a drive is seeking
expression, then “an activity that is motivated by a drive does not aim to
attain some object that would put an end to the activity”—it “aims not at
the achievement of a determinate end, but at the performance of the activity
itself.”13
This view of drive, however, is not Freud’s view. Freud introduces the
distinction between aim and object in the Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality (1905). While it is true that he sometimes talks about characteris-
tic activities (such as copulation) in connection with the aim of the sexual
drive, he clearly supposes these activities to be subservient to the actual
aim of discharge: “The normal sexual aim is regarded as being the union
of the genitals in the act known as copulation, which leads to a release
of the sexual tension and a temporary extinction of the sexual drive—a
satisfaction analogous to the sating of hunger.”14 When he defines the
concept of drive in the same work, Freud claims that “the source of a drive
is a process of excitation occurring in an organ and the immediate aim of
the drive lies in the removal of this organic stimulus.”15 Later on, in Drives
and Their Vicissitudes, he is even more explicit: “The aim of a drive is in
every instance satisfaction, which can only be obtained by abolishing the
condition of stimulation in the source of the drive.”16 So, clearly the aim
of the drive is the removal of the stimulation that caused its arousal. The
drive aims at “satisfaction”—a “reduction of the tension” created by that
stimulation, a release or discharge—and while the satisfaction of the drive
might require a certain form of activity, it does not consist of it.17
In Katsafanas’s view, the idea that a drive aims at expression in activity
clearly motivates the thought that the drive must therefore seek resistance
to its “satisfaction,” in the sense of the realization of its end, for it is the
presence of such resistance that ensures its continuing activity. If there is
no more resistance, apparently, there is nothing else for the drive to do,
or to be active about. But if we abandon the idea that a drive aims at its
expression in activity, and adopt instead the idea that it aims at the removal
of the stimulation that caused its arousal, then the thought that it also seeks
resistance to that satisfaction looks implausible.
Freud (along with, arguably, Schopenhauer and a number of the
biologists and psychologists of that period) takes hunger to be the para-
digm for all drives. The notion that hunger motivates action that aims at
encountering and overcoming resistance in the pursuit of food is odd. If we
think of drives in general on the model of hunger, then this oddity would
apply to other drives as well. Nevertheless, I now want to suggest that it is
not entirely surprising that as astute a reader of Nietzsche as Katsafanas
would be inclined to attribute to him such a view of drive.
In the decades that followed Nietzsche’s death, and perhaps in part

under the influence of his work, empirical psychologists began to chal-
lenge the orthodox view of drives.18 According to this orthodox view,
which is often associated with Freud, a drive has its source in an internal
(endosomatic) stimulation, such as an unmet physiological need, which
is perceived as painful, and it motivates engagement in a consummatory
activity toward an appropriate object, which is designed to remove the stim-
ulation. As I remarked, this view applies especially well to the case of hun-
ger: a physiological change (such as lowering of blood sugar levels below a
certain threshold) is manifested in the form of unpleasant sensations (the
pangs of hunger) and induces the organism to interact with the external
world in ways designed to eliminate these sensations (eating food).
Empirical psychologists then began to observe that stretches of
behavior in both human beings and animals could not be explained in
terms of that orthodox conception of drive. In particular, they observed
that some forms of behavior seemed to aim not at removing stimulation,
but rather at perpetuating or reproducing it. This suggested that the stimu-
lation associated with the arousal of the drives motivating such behavior is
perceived to be pleasant, rather than unpleasant. A prominent example of
a drive whose operation does not conform the orthodox model is curiosity.
At first glance, we might think of curiosity—the drive toward knowledge or
understanding—in terms of the orthodox model of drives, namely, as aim-
ing to eliminate the painful anxiety that accompanies uncertainty or igno-
rance. Curiosity certainly involves a desire to know or understand, but we
can see that it involves more when we observe that it can be disappointed in
not just one, but two ways. My curiosity about some object is disappointed
not only if I fail to know or understand it, but also if it no longer offers
anything to know or to understand. Thus, curiosity can be disappointed
by the absence of problems or mysteries as much as by their recalcitrance
to resolution. Curiosity so conceived has an aura of paradox: it is both a
desire to know or to understand and a desire for their being obstacles to
knowledge and understanding—the mysterious, problematic features of an
object by virtue of which it can stimulate curiosity.
The satisfaction of curiosity consists not simply in the removal of
stimulation but, on the contrary, in the perpetuation or reproduction of it.
This is because the stimulation of curiosity, unlike the stimulation associ-
ated with hunger, is experienced as pleasant. It is for this reason that the
“satisfaction” of curiosity evokes a certain ambivalence: when my desire to
know or understand its object is satisfied, I am also deprived of the pleasant
stimulation of my curiosity by the exposure to its puzzling or m ysterious

features. So, the “satisfaction” of curiosity typically leaves me not in a
state of restful contentment—as is the case when hunger is satisfied, for
example—but in a peculiar state of motivational restlessness we identify
as “boredom.” Boredom is plausibly understood as a (frustrated) desire for
stimulation. The conditions of satisfaction of curiosity look less paradoxical
if we think of it as a drive aiming at activity, namely, the activity of inquiry,
rather than the state of knowing or understanding (in which the painful
anxiety associated with doubt and ignorance has been eliminated). To be
engaged in inquiry, I must want knowledge or understanding, but I must
also want there to be obstacles to knowledge and understanding.
Nietzsche seems alive to the distinctiveness of certain drives. The
“will to knowledge” or curiosity is a drive, in his view, but it is a drive of
a distinctive kind, a fact he marks off by calling it “will.”19 He conceives of
it precisely along the lines I sketched out above.20 And he regards the will
to power as a drive of the same kind. It is obviously a desire to be effective
in making the world bend to my will, by actually realizing my ends in it.
Like curiosity, however, the will to power can be disappointed in two ways.
It is disappointed if I fail to realize my end, but also if I actually realize it:
it is therefore a desire both to realize a certain end and for there to be obsta-
cles or resistance to its realization: “That I must be struggle and a becoming
and an end and an opposition to ends—ah, whoever guesses what is my will
should also guess on what crooked paths it must proceed” (Z II: “On Self-
Overcoming” 12). Thus, Nietzsche observes that the satisfaction of the will
to power—the successful realization of an end—leaves me not contented,
but saddled with a kind of dissatisfaction. This kind of dissatisfaction can
also be identified as boredom, a state in which the will to power is aroused
but not stimulated, and motivates me to seek stimulation in the form of
fresh opportunities to demonstrate my power. The will to power has such
paradoxical conditions of satisfaction because it, too, aims at activity.
The fact that there are such drives is very consequential for Nietzsche:
for example, it compels us to modify significantly our conception of
what would constitute happiness for beings endowed with them. It does
not follow that in his view all drives have this character. Even if hunger
is not a paradigm for all drives, it appears to represent one species of it
nonetheless: thus, to my knowledge, Nietzsche identifies hunger or even
sex as “drives,” but not “wills.” If all drives aimed at expression in activity,
we would expect Nietzsche to highlight such an important fact. Instead,
his view of the “gratification” of a drive appears quite pluralistic, including

“exercise of its strength, or discharge of its strength, or the saturation of an
emptiness” (D 119).21 This suggests that he is prepared to recognize different
species of drives, some operating in accordance with the orthodox model
Freud described and aiming at “the saturation of an emptiness,” and others
operating according to a different model where they aim at the “exercise of
[their] strength,” in which he took a particular interest, and which became a
growing preoccupation of empirical psychologists in the first decades of the
twentieth century. Even if all actions are motivated by drives, not all drives
aim at activity (or power) and power cannot be thought, on this ground, to
be a constitutive aim of action.
As I noted earlier, Katsafanas is well aware of the “surprising and
counterintuitive” nature of his view, and so he spends some time answering
obvious objections against it. A brief consideration of this discussion
should add further light on the issues I have been considering. Katsafanas
considers squarely an intuitively compelling counterexample: “when I loaf
on the couch and watch a lowbrow sitcom on television, it may seem that
I am not encountering and overcoming any resistance.”22 In responding to
this, and other similar counterexamples, Katsafanas deploys two arguments
I want to consider.
The first argument is that even loafing on the couch is an activity that
“does not aim at putting itself to an end, but rather aims at continuous
expression, and therefore aims at the conditions of continuous e xpression:
encountering and overcoming obstacles or resistances.”23 There is an
undeniably true point here, from which Katsafanas infers a very contro-
versial one. The true point is that my aim, in engaging in this activity, is
not reaching the state of having loafed on the couch, but it is rather this
activity itself, the loafing on the couch. The controversial point he infers
from it is that for the activity to be possible, there must be obstacles and
resistances to overcome, and that my engagement in that sort of activity
must aim at encountering and overcoming obstacles or resistances. This is
controversial because while it is true that I have desires for activities, such
as the desire to dance or to take a walk, it seems less obviously true that in
acting from such desires I aim at encountering and overcoming obstacles
or resistances.
The second argument grows out of a reply to my objection to the first.
To act, or to be active, Katsafanas points out, inevitably involves encounter-
ing and overcoming resistance: “acting is shaping a recalcitrant world: part
of what it is to act is to effect a change in the world, and effecting a change

in the world requires overcoming resistance.”24 Even the activity of loafing
on the couch requires overcoming some, perhaps minimal, resistance: for
example, “one must support oneself on the couch.” This is true but it is also
consistent with the view that action aims only at what Christine Korsgaard
calls efficacy25—the hypothetical imperative, or being prepared to overcome
whatever resistance presents itself to the realization of my ends—and not at
what Katsafanas calls power, which involves seeking resistance to overcome.
After all, precisely this is the “highly counterintuitive” aspect of the view
he ascribes to Nietzsche: “Don’t we simply seek to achieve goals, and view
overcoming resistance as a necessary yet regrettable condition of achiev-
ing these goals? Wouldn’t we prefer to avoid resistance if we could?”26 In
fact, it is especially counterintuitive in the case of loafing on the couch: to
loaf on the couch successfully, I may have to be prepared to overcome the
resistance a recalcitrant world is likely to oppose, but the activity of loafing
(or relaxing) cannot, on pain of incoherence, aim at encountering and over-
coming resistance. Whatever resistance I encounter in my activity of loafing
(or relaxing) may coherently be seen at best “as a necessary yet regrettable
condition” of achieving my goal.
Katsafanas offers a final consideration to support Nietzschean
constitutivism, which is based on the nature of satisfaction. Certain facts
about the nature of satisfaction suggest that human actions are motivated
by drives, and that in virtue of being so motivated, actions aim at the activ-
ity of overcoming resistance, rather than at the achievement of a state. The
relevant facts are the following: (A) There is no state such that being in
that state provides lasting satisfaction; and (B) There are processes such
that engaging in those processes provides lasting satisfaction. Katsafanas
concludes, “If our actions were not drive-motivated, (A) and (B) would be
puzzling. Therefore, Nietzsche argues, the best explanation for (A) and (B)
is that our actions are drive-motivated.”27
Even if we suppose (A) and (B) to be true, it is far from clear that the best
explanation for them is the view that all actions are motivated by drives, and
that all drives aim at their own expression in activity. While some instances of
(B) may be explained in this way, in other instances engaging in a process—an
activity of a certain kind—may provide satisfaction simply because engaging
in an activity of that kind is just what we desire. For example, I enjoy taking a
walk, as long as it lasts, simply because this is what I want to do—not because
my motivation for taking a walk is a drive that aims at expression in activity.
Likewise, the reasons supporting (A) may have nothing to do with the
view that all actions are motivated by drives that aim at their own expres-
sion in activity. Schopenhauer accepts (A), for example, but explains it
in terms of a certain negative conception of pleasure. In this conception,
pleasure is nothing but the experience of the absence of pain, and since pain
is essentially connected with the arousal of drives, pleasure derives from
the “quieting” of drives through their satisfaction. One reason why this
pleasure is not lasting is not that drives in fact aim at activity, rather than
at a state of final satisfaction; it is that the experience of the absence of pain
requires acquaintance with the pain whose absence is experienced, most
typically the memory of it: “The satisfaction and pleasure can be known
only indirectly by remembering the preceding suffering and privation that
ceased on their entry.”28 If a drive were satisfied once and for all, the mem-
ory of the pain caused by its arousal would be bound to fade eventually
and, with it, the ability to experience its absence.29 To show that his concep-
tion of drive-motivated action is the best explanation for (A), Katsafanas
would have to show that it is—and is seen by Nietzsche as being—better
than Schopenhauer’s own explanation in terms of a negative conception of
pleasure.
Katsafanas will no doubt offer thoughtful replies and clarifications
to address the concerns I have sketched out here. Even apart from them,
Nietzschean Constitutivism is a tantalizing and exceptionally lucid book,
replete with fresh new perspectives on Nietzsche’s value theory, his meta-
ethics, his philosophy of action, and his philosophy of mind. No reader of
Nietzsche’s works, and certainly no reader interested in these central areas
of his thought, can afford to ignore it.
Brown University
bernard_reginster@brown.edu
N OT E S
1. Paul Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean

Constitutivism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
2. Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, 163.
4. E.g., Simon Robertson, “Normativity for Nietzschean Free Spirits,” Inquiry
54.6 (2011): 591–613.
5. Jesse Prinz, The Emotional Construction of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2007); for a version of this view in relation to Nietzsche, see, e.g., Alex Silk,
“Nietzschean Constructivism: Ethics and Metaethics for All and None,” Inquiry 58.3
(2014): 244–80.
6. Citations of Nietzsche’s work refer to the following translations: Beyond Good
and Evil, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966); Daybreak, trans.
R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); On the Genealogy
of Morals, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1969); Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Penguin Books, 1978); and The Will to
Power, trans. W. Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968).
9. There are differences between Katsafanas’s view and the varieties of subjectiv-
ism I have sketched out. For instance, while they draw on features of the content of
the motivation, Katsafanas’s view draws on its form (i.e., it consists of drives).
14. Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, in The Standard
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols., trans. J.
Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953), 7:149; hereafter cited as Standard Edition
by volume and page number.
15. Freud, Standard Edition, 7:168.
16. Freud, Standard Edition, 14:122.
17. Katsafanas attributes to Schopenhauer the same view of drives as aiming
at expression in activity. However, I believe that Schopenhauer’s conception of a
drive is in fact closely similar to the Freudian conception I just described. Thus,
Schopenhauer claims that the aim of our “willing” is “peace of mind,” a condition
in which this willing is “quieted.” See, e.g., Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will
and Representation, vols. 1–2, trans. E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1969), I §38, 196;
hereafter cited as WWR with volume, section, and page numbers.
18. For a detailed summary of this research with a focus on the identification
of a special drive toward “competence” (or “mastery,” or “effectance”), see Robert
White, “Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of Competence,” Psychological
Review 66.5 (1959): 297–333.
19. Nietzsche (and Schopenhauer before him) makes a profuse and confusing
use of the concept of will. Without going into details, I can note that Nietzsche
may call such drives “wills” in part because the experience of them feels volun-
tary, perhaps in virtue of the fact that their arousal is not tied, like hunger and
sex, to stimulation. For more detail, see Bernard Reginster, “The Will to Power,”
in Routledge Philosophy Minds: Nietzsche, ed. Paul Katsafanas (London: Routledge,
forthcoming).
20. I offer a relevant analysis of Nietzsche’s view of curiosity in “Honesty and

Curiosity in Nietzsche’s Free Spirit,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 51.3 (2013):
441–64.
21. Nietzsche sometimes seems to advocate a fundamental relation of all drives
to the will to power: for example, “what one calls ‘nourishment’ is merely a deriv-
ative phenomenon, an application of the original desire to become stronger” (KSA
13:14[174]; translated as The Will to Power 702). This may be interpreted in a number
of different ways, most of which do not imply that all drives aim at expression in
activity. For more detail, see Reginster, “Will to Power.”
25. See Christine Korsgaard, Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 81.
28. Schopenhauer, WWR I §58, 319–20.
29. This is Schopenhauer’s original explanation of the well-known phenomenon
of hedonic adaptation.
“Why?” Gets No Answer: Paul Katsafanas’s
Agency and the Foundations of Ethics
JORAH DANNENBERG
Abstract: In this review, I consider Paul Katsafanas’s attempt to provide a

constitutivist defense of ethics, informed by his rich and original reconstruction
of Nietzsche’s theory of agency. In particular, I focus on the ambition to combat
nihilism (conceived as a special brand of ethical skepticism), by offering a vin-
dication of the authority of ethical values. I offer some reasons to question the
viability of this strategy in general, as well as some considerations concerning
the dispute between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, which lead me to wonder
about attributing such a strategy to Nietzsche in particular. Rather than read-
ing Nietzsche as sharing the constitutivist’s defining ambition, I suggest that
contemporary ethical theory may have more to learn from Nietzsche’s diag-
nosis of what the constitutivist is trying to do. Nietzsche’s understanding of
nihilism suggests that seeking irrefutable foundations for our values may itself
be a symptom of, rather than the cure for, the kind of ethical skepticism that
plagues us.
Keywords: Schopenhauer, moral skepticism, nihilism, constitutivism, agency
Introduction
Agency and the Foundations of Ethics is an ambitious, engaging, and

challenging book.1 The foundational problem of ethics, Paul Katsafanas
tells us at the outset, is providing a justification of morality’s authority, one
that can fend off skepticism. Constitutivism undertakes to do just that, by
giving an account of the nature of action in terms of some constitutive aim,
which will at once vindicate the authority and illuminate (at least some of)
the substance of practical normativity. Such a strategy is, Katsafanas argues,
uniquely poised to succeed in providing a foundation for ethics, but it has
so far failed to deliver. We thus need a new and improved version, and that

Paul Katafanas’s Agency and the Foundation of Ethics | 419
is precisely what Katsafanas offers: a version of constitutivism informed by

the theory of action he mines from Nietzsche, engineered to succeed where
other constitutivist theories fail. Nietzschean constitutivism, Katsafanas
argues, can do two things at once: provide us with a clearer and more
systematic understanding of certain core elements in Nietzsche’s ethical
thought, and deliver on constitutivism’s inherent promise, to surmount the
problems of contemporary ethical theory.
Katsafanas’s book thus represents both an original contribution to con-
temporary ethics, and an insightful work of Nietzsche scholarship. I should
say right up front that what little “expertise” I can bring to bear concerns
only the former. I have studied some of the ethical theory of the late twen-
tieth and early twenty-first centuries, and in particular the corner of late
twentieth-century ethical theory where constitutivism first emerged, then
became a growth industry. I am, alas, highly unqualified to engage with this
book as a Nietzsche scholar would. I confess up front what I think will be
painfully obvious soon enough: I am at best half the philosopher I would
need to be in order to take the full measure of this impressive book.
With respect to that part that I do not feel totally unqualified to con-
sider, I suppose I might summarize my reaction this way: I have my doubts,
and I want to keep them. One thing I do not doubt, however, is whether
Katsafanas is right to argue that constitutivism is uniquely well positioned
to provide the sort of foundational defense of ethics that is aimed at thwart-
ing skepticism. I dare say constitutivism evolved for precisely that purpose.2
But where Katsafanas sees a reason to try to fashion a new version of con-
stitutivism, I find myself inclining in the opposite direction: I see a reason
to be that much more wary of the constitutivist project. I tend, at least some
of the time, to think that we contemporary ethical theorists too readily take
it for granted that we know what our real problems are, and what it would
mean for us to solve them. I am, in other words, suspicious that the aims
and ambitions that tend to organize and animate contemporary ethics may
be more than a little misguided and confused. This is especially so when it
comes to the aim that Katsafanas and I agree drives the constitutivists: pro-
viding ourselves with a convincing justification of morality’s authority, one
that can relieve us of all our skeptical doubts.
To the extent that I find myself increasingly drawn to hearing more of
what Nietzsche has to say, this is largely because what little of Nietzsche I
think I know has nursed my sense of discontent with contemporary eth-
ics and its defining problems. That, I should again stress, reveals next to
nothing about the scholarly merits of Katsafanas’s reading of Nietzsche. But

I suppose if Nietzsche really is best understood as providing one sort of
solution to the problems of ethics as we have come to think of them, I am
perhaps a bit less interested in hearing from Nietzsche than I thought.
In sum, my reservations about Katsafanas’s book are very much those
of a somewhat dissatisfied ethicist, one who doubts whether we in contem-
porary ethics really understand our own problems, and who doubts even
more that we know what it would mean for us to solve them. I want to use
this comment to explore, a bit further, just what we should think the prob-
lems of ethics really are, and in what sense we might or might not be able to
see Nietzschean constitutivism as offering us an attractive solution.
Skepticism and Nihilism in Contemporary Ethics
I think it is safe to say that the problem of justifying the authority that
morality purports to have is more or less our direct inheritance from Kant.
As Katsafanas sees it, however, it is a problem that has gotten harder rather
than easier since Kant’s attempt to solve it himself. It has gotten harder
because we have come to see ourselves as having more reason for being
skeptical about morality’s authority rather than less.
Katsafanas’s discussion begins by identifying three sorts of skeptical
challenges that any foundational defense of ethics must overcome: one
epistemological, one metaphysical, and one practical. Epistemically, we
lack confidence in the truth of our particular ethical beliefs, our views
about what is of value, or what is to be done, or our ideas about how to
live. Metaphysically, we doubt whether there could even be values, or facts
about what is right or wrong, or anything like bona fide normativity at all.
We struggle to see how these sorts of things can be integrated into a more
or less naturalistic understanding of the world, and of our own psychology.
Practically, we worry that the sort of “grip” on us that we take our values to
have may be illusory or precarious or both—that nothing about our values
can, on reflection, sustain our allegiance to them. We fear that our values,
and so our lives insofar as they are shaped by our values, will be revealed as
ultimately unsupported, and unsupportable.
While versions of these skeptical challenges are familiar, Katsafanas
deftly shows how Nietzschean ideas can be marshaled in order to put each
one in an especially pointed way. Concerning morality’s epistemology,
Nietzsche draws our attention to the fact that morality has a history, one
which can provide a powerful explanation of how our current system of
moral beliefs developed, which undermines our claim to know anything
about what we really must or must not do, what we should value, or how we
ought to live. On the metaphysical front, Nietzsche’s methodological natu-
ralism, and in particular his knack for unmasking the actual workings of
the human psyche, make it seem preposterous that there might be the sorts
of entities, powers, faculties, or processes that moral theories tend to posit:
moral reasons, Kantian wills, perception-like faculties of moral intuition,
agent-causation, and on and on—these come to seem like so much super-
stition in the wake of Nietzsche’s gimlet-eyed investigations. Finally, there
is the third challenge, which Katsafanas labels the “practical challenge.” I
am going to focus on it, for I think that from the point of view of contem-
porary ethics it is clearly the most novel, arguably the most important, and
by far the least acknowledged and understood of the challenges Katsafanas
considers.
Katsafanas introduces the practical challenge as that of explaining “how
and why morality has its grip on us.”3 He rightly rejects the question of
“motivational judgment internalism” as an adequate way of characterizing
the problem, suggesting instead that Nietzsche’s discussion of nihilism can
help make out the real challenge in an especially poignant way. The threat
of nihilism, as I understand it, is the threat that values might come to seem
arbitrary to us and, thus, that we might come to feel that nothing is really
worth valuing at all. I take it this is not just a concern about some values,
though it might start out that way; it is in fact a fear about values generally.
The threat of nihilism is the fear of losing confidence not only in our own
values, but in the very idea of value—the idea that anything is worth doing,
or caring about, or being inspired by, or paying respect to. For the nihilist,
and here I follow Katsafanas in quoting from Nietzsche, “life is no longer
worthwhile, all is the same, all is in vain.”4 And again, “The goal is lacking;
‘why?’ finds no answer.”5
Katsafanas at one point characterizes nihilism as “the belief that no val-
ues are justified.”6 But I find this characterization doubly misleading. First,
though we would no doubt be correct to attribute that belief to the nihilist,
talking in terms of belief makes it sound like nihilism is a doctrine. But I
hear in the remarks of Nietzsche that Katsafanas approvingly quotes some-
thing rather more like the characterization of a condition—one of despair,
hopelessness, boredom, and alienation. Second, while that sort of condition
may be the result of having gone looking for a justification and not finding
it, this strikes me as inessential, or perhaps as representing a more advanced
stage of the condition itself. At any rate, we should not want to rule that
out by definition. The original worry—the first kernel of nihilistic doubt—
seems to me not a matter of wondering whether our values are justified,
but rather justifying—not a matter of whether we can provide support for
them, but whether they can provide support for us. Perhaps one naturally
and inevitably goes looking for something further to support one’s values
once one begins to sense that living in accordance with them is not enough
to ensure that one’s life is worthwhile. But the sense that one’s life or one’s
values require some further support can, it seems to me, be just as readily
construed as itself a symptom of the very condition we mean to diagnose.
I think Katsafanas is entirely right to claim that this sort of nihilism
represents a distinctive challenge, and one that is ever-present, if not
overtly so, throughout contemporary ethics. As he points out, more famil-
iar are attempts to rebut or condemn the amoralist or the egoist. But nei-
ther Thrasymachus, nor the Hobbesian Foole, nor the “ideally coherent
Caligula,” is a nihilist. Each, after all, has goals and purposes that clearly,
for him, “inspire faith.” If ethical theorists are worried about nihilism—and
I wholeheartedly agree that they should be—this is not ordinarily appar-
ent in how they present or understand themselves. More work needs to be
done in order to understand the distinctive challenge or threat that nihilism
poses, and to understand its relationship to the practice of ethical theory.
Katsafanas has done us a service merely by calling attention to this.
The Nihilistic Condition
When David Enoch asks what reason he has to perform any actions at
all, he is attempting to make a philosophical point. One can indeed refute
Enoch, as Katsafanas and other constitutivists do, by explaining why the
question “what reason have I to do anything?” is not well formed—that,
strictly speaking, the question asks something incoherent. But it does not
follow, and it clearly is not true, that, as Katsafanas puts it, “the question
whether there is a reason to perform any actions at all is moot.”7
The question is not moot, because while we may not be able to pro-
vide a content for the question, nor can we offer one kind of answer to it,
we can certainly understand something about the person who asks it. As
Bernard Williams pointed out, someone who sincerely asks “why should
I do anything?” might naturally be taken to express despair and hopeless-
ness. In fact, Williams seems more or less to agree with the constitutivist’s
semantic point, when for instance he writes, “it is very unclear that we can
give the man who asks [why should I do anything] a reason—that, starting
from so far down, we could argue him into caring about something. . . .
What he needs is help, or hope, not reasonings.”8
The man who asks, sincerely, “why should I do anything?” seems to me
rather close to exhibiting the same condition as Nietzsche’s nihilist. If that is
right, I am inclined to think at least the following about the nihilist and how
he might or might not be helped. First, someone who has in fact become
a nihilist does not appear to be in much of a position to help himself—not
even in principle. That is, it is very unlikely that anything he can say to or
for himself will cure him of his nihilism. Second, it seems to follow that if
we are in any sort of position to help him find relief, it must be that we are in
a different shape than he is; in particular, we are not (yet) as desperate and
hopeless as he, and that is why we may be able to help him to find hope in a
way that he could not, even in principle, hope to help himself. Third, point-
ing out to him that his question makes no sense will be of absolutely no help
to him; we surely cannot show him how to hope by explaining to him why
it is that, as Luca Ferrero elegantly puts it “agency is closed under the opera-
tion of reflective rational assessment.”9 Nor can we help him by pointing out
to him that, by asking for help in the first place, he is already “committed”
to there being reasons, and so he has already in effect presupposed some
kind of answer to his own question. Fourth, whatever genuine help or hope
he might receive, it will not and cannot come from our providing him with
a justification for the authority of some claim or claims made upon him,
concerning how or what he ought to be doing or feeling or valuing. Help
might indeed come from being told what he must do; but part of his very
predicament is that if he is even able to follow such orders, it will be in a
diminished and attenuated way. Help or hope must come first, and then he
may be in a position to ask after justifications.
I think Katsafanas and other constitutivists will want to disagree with
me on at least one, perhaps some, and maybe all of these claims about nihil-
ism. I think they think that constitutivism, the theory, can thwart nihilism,
the condition, by securing for the nihilist—and us, insofar as we fear becom-
ing more like him—a justification for the authority of some value or values.
I see evidence for this ambition of thwarting nihilism in this way, which
I am inclined to think is deeply mistaken, throughout the constitutivist

canon. But I will here focus on one piece of Katsafanas’s argument that I
find especially telling in this regard: Katsafanas’s reconstruction of where
Nietzsche and Schopenhauer part company, and his attempt to show,
through something like a transcendental argument, that Nietzsche is right
and Schopenhauer wrong.
The Basics of Nietzschean Constitutivism
To get to that argument, I will first need to put before us considerably more
of the substance of Katsafanas’s view. Katsafanas’s general defense of the
constitutivist strategy, together with his critique of extant versions that
comprise the first half of the book, pave the way for Katsafanas’s positive
proposal: Nietzschean constitutivism, which posits two constitutive aims,
activity and power.
Activity first. Katsafanas accepts, from a tradition with roots in Locke
and Kant, the basic thought that in acting, an agent may be more or less
active. This is not, he stresses, the same distinction sometimes thought to be
the basic one drawn in action theory, between those events that are actions,
and those that are not. Rather, it is a way of grading or evaluating those
things we have already granted are actions, as more or less paradigmatic or
exemplary instances of their kind. The thought, insofar as I understand it, is
that some of the things I do may perfectly well qualify as actions, if action is
contrasted with “mere” behavior, but I may nevertheless be less than (fully)
active in their production. In other words, we need a way of making sense
of the idea that there are things that I undeniably, in one sense at least,
count as doing, despite the fact that I, in some other sense, am merely along
for the ride when they are done. Examples, I gather, include certain sorts of
actions commonly thought akratic—for instance, having that third drink
despite my judgment that I had better not. Or, perhaps, an impulsive and
insulting outburst that is due to neither a brute compulsion like Tourette’s,
nor to a fully calculated or deliberate intention to cut someone down. In
such cases, we might think that while I most definitely do act, I am never-
theless more spectator than agent with respect to what I do.
To draw any such distinction, Katsafanas argues, we must accept—along
with Locke and Kant—that our motives incline without n ecessitating—that
we have some ability to “step back” from a motive and deliberate, in a way
that actually exerts some influence on how we go on to behave. But the

tradition tends to go further, attributing to us the power to suspend entirely
the influence of our motives. For the tradition, a human agent is fully active
just in case, having stepped back from all of her motives and evaluated
them independently of any influence upon her, she determines her action
unimpeded by any alien influence. Such a picture is, Katsafanas argues,
philosophically untenable, false to our experience, and refuted by empirical
psychology. We do not have the ability to deliberate and choose from a per-
spective entirely outside our various feelings, drives, moods, desires, and so
forth. There simply is no such unsaturated perspective for us to occupy—no
“view from nowhere” to which we can retreat, no purely rational self to do
the retreating.10
If the active-passive distinction in action is to be maintained, it must
therefore be redrawn in order to incorporate the basic psychological facts.
This Katsafanas does by proposing a criterion of activity in terms of what he
calls (borrowing from Nozick) equilibrium: roughly, an agent is active with
respect to some action just in case she approves of the action, and further
knowledge about the motivational etiology of the action would not under-
mine her approval. In other words, I need not—as the tradition had it—be
fully, or even minimally aware of nor in control of what moves me, in order
for some action performed by me to count as, in the fullest sense, “mine.”
What makes an action mine is, rather, that I approve of what I do, and that I
am disposed to continue to approve, were I to have all the facts about what
I was up to put before me.
Katsafanas argues that being active so conceived is a constitutive aim of
action. This means that insofar as we act, we must undertake to act in ways
that are in the fullest sense our own, which in turn requires us to take our
own approval—both in fact and in disposition—as normative. So, activity-
as-equilibrium establishes the first standard that every agent must strive
to meet, and against which every agent must measure herself in acting.
This standard would, however, appear to make the content of normativity
depend on an agent’s particular, idiosyncratic values. For it is fundamen-
tally in light of these values that she will, as a matter of fact, approve or
disapprove of her action. I may, for instance, be the sort of person with a
system of values that leads me to approve of my actions when they inflict
harm on others. You may be the sort of person whose values lead you to
approve of your actions when they exhibit compassion. Nothing in the con-
stitutive aim of activity could adjudicate between these systems of values,
each of which would presumably yield radically different results about how
each of us ought to act.
But in fact, the lack of determinate content and the related failure to
adjudicate between conflicting sets of values is not, I believe, the real prob-
lem for Katsafanas. Because this story bottoms out in facts about a par-
ticular agent’s values, Katsafanas thinks an agent would be mistaken if she
understood her own values as having a legitimate claim to authority over
her. I think what he must have in mind is something like this: confronted
with a situation in which it would be difficult to muster an action of which
she could approve, an agent would be under no normative pressure what-
soever to stick with her values; she could, so far as the source of normativity
is concerned, simply dispense with her old, inconvenient values and adopt
new, more convenient ones. Any stability her system of values exhibited
would thus be due to inertia, or luck. What Katsafanas wants is something
rather more than that: an authoritative standard, one that can tell her when
and whether she must stay devoted to her values. Enter power, action’s sec-
ond constitutive aim. In every action, Katsafanas argues, an agent necessar-
ily aims to express her power.
Katsafanas is here making a claim about the very essence of willing,
which he presents through an explication of Nietzsche’s concept of will
to power. Unpacking the idea first requires elaborating the structure of
drives—a particular kind of motivational factor that, unlike the basic ele-
ments in many more familiar models of our practical psychology, are not
in the first place a matter of an agent’s being directed toward some deter-
minate goal or end. Drives may, and often do, orient agents toward ends or
goals, but this is a secondary consequence of the drive’s more fundamental
aim, which is simply its own expression. My aggressive drive, for instance,
might move me to belittle someone. Hurting that person’s feelings indeed
becomes my goal, but it is not, as it were, that for the sake of which I act.
Rather, the aggressive drive’s fundamental aim is simply its own expression.
The vulnerability of another merely happens to provide opportunity.
Like aggression, our aiming at power is not, Katsafanas urges, to be
understood as aiming at some determinate end or goal in action—he is not
claiming that we necessarily act in order to attain power, or even in order
to exercise it (at least where “in order to” is understood in its usual sense).
Power is expressed through the encountering and overcoming of resistance,
in the pursuit of whatever else our goals or ends happen to be. But power
is not to be understood as itself a drive, to be placed alongside our other
particular drives; that would be a kind of category mistake. Rather, power is

something like the very form of a drive. For any particular drive to success-
fully express itself just is for it to encounter and overcome resistance. Thus,
will to power is a formal feature of how a drive—any drive—structures the
pursuit of its (happenstance) ends or goals. Any drive aims to express itself
powerfully. The idea is that whatever else it is that we aim to do, or will, or
bring about through acting, insofar as we are acting on drives we are nec-
essarily aiming to express them, and thus necessarily aiming to realize our
ends or goals in a powerful way.
To say that all action aims at power, it thus turns out, just is to say that all
action is motivated by drives—all action is aimed at the successful expres-
sion of some drive or other, and so necessarily has the higher order aim of
every drive, to encounter and overcome resistance. And indeed, this is what
Katsafanas, following Nietzsche, argues: our psychology is a drive psychol-
ogy. Whenever human beings act, they act on drives, and so every human
action has the constitutive aim of power.
Power can thus provide a kind of authoritative standard, Katsafanas
argues, against which the otherwise arbitrary values that ground the evalua-
tion essential to achieving action’s first aim, activity, can be assessed. Values
that tend to ground approval of actions that are not or cannot be willed
powerfully, will be defective with respect to this higher-order aim. The aim
of activity underdetermines what we have reason to do, insofar as it is silent
on the question of what we should value. The second aim, power, breaks
that silence, by telling us to value only those things that enable us to will
power. The overall result is normative pressure to adopt a system of values
and act in ways that will elicit approval in light of that system, in a way that
allows an agent to fully realize both aims—to be at once active and powerful.
Nietzsche vs. Schopenhauer
With all that in mind, let me return to Katsafanas’s reconstruction of

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. As Katsafanas reads them (and who am I to
disagree?) Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are in close to perfect agreement on
at least one fundamental point: that “all actions manifest a ceaseless, inde-
terminate striving. This striving is not directed toward any particular end,
but simply toward activity.”11 But where Schopenhauer sees something ter-
rible in this, Nietzsche evidently finds something worthy of affirming. Why,
according to Nietzsche, are we to affirm ourselves, insofar as we r ecognize

ourselves as ineluctably driven in this way? Why not, as Schopenhauer sug-
gests, lament this fact about ourselves, and do whatever we can to try to
relieve ourselves of the burden it places upon us?
Katsafanas seems to think that if Nietzsche cannot give a certain kind
of argument that demonstrates why Schopenhauer is mistaken in seeking
relief in the form of “denial” or “self-suppression,” then he may be in big
trouble. What Katsafanas thinks Nietzsche needs is thus a legitimation
of will-to-power’s authority, a showing that will-to-power is entitled to
command our embrace: “If an agent can coherently regret the presence of
inescapable aims and therefore seek the elimination of action, this might
undercut the alleged normative authority of action’s constitutive aim.”12
Katsafanas undertakes to give just such an argument on Nietzsche’s behalf:
1. If the agent performs an action A-ing, she is committed

to agential activity. That is, in A-ing, she is committed to
approving of her A-ing, and to having this approval be stable
given further facts about A-ing’s etiology.
2. The etiology of every action includes will to power.
3. Thus, in order for the agent to be active, the agent’s approval
must be stable given further facts about the way in which will to
power motivates her.
4. In this sense, the agent must approve of will to power as a
motivating force.13
I see some problems with the argument,14 but rather than rehearse them,
let me instead pose a question: What sort of effect is such an argument
expected to have in the face of Schopenhauer’s pessimism, assuming it is
sincere? That is, what exactly is such an argument supposed to do to, or
for Schopenhauer, or anyone already somewhat persuaded by him, in the
direction of getting him to affirm and embrace what he presently denies and
tries to stifle?
I find the answer to that question especially opaque, in light of the nature
of Schopenhauer’s own position, which Katsafanas helpfully reconstructs
for me in a rather detailed footnote.15 Schopenhauer evidently recognizes
that it would be absurd to try to stop oneself from willing—in the very try-
ing, one would be willing, and so one would have failed. It thus seems that
Schopenhauer cannot be understood as trying to offer us even a pro tanto
reason for doing that. What he can do, and apparently does, is offer some
ideas about what will happen to us if we start to pay more attention to the
ubiquity and inevitably of suffering, and the conditions that, according to
him, necessarily engender it. Such sustained attention will, he tells us, ulti-
mately lead to the will’s withering away, and with it our suffering, though
again not through any overt act (or series of acts) that would constitute
anything willed.
Schopenhauer, it seems to me, must be preaching a kind of conversion—
trying to show us a there to which we cannot get from here, at least not by
following the routes laid down before us by practical reason. This is what
I make of his instructing us in how, if we want our suffering to go away,
we might do well to pay more of a certain kind of attention to its ubiquity.
He is offering us a prescription in the form of a not-altogether-intentional
strategy for finding relief. We will be moved to follow his advice, insofar as
we find his diagnosis of the human condition convincing, and his claim to
have found an antidote for it credible.
If that is in the neighborhood of right, then it seems clear to me that
Schopenhauer needs nothing like a legitimation of authority. When the
doctor pulls out the big, ugly syringe and says, “You must have a shot,” the
question “Do I really have to?” is not a question about his normative enti-
tlement to issue you valid commands. It is rather responded to with some-
thing like, “Yes, it is the only way.” And then of course one may still wonder,
“Is it?” And then one might want a second opinion.
Nietzsche, it seems to me, is in a position exactly symmetrical to
Schopenhauer: he has his own diagnosis, and his own purported cure. From
what I gather, he wants to convince us that an immense amount of suffering
can be borne, provided one comes to have the sense that it is for something.
To the extent that we will tend to experience our suffering as meaningless,
something to be relieved, this is due to our alienation from our nature as
creatures who ineluctably strive to express our power. In large part, that
alienation is the result of our having embraced a system of values—moral
values—that pit us against our selves. To cure ourselves of what ails us, we
should indeed embrace will to power, and reject old values insofar as they
are incompatible with it, Nietzsche tells us.
But again, it seems to me that a claim to authority would here be beside
the point; I find it very odd to put one in Nietzsche’s mouth. The closest I
can come is in thinking of Nietzsche’s point as something like the follow-
ing: we must choose to make power our authority, by embracing it. But,
just as in Schopenhauer, the force of this “must” is peculiar, and it surely
cannot be the “must” of a rational norm. Relatedly, grasping the sense in
which embracing power is something we are in any position to do seems
to me to require some delicacy. After all, if Nietzsche is right and our wills
are already sickly, then we are likely to find that we cannot so easily take his
medicine, even if we want to.
I think that for Katsafanas, unless we can settle the dispute between
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche with an argument that establishes that we
are already “committed” to treating will to power as an authority, we are
left with something here that is merely a matter of taste. It is as though we
might just have to say: “Some go in for a resolute sense of purpose that
makes their immense suffering bearable; others go in for withering away of
willing, and with it suffering itself. Who is to say who is right?” In one sense,
I find myself agreeing that to leave it at this would do violence to the pro-
fundity of their disagreement. But I worry that no less violence is done by
seeing this as a question of legitimating the claim to authority made on us
by our nature. My thoughts return to Williams’s point: if Nietzsche thinks
he has something to offer Schopenhauer, and to us insofar as we are like
him or likely to be moved by him, it seems to be something more like help,
or hope, and not arguments. “You do not have to starve yourself and your
desires, or otherwise let your will wither away,” we might imagine Nietzsche
saying to us, “for your problem is not that you suffer, but that your suffering
cannot mean anything for you. I can show you how you can make it mean
something, by showing you what it would mean for you to embrace your
nature as a willer.”
The Opposite of Nihilism
Katsafanas has not yet convinced me to embrace that part of myself that
aims, ineluctably, at encountering and overcoming resistance. But one thing
that Katsafanas has convinced me of is something he probably did not quite
intend: that contemporary ethical theory needs to pay much more attention
to nihilism, and the unique sorts of problems that it presents.
One thing that would help, I think, is if we had a concept for the con-
dition that is the opposite of nihilism: the condition a person is in when
she and her life stand in the right sort of relation to her ideals and her
values, so that they are genuinely her own, and are capable of nourishing
her and propelling her forward. Such a concept would have to be one that
allowed us to raise the question, without begging it, of whether a person
could genuinely be in that condition, without necessarily being able to
“justify” the claims that her values make upon her to any other rational
agent as such.
If contemporary ethical theory already has such a concept, I am not
aware of it. Bernard Williams appears to have tried, at least at one point, to
reclaim the concept of justification itself for something like this very role.16
But that effort, in retrospect, proved a mistake. Williams could not cancel
the rationalist connotations of the notion of justification—in particular, the
idea that for an agent to be justified is for her to be flush with the legal
tender of rationality, universally valid reasons, with which any justificatory
debt, public or private, can be paid. His effort thus bred more confusion
than anything else. Other words that he could have used, and sometimes
did try to use, to capture the particular way in which a person’s values, proj-
ects, and principles can, if she is lucky, fund her life—words like purpose,
meaning, or ground—invite other, equally problematic misunderstandings
in contemporary ethics.
This is highly speculative, but I suspect that if we had a concept like
the one Williams tried to make justification into, it would especially help
contemporary ethicists like me to get a handle on what Nietzsche might
have to say to us. It might also help us to understand how constitutivism,
and especially Nietzschean constitutivism, could hope to be true. If there
is any sense at all to the idea that one can derive a justification for one’s
values, principles, or ideals from the facts about one’s nature as an agent, it
seems to me that this cannot be understood on the model of deriving the
conclusion of an argument from its premises. To steal an idea from Stanley
Cavell, it must be rather more like the way one derives pleasure from play-
ing the piano. One thus cannot expect an answer to “why must I embrace
and identify with that part of me that wills power?” if one is not already
doing so. One must be helped to embrace that part of oneself, and then—
maybe—one will derive the why.
In this respect, I think Nietzschean constitutivism must be under-
stood to be in a rather different position than Korsgaardian constitutivism.
Korsgaard, it seems to me, is in the rather advantageous position of selling
us an image of ourselves and our nature that most of us are already embrac-
ing, insofar as most of us do tend to identify with the values and ideals
of enlightenment morality. She can, it seems to me, agree with Williams
in thinking that a person who has begun seriously to ask, “Why should
I do anything?” should be offered help or hope, not reasoned with. But her
diagnosis will be that, insofar as that question comes to seem serious, it
is because such a person has begun to lose hold of her reason. Help thus
comes in being reminded of what one already knows about oneself, and
what this entails. Provided she is willing to try, every agent is assured in
advance that she can succeed in “making something” of herself, for the con-
stitutive principles of autonomy and efficacy just are the failsafe recipe for
doing so. For Korsgaard, a satisfying answer to “Why?” is the birthright of
every rational agent, and she promises to help you find your why by helping
you discover what follows from the fact that you are more or less what you
would like to believe that you are.
Katsafanas’s Nietzsche, it seems to me, must want to nurse the very
doubt that Korsgaard aims to quiet. His recommendation is that we under-
take to embrace a part of ourselves that, insofar as we have come to iden-
tify with enlightenment values, is bound to seem at least somewhat alien,
regrettable, or even shameful to us. It will continue to seem that way even
if we acknowledge it as an “inescapable” part of who we are. Importantly,
he cannot offer any assurances: a fully meaningful or worthwhile life is not
within the reach of everyone as such, and there can be nothing to guarantee
in advance that one will succeed in making something worthwhile of one-
self by following his prescription. Essential to Nietzsche’s view seems to be
that, despite trying with all their might, many people will find themselves
left without any satisfying answer to “Why?”
So in effect, Korsgaard says to me: If you are worried that “Why?”
will find no answer, do not worry. Instead, double-down on your enlight-
enment ideals, and then your values are guaranteed to support you and
never desert you. Nietzsche says, if you are even a little worried about
nihilism, you are probably right to be: that is precisely where you are
headed. It may not be too late to right the ship, but you had better be
prepared to try something fundamentally different: learn to embrace a
part of yourself that now seems alien. If you do, maybe, through some
combination of effort and luck, your life will come to really mean some-
thing for you. But there are no guarantees.
Comparing the two at face value, it is pretty clear which is the more
inviting wager. If I am to opt for Nietzsche’s way, it seems to me I must at
least have come to be convinced that Korsgaard’s is too good to be true,
and thus a lie. I am more or less convinced of that, and so not prepared
to double-down on enlightenment morality with Korsgaard and Kant. But

Katsafanas’s Nietzschean proposition strikes me as a very risky one, and
I am not yet prepared to make that bet either. That brings me back to what
I said at the outset: I have my doubts, and—for now at least—I want to
keep them.
Stanford University
jorahd@stanford.edu
N OT E S

2. Christine Korsgaard marks the emergence of constitutivism as a distinctive
option in contemporary ethics; see Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). But many of the essential pieces
of the constitutivist program show up first in Thomas Nagel’s The Possibility of
Altruism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). See esp. chap. 4 and the
discussion of what Nagel calls interpretation. There are important differences in the
two authors’ ambitions vis-à-vis skepticism. One should compare the discussions
of skepticism from the final chapter of Nagel’s book and the opening chapter of
Korsgaard’s. In effect, Korsgaard picks up a challenge laid down by Nagel, to “raise
the cost of skepticism further by pushing the roots of moral motivation still deeper”
(Nagel, Possibility of Altruism, 143).
4. Z IV: “The Greeting” 11, quoted in Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations
of Ethics, 23.
5. KSA 12:9[35], quoted in Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of
Ethics, 22.
7. Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, 52, my emphasis.
8. Bernard Williams, Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1972), 3.
9. Luca Ferrero, “Constitutivism and Inescapable Agency,” in Oxford Studies in
Metaethics, vol. 4, ed. R. Shafer-Landau (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009),
303–33, 308.
10. I am generally sympathetic to this claim and defend a similar one in
“Promising Ourselves, Promising Others,” Journal of Ethics 19.2 (2015): 159–38.
14. Briefly and inadequately: it seems to me that the first premise equivocates on
the notion of commitment, in a way that begs the question against Schopenhauer.
Granting that Katsafanas is right that activity is a constitutive aim of action, then
Schopenhauer is indeed “committed” to acting in ways of which he approves, but in
just the following sense: he is committed to assessing his actions by that standard,
insofar as he acts. He is, however, not committed to acting—precisely his question is
whether to be committed to that. But then, I do not see how appealing to anything
further about the nature of action, including its second, higher-order constitutive
aim, could be thought persuasive for him. Insofar as inaction is a live option for him
(albeit not an option accessible via the exercise of practical reason, as he admits), I
do not see how the argument can hope to work.
15. Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, 205–6 n. 45.
16. See especially Bernard Williams, “Moral Luck,” in Moral Luck, ed. Bernard
Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 20–39.
Normativity and the Will to Power:
Challenges for a Nietzschean Constitutivism
ANDREW HUDDLESTON
Abstract: In this article, I critically consider the Nietzschean version of

constitutivism that Paul Katsafanas has recently developed. My focus, following
Katsafanas’s, is not on the exegetical issue of whether this constitutivism was
indeed Nietzsche’s own view. It is rather on the philosophical question of whether
the view itself is tenable. Do actions have a constitutive aim, in the way that
Katsafanas supposes? If so, what is that aim? From the putative fact that actions
have a constitutive aim, what would follow about the grounding of normativ-
ity in general? Will this approach yield up a tenable metaethical theory? While
Nietzschean constitutivism is an ingenious and original position, it faces some
serious challenges that it will have difficulty answering in a satisfactory way.
Keywords: normativity, agency, constitutivism, Katsafanas, will to power
Introduction
The past decade and a half has seen a considerable flowering of interest
in Nietzsche’s metaethics. In this time, Nietzsche has been presented
with nearly as wide a range of views in metaethics as there are exegetical
options on the table—views ranging from nihilism to subjective real-
ism to expressivism to fictionalism to objective realism to, most recently,
constructivism and constitutivism. Interpreters must square Nietzsche’s
apparently skeptical remarks about the objectivity of value with his
seeming commitment to a certain privileged set of values, in light of
which he purports to “revalue” the values of the moral tradition. Is this
apparent commitment nothing more than rhetorical bluster? Or does he
think that some values really have a privileged status? And if so, in vir-
tue of what? This puzzle has elicited a number of elegant solutions and
ingenious potential interpretations.

In his recent book, Paul Katsafanas adds one of the most—if not the
most—philosophically sophisticated options to the mix by developing
a Nietzschean form of constitutivism, a view more often associated with
Kant, but in its broad outlines, amenable to a Nietzschean version as
well.1 The aim of Katsafanas’s book is to do more than simply resolve an
exegetical puzzle in Nietzsche scholarship. He wants to develop a d istinctive
metaethical theory rooted in Nietzsche’s work. What he arrives at is a view
of considerable ambition and interest that he offers as a way not just of
making sense of Nietzsche’s work, but of how we are to understand the
grounding of normativity. As he notes in various places in his book, he
is more c oncerned to establish the theory’s philosophical credentials than
to argue that it was indeed Nietzsche’s own view. So in what follows, I will
be concerned exclusively with the philosophical, as opposed to exegetical,
questions that arise with this Nietzschean view and with the constitutivist
strategy that Katsafanas has taken up.
In the philosophical literature thus far, constitutivism has mainly been
associated with the work of David Velleman and especially that of Christine
Korsgaard.2 Katsafanas takes his inspiration from these views, but wants
to put forward an account that improves on their weaknesses—and that
promises advantages over rival nonconstitutivist metaethical views, includ-
ing Humeanism and nonreductive realism. Although I think there are good
potential replies to the difficulties that Katsafanas has raised for several of
these views, those matters are not my focus of attention here. The guiding
questions of my article are internal ones that arise from his form of constitu-
tivism itself: Do actions have a constitutive aim, in the way that Katsafanas
supposes? If so, what is that aim? From the putative fact that actions have a
constitutive aim, what would follow about the grounding of normativity in
general? Will this approach yield a tenable metaethical theory? While I have
great admiration for the ingenuity and originality of the view Katsafanas
has put forward, ultimately I think it faces some serious challenges that it
will have difficulty answering in a satisfactory way.
Constitutive Aims and the Generation of Normativity
I would like to begin by exploring a foundational idea for the constitutiv-

ist project—the notion of a constitutive aim.3 Games are a natural way of
introducing this idea. Games ordinarily have a clear goal, such as, in chess,
Normativity and the Will to Power | 437
checkmating one’s opponent. In order to count as playing the game, one

supposedly needs to take that goal as one’s aim. This goal in turn gives rise to
the standards of success, whereby one judges the moves in the game as good
chess moves. Normativity in successful chess playing thus is thought to arise
out of the aims one necessarily needs to have in order to count as playing
chess.4 The constitutivist wants to extend this lesson and make the case that
not only do games involve constitutive aims, but so too do beliefs and actions
in general. Their constitutive aims are thought to g enerate analogous stan-
dards of success, and thereby, to provide a grounding for epistemic and prac-
tical normativity in general.5 Defining a constitutive aim, Katsafanas writes:
[Constitutive Aims:]
Let A be a type of attitude or event. Let G be a goal. A constitutively
aims at G iff:
(i) each token of A aims at G, and
(ii) aiming at G is part of what constitutes an attitude or event as
a token of A.6
Katsafanas follows this with what he describes as a “relatively uncontrover-

sial” claim about how aims relate to standards of success:
Success: If A aims at G, then G is a standard of success for A.7
So if playing chess aims at checkmate, then checkmate is a standard of

success for playing chess. Katsafanas goes on to gloss this Success claim as
meaning “that aims generate standards of success.”8
First, it seems to me that Katsafanas has moved from what is indeed a
relatively uncontroversial claim, Success, to one that is considerably more
controversial. Does it follow from Success that aims generate standards of
success in a given activity or practice? Much depends on what is meant
by “generate.” For constitutivism to get going as a distinctive metaethical
theory, this idea of generation would need to be doing ambitious work in
explaining the grounding for normativity. Standards of success would need
to be grounded in aims. A natural way of capturing this idea is the following:
Generation: A’s constitutively aiming at G grounds the fact that

the standards of success for A-ing are given by G and grounds
the fact that G has the reason-giving character that it does.
Could this be what the Nietzschean constitutivist wants? Possibly. Notice,

however, that Success does not imply Generation. After all, the conditional
in Success could be true, even if that grounding claim in Generation were
false. It may be that G’s being a standard of success for A is an independent
fact, not a function of A’s inescapably aiming at G. Consider an alternative
claim also compatible with Success—call it Generation*.
Generation*: The fact of G’s being a standard of success for A-ing

grounds the fact that A must constitutively aim at G.
According to Generation*, the fact that there is a goal serving as a standard of

success in a given activity explains why those who are engaging in the activ-
ity must take that aim as action-guiding and reason-giving insofar as they
are to be engaged in that activity. Consider the standard example of chess
again. The game of chess is governed by a series of conventional rules, which
specify, among other things, the conditions under which one wins, namely
by checkmating one’s opponent. Thereby, it provides players with a goal at
which to aim. People come to be playing chess, and not playing another
game, or indeed playing no game at all, when they guide their actions by
the goal of trying to achieve checkmate (and also, of course, by hewing to
certain rules in doing so). The standard of success thereby g enerates the aim
constitutive of chess playing, not the reverse. Indeed, the reverse is difficult
even to fathom. What would it even take for Generation to be true in the
case of chess? It is not as if people were just antecedently aiming at taking
the opponent’s king and this aiming grounds why the standard of success is
as it is. Without recourse to a conventionally acknowledged standard of suc-
cess, participants in the game could not conceptualize their activity as one
of aiming in the sense necessary. In fact, I cannot see how they could even
think of themselves as playing the game at all. So even in the supposedly
paradigm case of constitutive aims, Generation is questionable. It seems to
have gotten things backward. Standards of success are more fundamental
than constitutive aims. At the very least, if Success is true, Generation* is
a good possibility for explaining the relation that obtains between aims,
goals, and standards of success, as specified in Success.
Yet the constitutivist’s ambition, remember, is meta-normative: to
explain the grounding for normativity through appeal to the constitutive
aim of belief and action. Generation had ambitions of carrying this off by
saying how aims themselves “generate” standards of success, with those
standards of success being the rabbit pulled out of the hat that is the aim.
Generation* would no longer be doing that. Normativity would have its

grounding independently of our aims, and it would explain what those
aims need to be, if we are to be engaged in a given activity. Generation*
would thus allow that certain normative standards are basic and have
their reason-giving character independently of our aims. This issue is
particularly important where, unlike in chess, the standards of success
seem to be a matter of more than mere convention. Presumably it was
the Nietzschean constitutivist’s skepticism about the realist leanings of this
“standards-first” conception of normativity in such fields that drove him
to try to anchor normativity for beliefs and actions in something seem-
ingly more naturalistically respectable: our inescapable aims as human
agents. If Generation* is all Nietzschean constitutivism is committed to,
though, it is puzzling how it would be an alternative to realism, as it pres-
ents itself to be. The more distinctive, ambitious, and interesting thesis
is one about the grounding (or, to use Korsgaard’s word, the “source”)9
of normativity in the aims constitutive of action or belief. I think this is
what the Nietzschean constitutivist is really after.10 To get this, though,
one must endorse Generation, or some similarly ambitious thesis in the
vicinity. Yet however plausible Generation* and Success may be, they do
not entail Generation. The move from the fact that in believing and acting,
we aim at certain goals and are thereby subject to certain standards of
success, to the claim that those standards themselves are grounded in our
so aiming, is, so far as I can tell, simply a non sequitur. One challenge for
Nietzschean constitutivism is thus to render Generation (or some similarly
ambitious thesis) plausible, without simply trading on the plausibility of
other, more modest theses.
Aims, Normativity, and Deriving an “Ought” from an “Is”
Central to the Nietzschean constitutivist’s position is the idea that certain

kinds of states have “inescapable” aims.11 This idea of inescapable aims is
not simply a generic descriptive claim. Nor, as I understand it, is it simply a
normative claim about what the aim of actions or beliefs should be. It is, first
and foremost, a universally quantified descriptive claim about what their
aim is. These inescapable aims, the constitutivist will then seek to claim,
ground reasons about what we should do and thus provide a foundation for
normativity. One major challenge, raised already by David Enoch, is how
we move from this fact about aims to anything with serious normative
implications.12 Enoch writes, “The move from ‘You inescapably Φ’ to ‘You

should Φ’ is no better—not even the tiniest little bit better—than the move
from ‘You actually Φ’ to ‘You should Φ.’”13
Although Katsafanas seeks to forestall this objection, he does not do so
successfully. His response is to claim that Enoch has misstated the consti-
tutivist strategy. The constitutivist, according to Katsafanas, is not moving
from “You inescapably Φ” to “You should Φ.” Rather, he is moving from
“You inescapably aim at Φ-ing” to “You should Φ.” According to Katsafanas,
the aim itself is reason-providing, not the inescapability of the action in
accordance with the aim.14
I see two main problems with this reply. First, although Katsafanas’s
clarification is helpful, the basic worry still remains. The shift to talk of
“aims” does not defuse the fundamental problem that Enoch has raised.
We are still moving from a certain descriptive fact—the fact of having
certain aims—to a certain normative fact—the existence of noninstrumen-
tal, categorical reasons that are supposed to be grounded in the having of
those aims. We continue, so far as I can tell, to move from an “is” to an
“ought.” Nietzschean constitutivism’s promise is that we can get categorical,
noninstrumental normativity from the austere structure of agency. But that
ambitious strategy cannot, I fear, be pulled off without deriving an “ought”
from an “is.” A challenge for constitutivism is to establish either that it is
not moving from an “is” to an “ought,” or that doing so is not the seri-
ous problem that it is often thought to be—all the while bearing in mind
that the “ought” we end up with must be something more than just that of
instrumental rationality.
That brings me to my second point. Even if the aim we happen to have
is reason-providing in some sense, this need be of little deep normative
significance, beyond simply providing us with easily defeatable reasons.
Consider what I shall call the Argument from Aims Perversion.
Aims Perversion: Some misguided and extremely powerful

economists, convinced that they understand the human good,
spray a certain powerful brain-altering potion into the atmo-
sphere that makes us strive after maximizing utility (understood
as personal preference satisfaction) in everything we do, at the
expense (say) of striving for power. Utility-maximization is
now, thanks to this potion, what we are all striving for in all our
actions.15 We no longer attempt anything unless it is, among the
choices available to us, utility-maximal in this regard.
Thanks to this intervention, utility-maximization would now, I take it, be

our “inescapable” aim.16 Our psychology would be altered, such that we are
not able to strive for anything else. But would this drastic alteration in aims
generate different standards of success for actions? In some thin sense, yes.
Given that our aims are altered, the standards of success relative to those
aims are thereby altered too. But does the constitutivist want to claim that
our overriding reasons for action now stem from these altered aims? If so,
constitutivism is little better than a crude form of Humeanism, over which
it touts itself as an improvement. The aims that we simply find ourselves
with, taken as they are, do not generate normatively significant standards
of success for action.
Now, if the constitutivist then goes on to insist that this utility-
maximization is not really the aim of action, then we may begin to suspect that
this notion of the aim of action was already normatively laden all along—a
function not simply of what actions do in fact aim at, but of some implicit
idea of what they should aim at, particularly where the two come apart. But
then, if that is so, normativity is not really coming from the aims themselves
after all, when this was just what Nietzschean constitutivism was promising.
The Argument from Aims Perversion is basically a retooled version of Enoch’s
basic challenge: just because actions all aim at something, it does not follow
that there should be any serious normative significance in their so aiming.
Constitutive Aims and Action
Now let us turn to discuss the heart of the constitutivist’s case: the close con-
nection between aims and action that is thought to generate the normative
standards for assessing those actions. The constitutivist’s idea here would be
that actions all aim at something. Of course, actions have all kinds of differ-
ent, more particular aims. So what the constitutivist will need to claim is,
first, that there is nonetheless a common aim that they all share and, second,
that it is in virtue of this common aim that they are constituted as actions.17
Let us recall Katsafanas’s claim that I earlier labeled Constitutive Aims:
Let A be a type of attitude or event. Let G be a goal. A constitutively

aims at G iff:
(i) each token of A aims at G, and
(ii) aiming at G is part of what constitutes an attitude or event as
a token of A.18
It would seem that two commitments of the constitutivist therefore

need to be:
Commonality: All actions have at least one common aim (by i).
Constitution: It is partly in virtue of this common aim that
something is an action (by ii).
I will discuss Commonality at greater length in the section to follow, when I

discuss whether a Nietzschean theory of the aim of action (particularly the
dimension focusing on power) is likely to be right. The best way to test the
merits of these claims is to consider a particular Nietzschean constitutivist
story about what the aim of action is. But let us put that aside for the time
being and consider Commonality and Constitution at a more general level
first. I shall state my main concern outright, and then frame the challenge in
terms of that concern. Actions certainly have aims. The question is whether
they have an aim. Likewise, the having of aims is part of what makes some-
thing be an action. The question is whether the having of some particular aim
is what makes something be an action. As I see it, a major challenge for the
constitutivist is to explain why Commonality and Constitution are more likely
to be correct than a less loaded theory about what constitutes actions as such.
To that end, let me sketch a simple alternative theory. I do not have
ambitions of giving a full-blown account of what separates actions from
nonactions here, and there are certainly borderline cases (e.g., what to say
about absentmindedly twirling a pencil, what to say about corporate agents,
complex computers, and so on). Let us begin with several truisms about
what I take to be the key concept of action at issue: Chairs do not perform
actions, even when they have a massage function. Clouds do not perform
actions, even when they pour down rain. An agent who accidentally falls,
or is pushed down the steps is not performing an action. Cats and dogs can
perform actions, yet plants do not, even when they are drawn toward the
sun. Nor, in the relevant sense of “action,” do humans perform an action,
when their intestines digest their lunch.
As a first stab at what makes something an action might go as follows:
Action-Minimalism: Actions are purposive behaviors that aim

at the achievement of some goal or other that the entity
performing the action is guided by and on some level
represents to itself.
This would seem to be a pretty decent account of what makes something an

action (as opposed to some other type of event). The Nietzschean consti-
tutivist will, however, need to say that this is not sufficient. More is needed
to make it an action. There is a debate among them about what that is, but
they are agreed that something more is needed (this will then underpin
Constitution). The Nietzschean constitutivist begins by claiming there is
some additional feature all actions have (Commonality). He then seems to
be reasoning in the following fashion:
1. There is some element x (viz., a particular kind of aim) over

and above what it is specified in Action-Minimalism that is an
“inescapable” characteristic of all actions.
2. (Hidden Premise) If x is an “inescapable” characteristic of
action, it is a constitutive feature of action.
3. Therefore, x is a constitutive feature of action.
I think this Hidden Premise, and thus the soundness of this form of
argument, is more questionable than the constitutivist realizes. Now,

much hangs on how exactly this rather wooly word “inescapable” is to be
understood. What is its modal profile? In just what sense is the proffered
aim “inescapable”? Is the claim of inescapability anchored in an empirical
psychological hypothesis about how all humans (and other sophisticated
animals maybe) are constituted, such that whenever they act, they, given
their constitution, strive for a certain goal? Or is it anchored in a conceptual
claim about the very nature of action—that it is impossible for there to be
something that counts as an action that does not aim at the constitutivist’s
favored goal? Or something else still? I am not sure there is a clear answer
here, nor is there likely to be agreement among various constitutivists, but
this is an issue that is worth flagging for further consideration.
But this issue aside, even if all actions involve self-constitution, or
self-understanding, or agential activity, or power—the constitutivist’s
favorite candidates for inescapable aims—this need not be what makes them
actions. It may be that, on some level, every action, however small, helps
constitute us as agents. It may be that, on some level, every action, however
small, yields its agent self-understanding. It may be that, on some level,
every action, however small, involves overcoming obstacles and resistances
(this is Katsafanas’s preferred understanding of power, a supposed aim of
all action). But we should ask: even if this is true, are the actions aiming
at these things? Might these things instead be inescapable preconditions,

by-products, or concomitants of actions, instead of what the action is
aiming at and the aiming at which makes it be an action?
Compare this: it is plausible that either as the result, or the precondi-
tion, of every action, that some degree of energy is expended. I suspect
there is no action (in the actual world, anyway) on the part of an agent
without some energy being expended. Of course, some actions, such as eat-
ing most foods, may increase net energy, but there will be an expenditure
in order to get that net increase. And even on the assumption that there
are purely mental actions, some small expenditure of energy presumably is
required. But is expending energy, even if it “inescapably” happens with all
actions, what makes an action be an action? The Nietzschean constitutivist,
remember, appears to be reasoning in the following way: if something is
an “inescapable” feature of x, then it is constitutive feature of x. But does
that follow? Can there be “inescapable” features of something that are not
constitutive features of it, on one gloss of the word “inescapable”: features
present, and perhaps not just coincidentally, in every actual instance of it,
but not responsible for making it the thing that it is?
Consider the properties of being a renate and being a cordate. At the
level of species characteristics anyway, all renates are cordates. But what
makes something be a renate is having kidneys—even if all renates also have
hearts, and even if there is an important biological story to be told about
why those two properties move in tandem. Now, constitutivists may stress
that whereas this point just made, or the point about energy, is an empirical
claim, they are making a conceptual claim. While this move to a purely
conceptual claim may come more naturally to Velleman or Korsgaard,
Katsafanas will have trouble making this move. He wants his theory about
the inescapable aim of action to be grounded better in the empirical facts
of actual human psychology. So I suspect it is not a purely conceptual point
he is making, but rather a claim about the aim of actions, as revealed by
empirical study of the natural world and the agents in it.19
Yet suppose it is not meant as an a posteriori claim of this form, but
instead as a purely conceptual one: All actions, insofar as they are actions,
must by their nature aim at the thing specified (whether self-understanding,
self-constitution, power, etc.). Even when it comes to purely conceptual
claims, I am not sure it is right, in general, that all necessary features (and that
is probably modally stronger than “inescapable” features) of something are
constitutive features. A case could be made that the two can come apart. It is
a necessary (thus “inescapable”) property of any object that it is self-identical;

but it is presumably not a constitutive property.20 Consider, by contrast, a
paradigmatic constitutive property of a triangle: being a closed, three-sided
figure. It follows from this necessarily (thus also “inescapably”) that it will
have three, four, or five sides. But this disjunctive fact is not what makes it be
a triangle, but simply something that follows necessarily (or “inescapably”)
from what does: the fact of being a closed figure with three sides.21 Now one
might here make the rejoinder that the relevant inescapable properties should
be those had by all and only the triangles, whereas this disjunctive property
is had by rectangles and pentagons too.22 I think this will still not be enough
to salvage the constitutivist’s point. For consider the conjunctive property of
being self-identical and a closed, three-sided figure. This is inescapably had
by all and only the triangles. But it would not seem itself to be a constitutive
feature, since the former conjunct does no constitutive work.
The general problem here is that the Nietzschean constitutivist would
seem to be moving from the “inescapability” of some feature of action
to that feature being constitutive of action. That move would seem to be
unwarranted. If the constitutivist is not making this move, then it is difficult
to see how y’s being an inescapable feature of x could have any decisive
bearing on the constitution of x.
To review the arc of this section thus far, I have granted for the sake of
argument that certain features of action are “inescapable.” I have then argued
that it does not follow that they are constitutive in making the thing be an
action. It is thus not obvious that Constitution follows from Commonality.
This is not simply a bit of Scholastic caviling. My interest, in raising this
point, is to press on why we should be tempted beyond a minimalist theory
as the right account of Constitution. Does Action Minimalism not give us
enough for what makes something an action? A challenge for the constitu-
tivist is to say why this flat-footed account of action is insufficient.
Now, let us grant the point that in the actual world we do, in all our
actions, aim at (say) power. Does the Nietzschean constitutivist really want
to claim that, in other possible worlds where, for various reasons, we aim,
in our action-like behaviors, at things other than power, we are not truly
acting? Or does he want to deny the very possibility of such a scenario?
Both options seem very implausible. The account of action, if it is really a
claim about what constitutes actions as actions, as it purports to be, should
not just be psychologically apt in the actual world, but modally robust as a
claim about action constitution across other possible worlds. It may be that,
given the way we are psychologically disposed, we aim, as the Nietzschean

constitutivist claims, at encountering and overcoming obstacles and resis-
tances whenever we act. But that is not what it is to act, as can be seen
simply from imagining scenarios where we engage in purposive behaviors
that aim at the achievement of some goal or other that we are guided by and
represent to ourselves, but where we do not aim at encountering or over-
coming obstacles and resistances in doing so.
As a matter of fact, though, I do not think the point, assumed for the
sake of argument, about all actual actions having a certain inescapable aim
is correct. In the case of all the aims constitutivists have specified, some
token state can lack this aim and still be an action.23 But we get into murky
territory here, because it is difficult to see what makes it the case that an
action is aiming at the thing specified as opposed to at something else or
at nothing at all, in such a way that there might be fruitful debate over this
question. How do we get an independent grip on what its aim is? It pre-
sumably is not an explicit, consciously occurrent aim of the acting agent,
as is my aim of getting some milk at the grocery store when I go for that
purpose. How then are we to adjudicate potential counterexamples?
One resultant strategy, in the face of this, is simply to treat action, as
the constitutivist is using it, as a term of philosophical art and to grant
the constitutive connection between actions and the favored goal that the
constitutivist likes. This style of criticism has been very nicely developed
by David Enoch.24 The question then gets pushed back a level: Why should
we care about acting as opposed to “schmacting” (where that is doing
something very similar, but just not aiming at self-constitution, or power, or
whatever)? I am very sympathetic to this strategy of Enoch’s, and it is com-
plementary to my own, but I think it is also worth considering, at the same
time, whether the constitutivist has given an adequate characterization of
the folk theoretic concept of action. Action-Minimalism may be all we need
to understand what constitutes something as an action. A challenge for the
Nietzschean constitutivist is to explain why we need more.
The Nietzschean Version of Constitutivism
In the previous sections, I explored more general questions that arise for
the constitutivist project—specifically, what it would be for belief and
action to have a constitutive aim in the first place. In this section I would
like to explore in more detail the Nietzschean conception of what the aims
of action are. On Katsafanas’s account, there are two constitutive aims of
action: agential activity and power. According to the first, actions aim for
a certain equilibrium, whereby the agent A’s, approves of her A-ing, and
further information would not undermine this approval. According to the
second, actions aim at power, understood as encountering and overcoming
obstacles and resistances.25 The second aim, according to Katsafanas, prom-
ises to generate more substantive normative content, so, for that r eason, and
for reasons of space, I shall focus on it.26
There is some debate about what sort of will-to-power thesis Nietzsche
endorses and its overall importance in his thought. That is an exegetical
debate that I will not get into here. I tend to be unconvinced that Nietzsche—
especially if we are cautious in our use of the unpublished notebook
material—should be read as aiming at a totalizing psychological hypothesis
about the aim of every action. I also tend to be unconvinced that it should
be understood as the anchor of his revaluation of values. Power is simply
one among several values, whose importance have hitherto been wrongly
denigrated in the Judeo-Christian moral tradition. But to the extent that
power is important for Nietzsche, there is a feature of the secondary lit-
erature that is worth pausing on for a moment, because the constitutivist
project builds so much on it. It is now often pointed out that power for
Nietzsche is not a matter simply of brute domination. The alternative that
has been developed by Bernard Reginster emphasizes the encountering and
overcoming of obstacles and resistances.27 There are plausible intuitions in
the background here. Real power seems to involve attaining something that
is difficult to attain, thereby overcoming obstacles in the process. Let us call
this conception Power-as-Overcoming.
Power-as-Overcoming: Power amounts to encountering and

overcoming obstacles and resistances.
Though this is a very helpful corrective to the idea of power merely as

brute domination, it seems to me that there is a danger of moving from
what power often involves, or what valuable instances of it involve, to what
power in general is.28 I think if we focus on encountering and overcom-
ing obstacles and resistances exclusively, we may obscure much of what
Nietzsche is actually talking about in the places where he discusses the goal
of power and our striving for it, and we may end up with a philosophically
implausible account of power. Again, I am not trying to make that full

exegetical case here, but I would like to draw attention to two other aspects
of power, or ways of thinking about it, that are important for the metaeth-
ical and action-theoretic issues at hand. Compare these two other dimen-
sions of power:
Power-as-Capacities: Power consists in those features that enable

you to function well in bringing about goals you have (or goals
that are worthwhile). In striving for power, we strive to develop
or maintain such features of ourselves.
Power-as-Dominance: Power consists in being (at least tempo-

rarily) in a position such that you feel you have succeeded in
bringing about goals you have (or goals that are worthwhile) and
that feeling is veridical (i.e., it is not simply an illusion of success
that underwrites your feeling). In striving for power, we strive
for such a feeling.
Both one’s capacities and one’s having achieved dominance are typically
related to the obstacles and resistances that one actually has or can poten-
tially overcome. So there is a close internal connection among Power-as
Overcoming, Power-as-Capacities, and Power-as-Dominance. It may even be
true (though it is more contentious than it is often made out to be) that
willing Power-as-Dominance or Power-as-Capacities, one must thereby will
obstacles and resistance too.
I suspect this connection actually relies on the rather strained Nietzschean
thesis about the interconnectedness of everything—that if we want one
thing, we should want everything, and so on. Absent that, the plausibility
of needing to will to encounter and overcome obstacles and resistances sig-
nificantly diminishes. After all, why can I not care about, and will to have,
Power-as-Capacities and Power-as-Dominance without caring about, or will-
ing to have, Power-as-Overcoming, particularly in certain limited domains?
I might view Power-as-Overcoming, in many cases, as necessary (if indeed
it is), but as something regrettable, on my way to achieving the other two
sorts of power, and thus may not aim at it per se. The plane may have to go
through the clouds to get from Point A to Point B, but that does not mean its
pilot is aiming at the clouds. Furthermore, even if it is true that we are always
aiming at power, let alone maximal power, in every action, a stronger case
needs to be made that we are, in every action, aiming at power in the sense
of encountering and overcoming obstacles and resistances, and not instead

aiming at power in one of the other two senses primarily. I suspect that in
many spheres of human activity, we actually aim Power-as-Dominance, and
are simply forced to put up with obstacles and resistances as an u navoidable
way of getting there. In many other spheres, we care about Power-
as-Capacities, but this is simply a concern for a dispositional feature of us that
does not involve the need to encounter and overcome actual obstacles and
resistances at all, merely to have the ability to do so, should the need arise.
The constitutivist seeks to soften somewhat his psychological claim
about striving for power by noting that in many actions, we are not aiming
at obstacles and resistances of any kind whatsoever, but only those specific
to the activity. To this end, Katsafanas distinguishes two different claims:
(A) Whenever we act, we aim to encounter and overcome

resistance of any and all kinds.
(B) Whenever we act, we aim to encounter and overcome
resistances that are related to the activity we are performing.29
It seems to me that (B) is certainly more plausible than (A). But I do not
think either is really psychologically apt. In many kinds of activities we
perform, we do not aim at encountering and overcoming obstacles and
resistances, even ones specific to those activities. Consider an ordinary day.
Because I am extremely nearsighted, I must leave my glasses in the same
place every night, or I will not be able to find them in the morning. When
I first wake up, I want them near me. I do not aim to encounter and over-
come resistances, as a child might in an Easter egg hunt. Then I have cof-
fee. I do not aim for resistance in this activity either. I do not hope for the
machine to be broken so I have challenge of fixing it, without the benefit
of caffeine or my glasses. Then I read the newspaper. Compared with other
things that I read, the Guardian is not particularly challenging. But still,
there are far less taxing ways of getting the news. I think it would be a mis-
take, though, to characterize my aim in reading this paper as one of encoun-
tering and overcoming obstacles and resistances, even if that is something
I must “inescapably” do in reading it. Rather, a better description is that I
value the intelligent, sophisticated way the news is presented. Accordingly,
I will encounter relatively more obstacles and resistances in reading it than I
would if I were having it read to me, or reading a tabloid paper with fourth-
grade prose, large, colorful pictures, and scant analysis. Perhaps after this,
I will go the gym and use the rowing machine. Here I do want resistance.
I turn a crank that, quite literally, sets “the resistance” higher. Or maybe
I will play squash. In order for it to be a fun game, I do not want to play
against someone I can easily beat. I want to play with someone closer to
my rather modest level or better. And later in the day, there will be vari-
ous intellectual endeavors where I do value encountering and overcoming
obstacles and resistances in working through interpretive puzzles or philo-
sophical arguments.
I mention these various examples because it is important to bear in
mind the diversity of mundane human action. We should not generalize
from the fact that in some activities, obstacles and resistances are part of
what we value about the activity to this immensely totalizing conclusion.
The constitutivist theory moves from the alleged fact that in order to act,
we must encounter and overcome at least some minimal level of resistance
to the implausible psychological inference that we are aiming at such resis-
tances in all that we do.30 Insofar as I can get a grip on what it is for an
action to be aiming at something, this does not seem to me to be a very
plausible general thesis. It is true of some actions, but not of others.
I myself prefer construing Nietzsche’s will to power psychology in a less
totalizing way. This more modest Nietzschean account has a surprising and
interesting conclusion when it comes to the posited motivational apparatus:
in the case of some goals, we are willing not just the goal, but resistance to
achieving that goal. That is an important observation, and it is helpful for
understanding certain kinds of actions. But the thesis becomes drastically
less plausible when it is generalized to actions as such. This more mod-
est Nietzschean account that I prefer has another surprising and interest-
ing psychological thesis to offer: A desire for power motivates many more
human actions than we have hitherto thought, even those that, superfi-
cially, do not seem motivated by it. We can convincingly explain a range
of puzzling and often perverse human phenomena in terms of this. But, I
would say, we need not make this a totalizing, universal claim either. After
all, what about simple actions that aim, apparently, at relaxation: sitting on
a porch and sipping iced tea and enjoying the spring sunshine. This is an
action. But it is not plausibly aiming at power in any sense.31 It may involve
encountering and overcoming minimal obstacles and resistances (e.g., not
dropping the glass, etc.). But first, it is not plausibly aiming at this, and
second and more importantly, even if it were, doing so would not be what
makes it be an action. The constitutivist would need both claims to be true,
and yet both are very doubtful.
One defensive strategy on the part of the constitutivist is to say that even
if some isolated action does not aim at power, it is part of a larger action
aiming at power.32 I need my glasses in order to see. I need coffee in order to
function. I need relaxation on off days to be more powerful on other days.
We might agree that these smaller-scale actions can be construed as part
of larger actions that are directed toward power. But, first, are we aiming at
Power-as-Overcoming primarily or exclusively, or are we aiming at power
in one of the other senses I outlined, particularly Power-as-Capacities? And
second, is it plausible that indirectly aiming at Power-as-Overcoming is what
makes these smaller token actions be actions? That I really do not see at
all. The more attenuated the connection gets between the action and the
allegedly constitutive goal, the less likely it is that aiming at the goal is what
makes it be an action.33 Now, if we are inventive enough, and provide tor-
tuous psychological redescriptions of every action, we can get something
reminiscent of the sort of account that undergraduates concoct to vindi-
cate dogmatically the idea that really we are motivated by egoistic consid-
erations, or the desire for pleasure all the time. Yet human psychology is
more varied, interesting, and complex than this. Power is a central, and
often neglected aspect of that psychology. Few were as astute about this
as Nietzsche was. But this striving for power (and particularly the striving
for maximal power) is unlikely to be the universal motive in or feature of
human action, and it is especially unlikely if power is construed as a matter
of overcoming obstacles and resistances. A challenge for the constitutivist is
not just to redescribe creatively every potential counterexample using this
posited motivation, but to explain why it is the most plausible and compel-
ling way of making agents and actions intelligible across the board.
The Full Extent and Overriding Character of Normativity
I have so far discussed the Nietzschean constitutivist’s contention that

a constitutive aim of action is power, because this is the constitutive aim
that has the potential to deliver the most substance in the normative and
meta-normative account built up from it. I now would like to discuss the
picture that it leaves us with. Katsafanas’s constitutivism frames itself as an
alternative to rival metaethical theories, including Humeanism and non-
naturalist objective realism. It seeks to overcome problems that those theo-
ries, and others, face.34
But I think it is worth asking to what extent it is a meta-normative t heory

that can even claim to be a rival at all, let alone a superior one. Simply from
the supposed fact that we aim at power, and that the will to power can serve
as a standard for assessing other values, it does not follow that the consti-
tutivist is making a metaethical claim at all. In order to be such a theory,
it would have to make general claims about the nature of n ormativity as
such. It needs to have a view about what normativity is grounded in. Or, in
the locution of reasons, it would have to explain what gives reasons their
reason-giving character. At times, particularly when it frames itself as a
rival to other major views, it seems to have that ambition. Recall, from ear-
lier in the article, the claim:
Generation: A’s constitutively aiming at G grounds the fact that

the standards of success for A-ing are given by G and grounds
the fact that G has the reason-giving character that it does.
Generation is a distinctive claim about what normativity is grounded in. But

the idea that constitutivism is a rival to Humeanism or objective realism or
even Kantian constitutivism is rather misleading. Those theories seek to
offer accoun0ts of what in general provides the grounding for what we have
reason to do—in particular, for what we have most reason to do. Nietzschean
constitutivism is not able to do this, nor does it, in the end, turn out to have
ambitions of doing so. The constitutive aim of action, Katsafanas argues,
simply provides pro tanto reasons, not overriding reasons.35 But that is tan-
tamount to saying that there are other, more important kinds of reasons.
And the normative force of those (in many cases) overriding reasons is left
wholly unexplained by the Nietzschean constitutivist’s story. One might
well wonder, what endows these other reasons with their normative force?
This concern becomes particularly pronounced when the constitutivist
seeks to explain why we do not have reasons simply to maximize power in
every circumstance (or to do in the present only what will be conducive to
maximal power in the long run). Of various activities that would involve
the overcoming of obstacles and resistances, why choose some over others?
Why choose some paths of lesser power over paths of more power? The
constitutivist wisely wants to say that we have other reasons that are stron-
ger, and thus in many cases, decisive in swaying us from always maximizing
power.36 For there are all kinds of activities that involve surmounting and
overcoming great obstacles and resistances, but some of these are heinous,
others vapid. I could carry out a series of carefully plotted serial killings,
seeking the challenge of resisting detection for as long as possible, sur-
mounting the obstacle of having more bystanders nearby, feistier victims,
and so on. But this does not give me reason to do it. Or, in a different and
less morally repellent vein, I could try to eat as many hot chicken wings
as possible in a short amount of time. (Suppose, for the sake of argument,
I could also devote that same time to doing a lower-resistance, but seem-
ingly worthwhile activity: catching up with an old friend whom I care very
much about.) Presumably, the sensible constitutivist will want to say that
I do not have decisive reason to engage in the killing spree or (given the
options) to participate in the chicken-wing-eating contest. But why not?
It is of course because I have other reasons that outweigh or override the
pro tanto reasons that I have to maximize power. This the constitutivist
acknowledges. But what explains the force and weight of these reasons? If
the constitutivist has no story about why one has more reason to do less
power-conducive over more power-conducive activities in many circum-
stances, in what sense is it a comprehensive meta-normative theory? And if
it is not, can it really claim to be an important contender in the landscape
of metaethical views?
For the sake of comparison: the Humean is claiming that all of our
reasons are, in some sense, a function of our desiderative economy. The
objective realist (of one stripe anyway) is claiming that all of our reasons
for action are a function of facts about the mind-independent evaluative
truths regarding various courses of action. Even the Korsgaardian con-
stitutivist is seeking to account for reasons for action in general. But the
Nietzschean constitutivist, in marked contrast, is claiming simply that some
of our reasons (which are merely pro tanto reasons anyway) are a function
of the supposedly “inescapable” structure of human action. Whereas one
can, in principle, just be a Humean or a Parfitian Realist or a Korsgaardian
constructivist across the board when it comes to what we have overrid-
ing reason to do, one cannot just be a Nietzschean constitutivist. Yet if it
is, at best, only part of the story about normativity, and not a story about
overriding normativity at all, how can it offer itself as a serious metaethical
rival to these theories? One challenge for the Nietzschean constitutivist is
to explain why this theory should be taken as a major account of meta-
normativity when it—assuming it succeeds at all—explains only a portion
of the domain in question and not even the most important aspect of that
domain.
Conclusion
Constitutivism is structurally very interesting because of its claim to offer

us categorical reasons, reasons that are not dependent on our contingent
desires. In this way, it seeks to be an improvement over the Humean the-
ory.37 It is supposed, further, to be generating this normativity out of the
inescapable aims of human action, so in this way it does not need to appeal
to independent and potentially spooky ideas of normative properties out
in the world. In this way, it seeks to be an improvement over certain non-
naturalist objective realist theories.38 It thus has considerable promise. But
I have so far given some reasons for doubt about whether it can succeed.
Constitutivism does not, it seems to me, deliver up a satisfying account of
normativity. As Katsafanas shows in the first chapter of his book, all major
metaethical theories face serious unanswered questions and limitations.
Constitutivism, though, would seem to have more challenges than most,
and it is not a theory I would thus be eager to embrace myself. However, it is
easier to be negative than positive, and I am not defending some alternative
theory here. At the very least, it is good to have the range of possibilities
increased by having such an interesting and original theory added to the
metaethical mix, no less one inspired by Nietzsche.
Birkbeck, University of London

a.c.huddleston@gmail.com
N OT E S
My thanks to Ken Gemes and Errol Lord for their comments on this article, as well
as an audience at Oxford, where I presented a version of this paper. Suggestions
there from Brian Leiter, Mattia Riccardi, and Paul Katsafanas were particularly
helpful.
2. J. David Velleman, The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000); Christine Korsgaard, Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity,
Integrity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
3. In what follows, I will be primarily discussing Katsafanas’s take on the con-
stitutivist’s general strategy—and that is as a meta-normative theory that seeks to
generate normative standards from the inescapable aims of belief and action. There
are other forms of constitutivism that may well fare better vis-à-vis some of the
objections I raise in this article, though they would face different objections of their
own. They will not be my focus of attention here.
5. Ariela Tubert, “Constitutive Arguments,” Philosophy Compass 5 (2010): 656–
66 provides a helpful overview of the constitutivist strategy.
6. Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, 39. (The heading
“Constitutive Aims” is my own, but the wording is from Katsafanas.)
8. Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, 39, my emphasis.
9. Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996).
10. Other forms of constitutivism may be less metaethically ambitious, in not
trying to work up from aims to normativity. They may instead simply be trying to
understand why we are committed to certain standards, without addressing the
metaethical grounding of those standards themselves. As I see it, these are not really
metaethical views of the sort that could claim to be rivals of, say, objectivist real-
ism. They are moral-psychological views that are silent on fundamental metaethical
questions.
11. E.g., Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, 40 and chap. 2. Exactly
what “inescapable” means and what modal strength it has are not entirely clear to
me. Later in the article, I consider a few ways this term might be understood.
12. David Enoch, “Agency, Schmagency: Why Normativity Won’t Come from
What Is Constitutive of Action,” Philosophical Review 115 (2006): 169–98.
13. Enoch, “Schmagency Revisited,” in New Waves in Metaethics, ed. Michael
Brady (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 208–33, 216.
14. Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, 56–57.
15. It is not relevant for the purposes of the example to say whether we are try-
ing to maximize utility in each individual decision or over the long run.
16. It might be protested that this aim is not really inescapable, because it could
be altered with further intervention. But the Nietzschean constitutivist wants a
basically naturalistic picture in which he establishes on empirical psychological
grounds the inescapable aim of human action from a consideration of what we do
in fact aim at. If the claim indeed has such a status (and is not, say, a claim about
the abstract nature of action as such), it would seem to be based on an alterable
psychological fact about us; with enough intervention, our aims presumably could
be changed.
17. It is important to notice that, in principle, these are separable claims: even
if actions did all have a common aim or common aims, it would not necessarily
follow that it is in virtue of aiming at this that they are constituted as actions.

20. My thanks to Ken Gemes for suggesting this example.
21. My thanks to Jack Spencer for suggesting this example.
22. My thanks to Mattia Riccardi for suggesting this possibility.
23. As Evan Tiffany argues, the features attributed to agency by the constitu-
tivist that give it a chance of producing a rich normative content are precisely the
features that seem to be dispensable without it ceasing to be a case of acting. See his
“Why Be an Agent?,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90.2 (2012): 223–33. See also
Enoch, “Schmagency Revisited.”
24. Enoch, “Agency, Schmagency,” 177–80.
25. Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, chaps. 5 and 6.
27. Bernard Reginster, The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
28. On such a conception, it is very difficult, for example, to account for an
omnipotent being who can instantly bring anything about through his mere wish.
The intuitive characterization would be that such a being gets anything it wishes
for effortlessly, without needing to encounter and overcome obstacles and resis-
tances. But if power is a matter of encountering and overcoming obstacles and resis-
tances, then such a being would seem to be powerless, not all-powerful. (Thanks to
Ken Gemes for raising this case.) Such cases suggest that power-as-capacities and
power-as-dominance are also important in accounting for basic intuitions about
power.
30. Here I am in agreement with Alex Silk. See his review of Agency and the
Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism, Notre Dame Philosophical
Reviews, October 13, 2013, http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/43499-agency-and-the-
foundations-of-ethics-nietzschean-constitutivism/.
31. Peter Poellner, “On Nietzschean Constitutivism,” European Journal of
Philosophy 23.1 (2015): 162–69, 167.
33. Cf. Silk, review of Agency and the Foundations of Ethics.
34. Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, chap. 1
36. Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics, 188–89, 198–200.
37. Nonetheless, if it is true that we are always aiming at (maximal) power in all
our actions, does it not follow that a desire for power is then central in our subjec-
tive motivational set? If so, then why, when it comes to the supposedly categorical
normativity we can get from it, is constitutivism an improvement over a Humean
theory that shares the Nietzschean constitutivist’s empirical assumption that there
is a strong aspect of our desiderative economy in common?
38. One might, though, think the idea of actions or beliefs all having an “aim” is
no less obscure or queer.
Response to Bernard Reginster, Jorah Dannenberg,
and Andrew Huddleston
PAUL KATSAFANAS
Abstract: This is a response to Bernard Reginster’s, Jorah Dannenberg’s,

and Andrew Huddleston’s comments published in the Journal of Nietzsche
Studies 47.3, on Agency and the Foundations of Ethics. I address the main points
raised in their critiques: Dannenberg’s concerns about whether I have ade-
quately characterized nihilism and his argument that Nietzschean constitutiv-
ism would be of no help to the nihilist; Reginster’s argument that constitutivism
offers no interpretive advantage over internalism and subjectivism, his conten-
tion that it is a mistake to see all drives as aiming at expression, and his argu-
ments against my claim that all actions aim at power; and Huddleston’s critiques
of the will to power thesis and objections to the constitutivist project. I argue
that these objections and concerns can be answered.
Keywords: Nietzsche, constitutivism, agency, moral psychology, drive, ethics
I want to begin by thanking Bernard Reginster, Jorah Dannenberg, and

Andrew Huddleston for their exceptionally rich and insightful critiques
of my book. It is rare to find commentators who have engaged so deeply
and so thoughtfully. Reginster, Dannenberg, and Huddleston have not
focused on subsidiary or inessential themes: their discussions target the
book’s central topics and pivotal moves in the argument. I am very grate-
ful to them for taking the time to write such challenging and thoughtful
responses to my book.
In my response, I will address the main points raised in these cri-
tiques. In section 1, I address Dannenberg’s concerns about whether I have
adequately characterized nihilism. In section 2, I turn to Dannenberg’s
argument that Nietzschean constitutivism would be of no help to the
nihilist. In the next three sections (3–5), I respond to Reginster’s argu-
ment that constitutivism offers no interpretive advantage over internal-
ism and subjectivism, his contention that it is a mistake to see all drives

as aiming at expression, and his arguments against my claim that all

actions aim at power. Sections 6 and 7 address Huddleston’s critiques
of the will to power thesis and his objections to the constitutivist proj-
ect. Finally, section 8 considers a series of more localized objections. As
will become clear, I think all of these objections and concerns can be
answered.
1. Characterizing Nihilism
A central theme in my book is that Nietzsche wants to show us how nihil-

ism can be avoided. Nihilism, as I describe it in the book, is the view that
no values are justified. Dannenberg argues that I have not c haracterized
nihilism adequately. In particular, he raises two objections:
(A) Nihilism is more of a condition than a belief about justification.

It is a condition of “despair, hopelessness, boredom, and
alienation,” rather than a view about whether our values are
justified.1
(B) To the extent that thoughts about justification enter into
the nihilist’s considerations, the nihilist is not principally
concerned about whether various values can be justified.
Rather, he is concerned about whether values are justifying,
whether they provide support for us.2
In response, let me acknowledge straightaway that I have come to think that

my characterizations of nihilism, in the book, were insufficiently nuanced.
Nihilism, as I define it in the book, is the idea that “the values that were
formerly regarded as highest or most central are experienced as unsupport-
able.” I then say, a bit later, “nihilism is the belief that no values can be
justified.” And, a page after that, I say that “What concerns him [Nietzsche]
is whether a whole system of normative judgments might come to seem
detached from our practical deliberations.”3
There is a problem with these three characterizations: I move from
speaking of highest values to all values to systems of values. And I move
between saying that values are experienced as unsupportable or unjustifi-
able to saying that they become detached from our practical deliberations.
Although I think Nietzsche is concerned with each of these things, they
Response to Reginster, Dannenbarg, and Huddleston | 459
are not equivalent. Moreover, I focus almost entirely on the more cognitive
aspects of nihilism, whereas Dannenberg is quite right that nihilism has
affective components.
So I acknowledge that more work needs to be done. Indeed, since pub-
lishing the book I have been working on several papers on Nietzsche’s
notion of nihilism and its relevance for contemporary ethics. I have come
to think that one dominant theme in Nietzsche’s reflections on nihilism is
the loss of higher values, rather than all values.4 Nietzsche is concerned
with a kind of evaluative flatness, rather than a total absence of value; and
Dannenberg is quite right that this is not merely a theoretical view, but is
manifest in the agent’s affective condition.
But let me respond to Dannenberg’s comments more directly. Begin
with claim (A), the contention that nihilism is more of a condition than
a set of beliefs about justification. This cannot be right. The paradigmatic
nihilist has a cluster of central features: he is, as Dannenberg points out,
forlorn and hopeless and bored, and he is also, as I point out, unable to see
values as genuinely justified and justifying. Dannenberg contends that the
former, more affective features are primary. I disagree: while Dannenberg
is right that the affective features are extremely important, I think the cog-
nitive features are essential. After all, we need to focus on these cognitive
aspects in order to distinguish the nihilist from the merely depressed per-
son. Someone could share all of the affective features of the nihilist without
being a nihilist. That is, someone could be forlorn, hopeless, bored, and so
forth, and all of this might have resulted simply from the loss of a loved one,
an injury, or a failure in life. What sets the nihilist apart from these more
ordinary cases is the cognitive features. The nihilist is forlorn because of a
view about values.
That point needs to be analyzed carefully. The nihilist need not be
pictured as someone who engages in explicit deliberation about the jus-
tificatory status of his values and concludes that they are unjustified. That
can happen, but it is hyper-reflective. Ordinarily, nihilism would arise in a
less reflective fashion. It can be manifest in the unavailability of what the
person wants rather than a conclusive refutation of its very possibility. So,
for example, the person who would have flourished in a religious culture
might founder in a secular one, without quite realizing why. What is at issue
is a cognitive matter: the unavailability of a certain kind of value. But the
person need not realize this. Nihilism can be manifest in culture, in the
possibilities afforded to individuals, rather than in the individual’s explicit
thoughts. So, in saying that nihilism essentially involves cognitive features,

we need not deny that it is, as Dannenberg puts it, also a “condition.”
Let us now consider Dannenberg’s claim (B) that, to the extent that the
nihilist is concerned about justification, he is concerned not about whether
his values are justified but whether they are justifying. I think this is a good
point: nihilism arises when we feel that our values cannot justify our lives
in the right way. In my book, I focused on the origination of this feeling
in the sense that our values are themselves unjustified: if my values seem
arbitrary, if they seem to be based on nothing more than whims or con-
tingent preferences, then my sense that these values justify my activities
might evaporate. But Dannenberg is quite right that the essential thought is
that the values do not justify anything, and this thought can arise for other
reasons. For example, this feeling might, as Nietzsche sometimes points
out, simply arise because we cannot take those values seriously any longer:
“What is now decisive against Christianity is our taste, no longer our rea-
sons” (GS 132).5
2. Responding to Nihilism
One of Dannenberg’s chief concerns, though, is that my Nietzschean

argument does not really provide a good response to the nihilist. As
Dannenberg puts it, I and other constitutivists “think that constitutivism,
the theory, can help us thwart nihilism, the condition.”6 But Dannenberg is
skeptical; indeed, he suggests that this ambition is incoherent. To show this,
he focuses on my comparison of Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s verdicts
on life. I argue that Schopenhauer and Nietzsche both recognize that all
actions manifest ceaseless, indeterminate striving, but they react to this fact
in opposite ways: Schopenhauer takes it as a reason for rejecting action,
whereas Nietzsche takes it as something potentially worthy of affirmation.
As Dannenberg explained, I present an argument that is designed to show
that insofar as we act, we are committed to seeing Nietzsche’s solution
as better justified than Schopenhauer’s. Dannenberg raises the following
question:
What sort of effect is such an argument expected to have in

the face of Schopenhauer’s pessimism, assuming it [is] sincere?
What exactly is such an argument supposed to do to, or for
Schopenhauer, or anyone already somewhat persuaded by him,

in the direction of getting him to affirm and embrace what he
presently denies and tries to stifle?7
Dannenberg doubts that the argument would have any effect on

Schopenhauer. He points out that it seems better to interpret Schopenhauer
as preaching a kind of conversion rather than as merely offering an
argument.
I think this is right. But I also think that we can pry apart Nietzsche’s and
Schopenhauer’s therapeutic aims from their argumentative aims. Nietzsche
and Schopenhauer, unlike many other philosophers, engage in both of
these tasks: they not only want to diagnose problems with philosophical
positions and offer arguments; in addition, they want to convert their read-
ers, shifting their attitudes toward life and their views of the world. In some
ways, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer prioritize the conversion task. And, at
some stages, the conversion task is disconnected from the argumentative
task: as Dannenberg notes, Schopenhauer does not think that rational argu-
mentation alone will bring about the conversion he envisions. However,
the fact that Schopenhauer and Nietzsche engage in these therapeutic tasks
does not entail that their justificatory or argumentative tasks are unim-
portant. This is not an either/or situation: a philosopher can engage in both
argumentative and therapeutic tasks.
With this distinction in mind, I want to say that Dannenberg is perfectly
right that the constitutivist arguments have scant therapeutic value. I think
they do have some therapeutic value for a certain kind of person: some-
one who takes truth as a central value, someone who leads a philosophical
life, will be impacted by the constitutivist arguments. And Nietzsche is, in
part, trying to reach such readers. (Nietzsche claims in BGE 227 that hon-
esty is “our virtue, the only one left to us,” and in EH P:3 he writes, “How
much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? More and
more that became for me the real measure of value.”) But in a larger sense
Dannenberg is right: if what one is trying to do is effect a conversion, subtle
arguments about what one is committed to taking as nonobjectionable are
unlikely to be the best route. What we need, instead, is incendiary rhetoric,
incitement of strong affect, presentation of alternative ideals, sketches of
what a new way of life would look like. What we need, in other words, is
what Nietzsche tries to provide in Zarathustra and his many impassioned
writings. We need ideals that catch on, that are taken up in literature, art,
and music, ideals that grip culture and shift it in ways that ultimately impact
the possibilities open to individuals.
But we can also step back from these images of life, these ways of living,
and we can ask whether we have any reason for preferring one of them to
another. There are different sorts of answers that we can then give: we can
show that some of these pictures are unachievable, or that they are mere fan-
tasies, or that they render us internally conflicted, or socially fragmented,
or incapable of affirming ourselves, or that they conflict with our deepest
aims, and so on. And surely Nietzsche does all of that. These are philosoph-
ical critiques of these pictures, critiques that proceed by showing that the
pictures are incoherent, based on false presuppositions, or otherwise unjus-
tified. And this is just what I take Nietzsche’s reflections on will to power to
be doing. He is trying to show that and how Schopenhauer’s picture of life
is fundamentally flawed, premised on a stance that is incoherent.
3. Constitutivism vs. Competing Interpretations
There is much more to say about nihilism. But, in the interest of space,
let me now turn to the concerns that Bernard Reginster raises. One of my
book’s central arguments is that Nietzsche is best interpreted as a constitu-
tivist. But Reginster points out that there is no direct evidence for the claim
that Nietzsche is a constitutivist.8 Nietzsche never explicitly states that he is
pursuing a constitutivist strategy.9 Nor does Nietzsche present his argument
in a form precise enough to enable us to straightforwardly show that he is
a constitutivist. The evidence is less direct: I argue that Nietzsche’s frequent
pronouncements about power being the essence of life or action, together
with his idea that power has a privileged status because it is the essence of
life or action, are best reconstructed in a constitutivist form.
But why, exactly, do I claim that constitutivism is the best reconstruc-
tion of Nietzsche’s argument? In part because constitutivism makes the
most sense of Nietzsche’s triad of seemingly inconsistent claims about value
(power has a privileged normative status; there are no objective values;
values are created by human activities). Reginster argues that there are at
least two other metaethical theories that would make equally good sense
of these three claims: internalism and Prinz’s subjectivism.10 Internalism
is the view that “an agent has a reason to act in a certain way if so acting
serves or furthers a motivation in his existing subjective motivational set.
In Prinz’s constructive sentimentalism, a value judgment reports on the

property an action or state of affairs has to elicit a certain affective response
in the agent who makes it.”11 As Reginster explains, both of these would fit
fairly well with Nietzsche’s three claims.
The reason that I see constitutivism as superior to these views is, as
Reginster correctly notes, that “such interpretations do not seem able to
account for the privileged normative status of Nietzsche’s own valuations,
particularly his valuation of power.”12 For, as Reginster continues, “In these
interpretations, reason judgments are dependent on the motivations the
agent happens to have, and value judgments are dependent on the affects
she happens to have.”13 As these affects vary across agents and cultures,
there is no reason to expect that power would have any privileged status: as
a contingent fact, some individuals or cultures might exhibit this motiva-
tion, but nothing guarantees this. Reginster is right that my chief concern
with these accounts is that they make the privileged status of power too
contingent. They do not account for the fact that Nietzsche takes the privi-
leging of power to be universally justified—justified for all human beings,
at all times.
This brings us to Reginster’s deeper point: in essence, I argue that the
advantage that constitutivism has over standard internalism and other
metaethical theories is that it secures a privileged status for power. But,
Reginster contends, my argument actually fails to secure a very robust
form of privilege. All that I show is that certain motivations are universal
in human beings, not that the very concept of action demands power. And
this, Reginster claims, puts my theory on par with standard internalism and
subjectivism. As he puts it, if my argument ultimately rests on the claim
that “human agents are constrained by what turns out to be a universal
feature of the character of motivation,” then it would just be “a variant of
the subjectivist strategies I have sketched out earlier.”14 That is, Reginster
argues that the only difference between my constitutivist interpretation and
standard subjectivist interpretations is that on my view, there is an aim that
is universally present in human action.
I disagree. Reginster is perfectly right to say that my version of consti-
tutivism does not establish that power’s privileged status is a conceptual
necessity, or that it is conceptually incoherent to imagine action without
power. In that respect, he is right that power’s connection to action is con-
tingent. But it is important to distinguish different degrees of contingency.
The presence of some motives in human beings is highly contingent: some
people like opera, some do not; some find in it the height of happiness,
some find it mildly entertaining, some find it interminably dull. Other
motives are somewhat more universal: there might be certain motives that
are present in all human beings, such as a desire for sex or a desire to eat
when hungry. Some of these motives might be present in all human beings
at all times, in all cultures, regardless of facts about how they have been
socialized. And some of those motives might be modifiable or susceptible
to being resisted, whereas others might not.
As Reginster explained, I try to show that because human action is moti-
vated by drives, all human action aims at power. If the argument succeeds,
then I will have shown that Nietzsche’s will to power is contingent only in
the very weak sense that if human nature were transformed—if we were
not motivated by drives—then we would not will power. But this is not
something over which we have any control: I cannot decide not to be moti-
vated by drives; I cannot expunge drives from my mental economy. And
this makes the constitutivist understanding of will to power quite different
from internalist or subjectivist understandings. For Nietzsche does not just
want to establish that all human beings sometimes aim at power (just as all
human beings sometimes aim at having sex or eating food). Nietzsche wants
to establish that power is an omnipresent aim. He wants to show that every
episode of action aims at power. This clearly is not true of sex and hunger.
To show that every episode of action aims at power, we need to show that
there is something about the very nature of human action that commits us
to aiming at power. We need to show that this aim is not something that we
can modify or extirpate. It is not obvious how internalism and subjectivism
could show this, without themselves amounting to forms of constitutivism.
In sum, then, constitutivism does in fact establish a more robust form of
normative privilege for power than would standard internalism or subjec-
tivism. To put the point more precisely, consider the following distinctions:
(a) The strongest form of necessity: showing that there can be no

such thing as action without power. Even if we modify facts
about human psychology, all action would aim at power.
(b) Somewhat weaker form: showing that human psychology
would have to be transformed in fundamental ways for
us to be able to act without willing power. Absent that
transformation, every episode of action will aim at power.
(c) Much weaker form: showing that power, like the desires for
food and sex, is a motive that every human being has and
sometimes acts upon.
I agree that I do not establish (a). I do not think Nietzsche has any inter-
est in establishing (a) either. However, constitutivism does establish (b),
whereas standard internalism and subjectivism could only establish (c).
So constitutivism establishes a privileged status for will to power, whereas
internalism and subjectivism do not.
Incidentally, these points help us to address two concerns that
Andrew Huddleston discusses. First, Huddleston asks whether the concept
of action is modally robust: Am I claiming that in every possible world,
action aims at power?15 No. This would be a version of claim (a), above. As
I have explained, I do not claim that will to power is a constitutive feature of
action as such. I claim, instead, that it is a constitutive feature of drive-mo-
tivated action. That claim is modally robust: because drives aim at expres-
sion, will to power is just a description of the nature of drive-motivated
action. And then there is an empirical claim: human action is drive-moti-
vated. That claim is not modally robust. There are possible worlds in which
humans are not motivated by drives, or in which some, but not all, human
actions are drive-motivated. So, again, I accept (b), not (a).
This is also a good place to address Huddleston’s example of what he
calls “aims-perversion,” in which some kind of drug alters the psychology
of human beings so that we all aim, in every action, at utility maximization.
The aims-perversion argument tries to show that if changes in our aims
generate changes in what we should do, then “constitutivism is little better
than a crude form of Humeanism.” For “the aims that we simply find our-
selves with” would be those that generate standards of success.16
In response, I actually do think that if our aims were altered in the way
that Huddleston describes, our reasons would change. If it really were true
that every episode of action aimed at utility maximization, then we would
have reason to be utility maximizers. If this strikes us as odd, I think part
of the explanation is that we are not envisioning just how different human
life would be if we actually did achieve this transformation. We imagine
that everything would be just the same, only we would have this one extra
desire. But actually things would be tremendously different: if we actually
did aim at utility maximization in every action, whole swathes of human
life would be fundamentally different. This point might be obscured by the

difficulty of determining what counts as utility maximization, so consider
a simpler example: if some drug transformed human action so that every
action aimed at maximizing pain, then I do think that we would have prima
facie reason to seek to maximize pain. But if such a transformation actually
occurred, it would affect human life in innumerable ways: consumer cul-
ture would disappear, presumably; restaurants would serve only the most
disagreeable of foods; ascetic rituals would become ubiquitous; the rich
would give up their fine residences and live in filth, exposed to the ele-
ments; and so on. It is a bizarre vision, and we have to keep in mind just how
bizarre it would be. Transformations in constitutive aims would bring with
them transformations in human life. Once we keep this in mind—once we
see just how profoundly different life would be if a drug of the sort that
Huddleston envisions were possible—then I think the idea that such a drug
would transform our reasons is no longer so outlandish.
4. The Nature of Drives
Let us return to Reginster’s article for a moment. As Reginster correctly

notes, the “first and most crucial step” in my argument for constitutivism
is “a claim about the nature of drives.”17 Reginster focuses on one aspect of
my characterization of drives: Nietzschean drives do not dispose the agent
to bring about any particular end, but instead dispose the agent to engage
in characteristic forms of activity. I use Freudian terminology to clarify this
point. The aim of a drive is its characteristic form of activity; the object of a
drive is that which provides the drive with a target for expressing its char-
acteristic activity. For example, the aim of the aggressive drive is aggressive
activity, and the object might be one’s competitors in a game of football. The
aim of a drive is relatively constant; the object is highly variable.
Notice that the aim of a drive is just expression of its characteristic activ-
ity, not attainment of the object. As Reginster notes, this is a crucial stage in
my argument. I use the claim that drives aim at activity to motivate the idea
that drives seek resistances upon which to express themselves. Reginster,
however, wants to deny that drives seek expression. Reginster’s argument
is based on the idea that this is not a standard account of drives. For Freud,
the aim of a drive is simply “the removal of the stimulation that caused its
arousal.”18 Put differently, for Freud drives aim at their own extinction, not
at their own expression. Moreover, Reginster notes that late nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century biologists and psychologists tended to adopt anal-
ogous views. These thinkers tended to take hunger as a paradigmatic drive,
and were therefore led to something like the following model: a drive has its
source in some internal condition, such as a physiological need. The drive
motivates activity toward an object that is designed to remove the stimulus.
Drives, so understood, aim not at expression, but rather at eliminating a
painful or uncomfortable stimulus, such as the sensation of hunger.
Fair enough. I agree that Freud and many of his followers had this view
of drives. But what I want to say in response is simply this: Nietzsche has
a different view of drives. We can see this by focusing on Reginster’s claim
that Nietzsche’s near contemporaries viewed hunger as a paradigmatic
drive. Revealingly, Nietzsche does not take hunger as central. Although a
search on the electronic version of the KGW returns 1,679 distinct passages
mentioning “Trieb,” “Instinkt,” and their cognates, only 43 of these passages
also mention “Hunger.” Moreover, most of these 43 passages simply talk of
drives “hungering” for satisfaction.19 Of the passages that discuss hunger
as a drive, several make the same point: hunger either is not a drive or is a
peculiar drive. For example, Nietzsche says that hunger is “the expression
of a specialized, belated form of instinct, an expression of the division of
labor of the instinct seen from above.”20 I can find only one reference to a
“hunger drive” in the published works, D 119, where Nietzsche tells us that
hunger is an atypical drive. So it is clear that hunger is not a paradigmatic
drive for Nietzsche.
Does Nietzsche then have an unprecedented view of drives? This would
not be so surprising. One of his chief complaints about philosophers and
scientists is that they mistake processes for states (“Becoming” for “Being,”
in Nietzsche’s more enigmatic phrasing). Freud’s conception of drives really
is more state-based than process-based. But I am actually not convinced
that Nietzsche’s account of drives is all that distinctive. At least the germ of
it is present in early thinkers. For example, although Reginster argues that
Schopenhauer treats drives as aiming at the removal of painful stimuli, I
do not think this is quite right. It is true that Schopenhauer thinks we aim
at tranquility, at removing the stimuli to action. This makes it sound as if
Schopenhauer is treating drives as aiming at their own extinction. However,
I interpret his remarks on the impossibility of satisfaction as suggesting
that we are actually disposed to seek activity rather than states-in-which-
we-abide. Put differently, we want tranquility, but we find ourselves driven
to activity. The will to live—the source of all our striving—has the structure
that Nietzsche attributes to drives.
Moreover, several of the German Romantics treated drives as sponta-
neous sources of activity, especially creative activity. In Goethe and Schiller,
among others, drives are not things that would be comfortably assimilated
to hunger; Schiller’s form drive and sensuous drives, for example, do not
aim at any particular end. And this is not restricted to the Romantics.
Consider Fichte, who argues for the presence of a pure drive—a drive that
motivates us simply to activity for the sake of activity, with no concrete con-
tent. Indeed, Fichte sometimes associates drives with pure activity. To quote
just one representative passage, he writes, “The being of the I is absolute
activity and nothing but activity; but activity, taken objectively, is drive.”21
So even if Reginster is right that some of Nietzsche’s near contemporaries
view drives as states that dispose us to remove painful stimuli, there is a
competing tradition of treating drives as sources of pure activity. In other
words, there is a tradition of treating drives as aiming not at any particular
end, but at expression of activity as such. In light of this, I also doubt that
Reginster is correct in claiming that Nietzsche distinguishes drives in gen-
eral from wills in particular, with the latter being active drives.22 I would
say, instead, that Nietzsche treats all drives as essentially active, though of
course in pathological cases or in cases of exhaustion, drives can wither
away, be conflicted, and so on.
5. Objections to the Idea That Will to Power Is Present

in Every Episode of Action
Reginster ends by considering some apparent counterexamples to the claim

that every episode of action aims at power. An example that I use in my
book is watching a lowbrow sitcom while lounging on the sofa. This activity
seems to offer minimal resistances, and the agent who engages in it does
not seem to be aiming to encounter these resistances. Would this count as a
counterexample to the will to power thesis? Reginster agrees that in loafing
on the couch, I am aiming at the activity itself, rather than bringing the
activity to an end. He further agrees that in order to engage in this activ-
ity, I must overcome resistances. However, he disagrees that in engaging in
this activity I aim at overcoming resistances. Instead, Reginster points out,
I may simply regard the resistances as regrettable yet necessary impedi-

ments to the end.23
I want to say two things about this case. First, when I am engaged in an
activity, I seek resistances related to that activity. But some activities do not
afford much opportunity for resistance. The sitcom example is supposed to
be like that: there is no way to introduce resistance into this activity without
transforming it into a different activity. Perhaps a simpler example will help:
if I aim to introduce additional challenges into the activity of relaxing while
enjoying a massage, how am I going to do that? By tensing my muscles?
But then I will not find the activity as enjoyable. By thinking about some
philosophical argument? But again I will not be relaxing. And so on. So my
point, in introducing the sitcom example, was not that it provides a compel-
ling example of agents aiming at resistance. Rather, my point was that it is a
case in which there are no additional opportunities for aiming at resistance.
My argument, then, was that this case cannot serve as a good counterexam-
ple to the claim that every action aims at overcoming resistance, for here,
where there are no additional resistances at which we can aim, that claim
turns out to be trivially true.
More generally, the point that I was trying to make is this. Whenever
someone claims that an event of type X constitutively aims at Y, critics can
respond by trying to find some event of type X that does not aim at Y. The
proponent of the theory then needs to explain why the case does not count
as a counterexample. There are two main ways to do this: the proponent can
show that, despite the appearances, this event of type X really does aim at
Y; or she can concede that this event of type X does not aim at Y, but argue
that this does not affect the more general claim that events of type X aim at
Y.24 In the case that Reginster considers, I was pursuing the first strategy.
Loafing on the couch really does aim at resistances; it is just that, on pain of
abandoning the activity and switching to some new endeavor, there is not
much resistance that one can attain.
Second, notice that my argument for the claim that action aims at resis-
tance is based on the idea that drives aim at resistance. So, to find the sorts
of resistance that are being aimed at, we would need to identify the drive
that is motivating this activity. There is no drive toward watching lowbrow
sitcoms while loafing, though there are desires to do so. So we should not
expect to find the agent aiming at resistance here. Instead, we should look
at a broader stretch of activity.
The general point here is that we cannot expect that each activity, no
matter how it is individuated, will reveal an aim of resistance. We should
instead expect that when we consider stretches of activity individuated by
drives, these activities will reveal an aim of resistance. Consider a more
straightforward example: if you just look at a person filling a cup with water,
you might not know, based just on that one action, that the person is bak-
ing bread. But then when you see that the person is performing a series of
actions—filling a cup with water, adding it to the flour, kneading the dough,
and so on—you see that the person is baking bread. The aim is present in
the more limited case of activity—otherwise the person would not be filling
the cup with water at all—but it is not obvious until we embed the activity
in a broader course of action.
6. Why Plausibility Is Not a Good Guide to Truth
A similar objection is given by Huddleston. He distinguishes several dif-

ferent interpretations of Nietzsche’s will to power thesis.25 We might read
Nietzsche as claiming that willing power is aiming at being in states in
which we have veridical feelings of having overcome obstacles (the “Power-
as-Dominance” reading), or that willing power is aiming at developing
and maintaining capacities that enable us to overcome obstacles (“Power-
as-Capacities”), or—as I suggest—that willing power is aiming at encoun-
tering and overcoming obstacles (“Power-as-Overcoming”).
With these distinctions at hand, Huddleston notes that there are good,
intuitively obvious reasons for aiming at Power-as-Capacities and Power-
as-Dominance. What is less obvious is that we have reason for aiming at
Power-as-Overcoming. Of course, I give an argument for the claim in my
book: drive-motivated actions constitutively aim at Power-as-Overcoming,
and all of our actions are drive-motivated. But Huddleston goes on to write,
The constitutivist theory moves from the alleged fact that in order
to act, we must encounter and overcome at least some minimal
level of resistance to the implausible psychological inference that
we are aiming at such resistances in all that we do.26
I am unsure how to take this. Of course it is implausible that every action

aims at encountering and overcoming resistance. We would not look at
human action and conclude, merely on the basis of glancing at a number

of examples, that all action aims at Power-as-Overcoming. But it is a lesson
from reading Nietzsche that what seems implausible or counterintuitive
can nonetheless be true. It is implausible that compassion is connected to
feelings of dominance. It is implausible that morality undermines human
flourishing. It is implausible that egalitarian social institutions are deleteri-
ous. Nonetheless, Nietzsche claims, all of this is true. Initial plausibility is
not a good guide to truth, precisely because what seems plausible is often
informed by background assumptions, tacit evaluations, hidden presuppo-
sitions, and so on. Just so with the claims about the omnipresence of will to
power. They are completely implausible, counterintuitive, and so on, but, I
argue, they are nonetheless true.
That might sound polemical, but my general point is just that we have to
be sure that we are approaching the theory in the correct way. If a theorist
were trying to systematize our intuitions, or to find general principles that
explain particular intuitions, or were striving for some kind of reflective
equilibrium between particular judgments and general principles, then the
sorts of considerations that Huddleston (and Reginster, in his discussion of
the sitcom example) deploys would be good objections to the theory. But
Nietzsche is not doing that. Nietzsche is not trying to take our intuitions
for granted and find a theory that matches them. He thinks our intuitions
are theory-laden, and that the theories that inform them are deeply flawed.
It is no surprise, then, that the Nietzschean theory will generate counterin-
tuitive results. It does not matter that the results are counterintuitive; what
matters is whether the argument succeeds.
So, when Huddleston says that the will to power thesis “is helpful for
understanding certain kinds of actions. But the thesis becomes drastically
less plausible when it is generalized to action as such,” I want to say: yes, but
that does not matter.27 We should not allow our philosophical reflections
to be controlled by thoughts about what we find plausible. We need to ask
why certain things seem plausible and whether their apparent plausibility is
driven by background assumptions that we should, in fact, reject.28
7. The Relationship between Aims and Standards of Success
Let us now move away from the exegetical matters and consider a more gen-
eral philosophical point. How does the fact that we have certain aims relate
to the fact that we are subject to certain standards of success? I endorse the
following claim:
(Success) If x aims at G, then G is a standard of success for x.
I claim that Success is uncontroversial. But Huddleston points out that

Success can be interpreted in two ways. One view is that aims generate
standards of success. Another view is that standards of success exist inde-
pendently of our aims.
I accept this distinction. The uncontroversial claim is that when you
have an aim, you have a standard of success. The controversial claim, as
Huddleston notes, is that the aim generates the standard of success. After
all, he points out, it is possible that the standard of success comes first and
then aim second (for example, you might think that people aim at acting
justly because justice is intrinsically valuable).29 If we accept this distinc-
tion, how does it affect my argument? Huddleston writes,
The move from the fact that in believing and acting, we aim
at certain goals and are thereby subject to certain standards
of success, to the claim that those standards themselves are
grounded in our so aiming, is, so far as I can tell, simply a non
sequitur. One challenge for Nietzschean constitutivism is thus
to render Generation (or some similarly ambitious thesis) plau-
sible, without simply trading on the plausibility of other, more
modest theses.30
In other words, Huddleston interprets me as starting with the uncontrover-

sial claim (if you have an aim, you have a standard of success) and using it to
establish the controversial claim (the aim generates the standard of success).
However, this is not how my argument proceeds. Let me first introduce
a distinction. Pace Huddleston, it is not controversial that aims generate
standards of success. For example, if Betty aims at eating cake and Johnny
does not, then it seems uncontroversial that, all else being equal, Betty is
subject to a standard of success (eating cake) that Johnny is not.31 What is
controversial is the claim that this is the only way that standards of success
arise. But the constitutivist need not argue for that latter claim. The consti-
tutivist just relies on the idea that aims generate standards of success, rather
than the controversial claim that standards of success are only generated
by aims. What the constitutivist aspires to do is show that if we accept the

claim that aims can generate standards of success, then we do not need to
posit any other way of generating standards of success. We are not barred
from doing so. For example, we could accept the Nietzschean constitutivist
argument about power, but also a realist account of justice or equality. That
is not ruled out. It is just not especially tempting. (And, as an exegetical
matter, it is clear that Nietzsche rejects realist accounts of value.)
The importance of this point is clear when we consider Huddleston’s
suggestion that the constitutivist wants to prove that realism should be
rejected.32 That is not how I envision the constitutivist project. To be sure,
some constitutivists—Christine Korsgaard comes to mind—aspire to show
that realism and other metaethical positions are untenable. However, I think
constitutivism is better seen as a response to the failures and inadequacies
of other metaethical theories. The familiar slate of metaethical theories face
a number of problems, many of which I chart in the first chapter of my
book. These problems are significant and, I suspect, intractable; however, I
do not try to show that these problems decisively establish that the famil-
iar metaethical theories are failures. It is enough to show that the familiar
theories are problematic. For the constitutivist can then show that there is
an alternative to them, that we can ground normativity without them, that
we do not need to choose between the tired old problematic options. So
the constitutivist is perfectly happy to admit that you could posit norma-
tive entities that ground aims; the constitutivist just thinks there is a better,
less problematic alternative, namely seeing aims as grounding normative
entities.
In sum, rather than seeing the constitutivist as relying on controver-
sial assumptions in order to decisively establish that all other metaethical
theories fail, we should see the constitutivist as relying on uncontroversial
assumptions and establishing that constitutivism avoids problems that
other metaethical theories face. We need not show that the other metaethi-
cal theories are wrong; we just need to show that constitutivism avoids their
problems.
8. Responses to More Localized Points
Before closing, I will mention four important but more easily addressed
points. First, Reginster objects to one of the arguments that I offer in support
of the claim that every action aims at power. I contend that Nietzsche
endorses the following two claims:
(A) There is no state such that being in that state provides lasting
satisfaction.
(B) There are processes such that engaging in those processes
provides lasting satisfaction.
I argue that the best explanation for (A) and (B) is that our actions are
drive-motivated. Reginster disagrees. While he concedes that drive-
motivation would explain (A) and (B), he argues that this is not the best
explanation of (A) and (B). To support this claim, Reginster points out that
the facts that explain (A) might differ from the facts that explain (B). For
example, he notes that we can explain (A) by analyzing happiness as essen-
tially negative: pleasure is nothing but the absence of pain. If we accept that
view of happiness, then (A) would follow but (B) would not.33
While I agree with Reginster that this is a possible explanation of (A),
as he himself admits it would not explain (B). So, if we accept both (A) and
(B), Nietzsche’s explanation in terms of drives is more powerful than the
argument that Reginster suggests. More generally, it is worth noting that
I offer several arguments that point toward the conclusion that all actions
aim at power. Each of these arguments can be critiqued individually, but
when taken together we have a series of related considerations that all point
toward the same explanation: all actions are drive-motivated, hence all
actions aim at power. So, taken collectively, the arguments provide strong
support for Nietzsche’s thesis.
Second, Huddleston argues that I do not respond successfully to an
objection from David Enoch. Simply put, Enoch argues that we cannot move
from “you inescapably X” to “you should X.” In my book, I agree, but point
out that—provided we accept the Success claim mentioned above—we can
move from “you inescapably aim at X” to “you should X.” Huddleston notes
that moving from “you inescapably aim at X” to “you should X” involves
deriving an “ought” from an “is.”34 My response is that I agree, but that
even Hume, the source of this claim about the impermissibility of deriving
an ought from an is, thinks that this kind of derivation is fine. For exam-
ple, if Bob desires pie and Annie does not, this gives Bob a reason that
Annie lacks. All else being equal, he should eat pie, and she should not.
This mundane derivation of reasons from desires and other aim-inducing

states is all that the constitutivist needs to rely upon.
Third, in discussing my arguments for the claim that all actions aim
at power, Huddleston notes the importance of distinguishing aims from
byproducts. It is one thing to show that all actions involve overcoming
resistance, but it is quite another to show that all actions aim at overcoming
resistance. By analogy, it is probably true that performing any action at all
involves expending some energy. Yet, in performing actions, agents do not
aim at expending energy.35 I agree with this, and for that reason I do not
accept Huddleston’s “Hidden Premise,” which he states as follows: “If x is an
‘inescapable’ characteristic of action, it is a constitutive feature of action.”36
Rather, I would say that if x is an inescapable aim of action, then it is a
constitutive aim of action.
More generally, Huddleston questions whether every necessary feature
of X must be a constitutive feature of X.37 If this is unwarranted, then the
fact that something is a necessary feature—or, as I often put it, an inescap-
able feature—would not imply that it is a constitutive feature. Huddleston
gives a number of nice examples. For instance, he says, a necessary feature
of a triangle is that it is self-identical and three-sided, but the former fea-
ture is not a constitutive feature. I think Huddleston’s points are convincing.
Not every necessary feature is a constitutive feature. As Huddleston demon-
strates, there are complicated metaphysical issues at play in distinguish-
ing necessary features in general from constitutive features in particular.
Fortunately, I think I can sidestep these concerns. All that I need to rely on,
for my arguments to succeed, is the claim that there is an inescapable aim
present in every episode of action. To make that point, I need not offer any
general set of criteria for distinguishing constitutive and necessary features.
Fourth and finally, Huddleston asks what account I can give of the nor-
mative force of values that are not derived from will to power. He writes,
The constitutive aim of action, Katsafanas argues, simply pro-

vides pro tanto reasons, not overriding reasons. But that is tan-
tamount to saying that there are other, more important kinds
of reasons. And the normative force of those (in many cases)
overriding reasons is left wholly unexplained by the Nietzschean
constitutivist’s story. One might well wonder, what endows these
other reasons with their normative force?38
This is a good question, but I think the answer is straightforward. What

provides these other reasons with their normative force? Just the usual
things: desires, aims, sentiments, perhaps customs and practices as well. We
can give standard internalist accounts of the normative force of these rea-
sons. Here is one way of putting it: you could read Nietzsche as a Humean
(albeit with a very complex account of the sentiments and the practices that
interact with them) who wants to supplement the Humean theory with a
constitutivist account of one standard, power, and thereby give us a way of
privileging one standard of assessment.
I appreciate the opportunity to clarify the arguments in my book and to
indicate the ways in which these important challenges might be answered.
Although my responses are necessarily abbreviated, I hope to have given
sufficient indication of why the constitutivist interpretation of Nietzsche’s
will to power doctrine is promising.
Boston University
pkatsa@bu.edu
N OT E S
1. Jorah Dannenberg, “‘Why?’ Gets No Answer: Paul Katsafanas’s Agency and

the Foundation of Ethics,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 47.3 (2016): 418–34, 421.
2. Dannenberg, “‘Why?’ Gets No Answer,” 422.
3. Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 22–24.
4. For an introduction to these issues, see Paul Katsafanas, “Fugitive Pleasure
and the Meaningful Life: Nietzsche on Nihilism and Higher Values,” Journal of the
American Philosophical Association 1 (Fall 2015): 396–416.
5. When referring to Nietzsche’s texts, I use the following translations: Beyond
Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1968);
Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982);
Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1968); The Gay
Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1974). I have sometimes made
minor modifications to the translations.
8. Bernard Reginster, “Comments on Paul Katsafanas’s Agency and the
Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 47.3
(2016): 403–17, 404.
9. As the term “constitutivism” did not arise until the 1990s, this is unsurprising.
But just as we can characterize Hume as arguing for internalism about practical
reason even though that label arose in the 1970s, we can characterize Nietzsche as a
constitutivist even if the term never occurs in his works.
10. Reginster, “Comments on Paul Katsafanas,” 405–6.
11. Reginster, “Comments on Paul Katsafanas,” 406.
15. Andrew Huddleston, “Normativity and the Will to Power: Challenges for a
Nietzschean Constitutivism,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 47.3 (2016): 435–56, 445–6.
16. Huddleston, “Normativity and the Will to Power,” 441.
19. The search was performed on the Digitale Kritische Gesamtausgabe Werke
und Briefe, available at www.nietzschesource.org.
20. KSA 13:11[121]; translated as The Will to Power 651.
21. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The System of Ethics, ed. Daniel Breazeale and
Guenter Zöller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 101.
24. A simple case: suppose I wanted to argue that belief aims at truth. A critic
comes along and points to Joe over there who believes that the earth is flat and
makes no effort to correct this belief in light of evidence. Two responses are open:
I could argue that Joe’s belief really does aim at truth, and try to demonstrate this
by pointing out that if we could get Joe to reflect on this belief and the evidence
against it, he would be under pressure to change the belief; or I could concede that
Joe’s belief does not aim at truth, but I could try to account for this by pointing to
background pressures that distort the belief. Just so with action and will to power.
25. Huddleston, “Normativity and the Will to Power,” 447–8.
28. “Implausible” is a word with an interesting philosophical use. It can mean
that the results are counterintuitive. Or it can mean that the argument is unsuccess-
ful. Or it can mean that although the argument seems to succeed, the results that it
generates are so outlandish or unbelievable as to be not worth considering. We need
a philosophical critique of the reliance on thoughts about what is plausible.
29. Huddleston points out that in chess, it seems like the constitutive aim is
generated by the fact that there is already a standard of success. That is, we first
define what it is to win chess, and then we define a constitutive aim in terms of
that (438). So “normativity would have its grounding independently of our aims,
and it would explain what those aims need to be, if we are to be engaged in a given
activity” (438). However, this is compatible with my view. If we accept Huddleston’s

characterization, it just shows that the constitutive aim’s content is given by the
notion of how to win. The constitutive aim should then be phrased merely as “aim-
ing to win.”
31. As I discuss in the book, certain nonreductive realists reject this claim, but
almost everyone else accepts it.
32. This is how I interpret Huddleston’s claims on 451–53.
37. Huddleston, “Normativity and the Will to Power,” 444–45.
Research Forum
International Nietzsche Research Group in Brazil: GEN–Nietzsche
Studies Group
SCARLETT MARTON
1. GEN–Nietzsche Studies Group
The Nietzsche Studies Group in Brazil (GEN) is an international research

group that gathers Brazilian scholars of Nietzschean philosophy and, more
recently, also French and Italian researchers. Founded by Scarlett Marton
in 1996, GEN was originally linked to the Philosophy Department of
University of São Paulo (USP). Having spread throughout the country, GEN
continues to advance Nietzsche studies and, toward this goal, welcomes dif-
ferent interpretations of Nietzsche’s thought. As a pioneering initiative in
South America, the Nietzsche Studies Group in Brazil intends to promul-
gate research on Nietzsche’s thought in our own country while nonetheless
remaining well connected with the different international Nietzsche societ-
ies throughout the world. Accordingly, GEN acts on three different fronts:
Cadernos Nietzsche (its academic journal), Coleção Sendas & Veredas (its
book collection), and Encontros Nietzsche (its national and international
conferences).
Cadernos Nietzsche is a unique initiative, comparable only to Nietzsche-
Studien in Germany, or, more recently, to Estúdios Nietzsche in Spain.
Published every May and September, the journal is evaluated according to
its Qualis score issued by CAPES (Brazil’s Ministry of Education Agency
for the Improvement of Higher Education) as one of the best philosophical
journals in our country. Since its foundation in 1996, Cadernos Nietzsche
has carried out two basic directives: produce for the Brazilian public highly
diverse readings of Nietzsche’s thought, offering an open space for the
confrontation of interpretations, and publish essays written by Brazilian
scholars as well as translations of foreign authors. Cadernos Nietzsche

features articles of both well-established researchers and postgradu-

ate students, thereby encouraging a dialogue between the generations of
Nietzsche scholarship. Cadernos Nietzsche has brought for the first time to
the Brazilian public authors from Germany, Austria, Italy, France, England,
the Netherlands, Portugal, the United States, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru,
Argentina, and Chile, including Werner Stegmaier, Giuliano Campioni,
Patrick Wotling, Paul van Tongeren, Diego Sánchez Meca, Richard Schacht,
Andreas Urs Sommer, Mazzino Montinari, and Jörg Salaquarda. For more
information, see www.cadernosnietzsche.unifesp.br.
Coleção Sendas & Veredas is a book collection created in 2000 in order
to stimulate and deepen Brazilian research on Nietzsche. It aims at bringing
to the Brazilian public important works on Nietzsche’s philosophy, essays
on the reception of his ideas within different countries, and texts of other
thinkers with whom he was in dialogue. Edited by Scarlett Marton, Sendas
& Veredas has published two titles yearly for the past fifteen years, among
them seminal works by international researchers such as Wolfgang Müller-
Lauter’s Nietzsche, seine Philosophie der Gegensätze und die Gegensätze seiner
Philosophie (2011), Patrick Wotling’s Nietzsche et le problème de la civilisation
(2013), and Giuliano Campioni’s Nietzsche e lo spirito latino (2016). Books
have also been published that treat the reception of Nietzsche’s thinking in
Germany (2005), Latin America (2006), Italy (2007), France (2009), and
Spain (2015). Welcoming different interpretative approaches to Nietzsche’s
thought, “without concession, exception, or bias,” Sendas & Veredas hopes
to enliven new interpretive possibilities.
Encontros Nietzsche has been a permanent forum for discussions
about Nietzsche’s philosophy since 1996. Organized twice a year (May and
September) in different Brazilian states, the meetings welcome our intel-
lectual partners from both national and international academic scenes.
In recent years Encontros Nietzsche has fostered discussions of the cur-
rent state of Nietzsche research. On the occasion of the thirty-third inter-
national conference in 2012, GEN welcomed Giuliano Campioni from
the Centro Interuniversitario Colli-Montinari di Ricerche su Nietzsche
and the Seminario Permanente Nietzscheano, Paul van Tongeren and
Hermann Siemens from the Nietzsche Research Group in Nijmegen, Tom
Bailey and Isabelle Wienand from the Groupe International de Recherches
sur Nietzsche (GIRN), Maria João Branco from Nietzsche International
Laboratory (NIL), and Mattia Riccardi from the Mind, Language and
GEN–Nietzsche Studies Group | 481
Action Group (MLAG), along with several Brazilian researchers. Instead

of just disclosing the results of completed research, participants presented
their works in progress. Thereby it was possible to both assess past achieve-
ments and discover the tasks that lie ahead for Nietzsche scholarship. And
that is a guiding principle as GEN continues to organize future conferences.
2. The Origins of GEN
Nietzsche Studies Group in Brazil started its activities in March 1989 in the
Philosophy Department of University of São Paulo (USP). For nearly five
years, the members carried out a structural and genetic analysis of Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, examining the concepts and strategies, the stylistic fig-
ures and images, and also searching the references to the history of philos-
ophy, the Christian religion, and the nineteenth-century cultural context.
Professor Marton and her circle, as part of a space devoted to thorough
education, did not lose sight of the relations between philosophy and cul-
ture more broadly. Their discussions always involved the arts and litera-
ture, music and cinema, theater and poetry; and the members’ own cultural
experiences were always shared. Without culture, after all, philosophy
devolves into mere technics.
Following the critical examination of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the group
turned to the conceptual analysis of Ecce Homo in 1994, and two years there-
after an analysis of the 1886 prefaces to Nietzsche’s republished works. The
group then evolved to discuss criticism and scholarly research on Nietzsche
in addition to his texts. Since many of those who participated in Professor
Marton’s circle would become educators themselves, the group naturally
multiplied into several individual cells throughout the country. Nietzsche
Studies Group in Brazil (GEN) was officially established in 1996 as a nation-
wide research group. And in recent years, it has started to gather French
and Italian researchers as well. Most recently, in 2015, CENBRA–Centro de
Estudos Nietzsche: Recepção no Brasil (Center for the Study of Nietzsche’s
Reception in Brazil) has joined GEN as well.
Although philosophical scholarship can be solipsistic, GEN strives in
the spirit of mutual support and solidarity. Embracing interdependence,
integrating diversity, and cultivating a sense of personal responsibility—
these are all practices that GEN is committed to developing. Swimming
against the tide of exclusion is already a manner of calling it into question;

sailing against the wind of competition is already a manner of fighting it.
3. The International Network of GEN
Since it was created, the Nietzsche Studies Group in Brazil has sought to
enlarge and strengthen its relations with the most important Nietzsche
research centers, including Sociedad Española de Estudios sobre
Friedrich Nietzsche (Spain), Centro Interuniversitario Colli-Montinari
(Italy), Nietzsche International Laboratory (Portugal), Stiftung Weimarer
Klassik (Germany), Internationale Nietzsche-Forschungsgruppe
Greifswald (Germany), Nietzsche Documentation Center in Naumburg
(Germany), and GIRN–Groupe International de Recherches sur Nietzsche
(Europhilosophie), directed by Giuliano Campioni, Patrick Wotling,
Werner Stegmaier, and Scarlett Marton.
4. Research Interests
Among the studies developed within the framework of the Nietzsche Studies
Group in Brazil, there are systematic works, explorations of Nietzsche’s cri-
tique of metaphysics and subjectivity, and examinations of his alternative
ethics of amor fati as well as the experimental character of his philosophy.
There are also immanent studies of Nietzsche’s writings, such as those
devoted to the question of Ecce Homo’s authorship or to the problem of civi-
lization in The Antichrist. Issues in the philosophy of biology and of political
philosophy are also taken into account, for example, the conceptual pirou-
ette necessary to rethink the very idea of democracy. Questions concern-
ing the theory of knowledge are considered too, such as those of causality,
perspectivism, or even the different conceptions of truth within Nietzsche’s
mature thought. Due attention is also given to themes related to the critique
of culture, such as Nietzsche’s analysis of nihilism, his diagnosis of nine-
teenth-century Germany, and his evaluation of modernity, and to those
concerning the critique of religion, such as his attack against Christianity
and the ascetic ideal. Methodologically, these studies showcase a range of
philosophical strategies, too, from analyses of his propositions to historical
approaches and criticisms of Nietzsche’s values. No doubt, the diversity of

perspectives and approaches has always been our greatest strength.
5. Biographical Notes on the Members of GEN
Clademir Luís Araldi is Associate Professor at the Federal University of

Pelotas. He earned his PhD from USP in 2002, with a dissertation on nihil-
ism, creation, and annihilation. Afterward he completed postdoctoral stud-
ies at Technische Universität Berlin in 2007–8 and 2014. He is a member of
GIRN and researcher in the fields of ethics and the history of modern and
contemporary philosophy, dealing with themes of moral criticism, geneal-
ogy, and naturalism.
Vânia Dutra de Azeredo is Professor in the Philosophy Department of the

State University of Paraná. She earned her PhD from USP in 2003, with
a dissertation on Nietzsche and the dissolution of morality, and pursued
her postdoctoral studies on ethics at the University of Caxias do Sul. She
is a member of GIRN and has coordinated Nietzsche’s GT ANPOF. She
published Nietzsche e a dissolução da moral (São Paulo, 2003), Nietzsche e
a aurora de uma nova ética (São Paulo, 2008), and Nietzsche e a condição
pós-moderna (São Paulo, 2013). Her current research themes involve gene-
alogy, values, and ethics.
Fernando Ribeiro de Moraes Barros is Professor of Philosophy at the Federal

University of Ceará. Working currently in aesthetics, he earned his PhD
from USP in 2005, with a dissertation on the musical thinking of Nietzsche.
He was recently guest researcher at the Deutsches Seminar at Universität
Freiburg, where he concluded his postdoctorate in 2014–15. He is author of
Estética filosófica para o ensino médio (Belo Horizonte, 2012), O pensamento
musical de Nietzsche (São Paulo, 2007), and A maldição transvalorada: o
problema da civilização em ‘O Anticristo’ de Nietzsche (São Paulo, 2002).
Blaise Benoit earned his PhD from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne

in 2006, with a dissertation on the problem of justice in Nietzschean
thought. He is a research fellow in the Atlantic Centre of Philosophy at the
University of Nantes, and a member of GIRN. He has written over twenty
articles about Nietzschean thought, several of which have been published in

Nietzsche-Studien and Cadernos Nietzsche.
Stefano Busellato earned his PhD in Cultural Science from the Scuola
Internazionale di Alti Studi San Carlo of Modena in 2005 and his PhD in
History of Philosophy from Università degli Studi of Macerata in 2008. He
did his postdoctoral studies at Università degli Studi di Siena on skepticism
in Nietzsche’s thought and he is currently studying Zarathustra with a post-
doctoral fellowship at USP. He is author and editor of several books, among
them Nietzsche e lo scetticismo. Momenti temi e fonti della scepsi nietzsche-
ana (Macerata, 2012); Tra la torre e i cammelli. Nietzsche a Pisa (Pisa, 2013,
with G. Campioni); Nietzsche dal Brasile. Contributi alla ricerca contempo-
ranea (Pisa, 2014); and Schopenhauer lettore di Spinoza. Le chiose all’Etica
(Macerata, 2015).
Eder Corbanezi is currently writing his PhD on the problematic relationship

between science and philosophy in Nietzsche at USP, under the supervision
of Scarlett Marton. He is a member of GIRN, and published “Considérations
sur les notions de texte et d’interprétation et sur leur rapport avec le rela-
tivisme chez Nietzsche,” in Nietzsche: un art nouveau du discours, ed. Denat
and Wotling (Reims, 2013); “Sulla concezione relazionale del linguaggio
in Nietzsche,” in Nietzsche dal Brasile. Contributi alla ricerca contempora-
nea, ed. Busellato (Pisa, 2014); and “On Nietzsche’s Relational Conception
of Language,” Cadernos Nietzsche 34 (2014). He translated “Nietzsche on
Eugenics and His Machiavellian Justification,” by Emmanuel Salanskis, in
Cadernos Nietzsche 32 (2013), and “From the Value of History to the History
of Values,” by Bertrand Binoche, in Cadernos Nietzsche 34 (2014).
Geraldo Pereira Dias is currently writing his PhD on the Brazilian recep-
tion of Nietzsche’s thought at the Federal University of São Paulo, under
the supervision of Ivo da Silva Júnior. He received his master’s degree in
philosophy from the same institution in 2013, with a dissertation titled
“Daybreak: Work of Transition in Nietzsche’s Philosophy?” He is a member
of CENBRA, and has published “Between Reformers and Reactionaries: The
Aesthetic and Political Reception of Nietzsche’s Work in the Brazilian Press
in the Period 1893–1945,” Cadernos Nietzsche 36 (2015); and “‘Nietzsche,
Brazilian Interpreter’? The Nietzschean Reception in the Brazilian Press
from São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro at the End of the XIX and Beginning of
XX Century,” Cadernos Nietzsche 35 (2014).
Wilson Antonio Frezzatti Jr. is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State

University of Paraná, and is Collaborating Professor at the State University
of Maringá. He earned his PhD from USP in 2004, with a dissertation on
the relationship between culture and biology in Nietzsche’s philosophy. He
undertook two postdoctoral studies: first, on Nietzsche’s philosophy and
French psychophysiology at the Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
in 2009–10, and, second, on the role of nutrition and reproduction in the
conception of life in nineteenth-century biology at the Federal University
of Santa Catarina in 2014–15. He is a member of GIRN, coordinator of
Nietzsche’s GT ANPOF, and coordinator of a research group on philos-
ophy, science, and nature in nineteenth-century Germany at the State
University of Western Paraná. He is author of Nietzsche contra Darwin (São
Paulo, 2014) and A fisiologia de Nietzsche: a superação da dualidade cultura/
biologia (Ijuí, 2006). He has published many articles on Nietzsche and is
currently working on the relationship between Nietzsche’s philosophy and
nineteenth-century biology and psychology, as well as diverse topics on
philosophy of biology.
André Luís Mota Itaparica has been Professor at the Federal University of
Recôncavo da Bahia since 2006. He earned his PhD from USP in 2003, with
a dissertation on the question of idealism and realism in Nietzsche’s phi-
losophy. He is author of Nietzsche: Estilo e Moral (São Paulo, 2001) and co-
editor with Márcio José Silveira Lima of Verdade e linguagem em Nietzsche
(Salvador, 2014), and has published several articles on Nietzsche.
Saulo Krieger is a PhD researcher at the Federal University of São Paulo,

currently writing a dissertation on psychology and consciousness in
Nietzsche’s philosophy, supervised by Ivo da Silva Júnior. His research
focus is the role of psychology in Nietzsche’s works, with an emphasis
on the appearance and fading out of a theory of consciousness in this
context. He has published articles on his research theme in specialized
journals.
Márcio José Silveira Lima has been Adjunct Professor at the Federal
University of Southern Bahia since 2014; before that he was professor at
the Federal University of Bahia from 2006 to 2014. He earned his PhD at
USP in 2010, with a dissertation on perspectivism and truth in Nietzsche’s
philosophy. He is editor-in-chief of Cadernos Nietzsche, author of As
máscaras de Dioniso: filosofia e tragédia em Nietzsche (São Paulo, 2006),
and also co-editor with André Luís Mota Itaparica of Verdade e linguagem
em Nietzsche (Salvador, 2010).
Scarlett Marton, Director of GEN, is Full Professor at the Philosophy

Department of University of São Paulo (USP). She earned her doctorate
from USP in 1988 with a dissertation titled “Nietzsche: On Cosmology
and Genealogy.” She founded GEN in 1996, founded the journal Cadernos
Nietzsche, and is the chief editor of Coleção Sendas & Veredas. She is author
of nine books published in Brazil, among them Nietzsche e a arte de decifrar
enigmas (São Paulo, 2014); Nietzsche, das forças cósmicas aos valores humanos
(Belo Horizonte, 2010); Nietzsche, filósofo da suspeita (Rio de Janeiro, 2010);
Extravagâncias: Ensaios sobre a filosofia de Nietzsche (São Paulo, 2009); A
irrecusável busca de sentido. Autobiografia intelectual (São Paulo, 2004).
And she is editor of six books, among them Nietzsche em chave hispânica
(São Paulo, 2015); Nietzsche, um “francês” entre franceses (São Paulo, 2009);
Nietzsche pensador mediterrâneo. A recepção italiana (São Paulo, 2007);
Nietzsche abaixo do Equador (São Paulo, 2006); and Nietzsche na Alemanha
(São Paulo, 2005). She has also published several articles in specialized
journals and several chapters in European and American anthologies. She
founded Nietzsche’s Brazil’s National Association of Post-Graduate Studies
in Philosophy (GT ANPOF) in 1998; and has co-directed with Stegmaier,
Wotling, and Campioni, the Groupe International de Recherches sur
Nietzsche (GIRN) since 2010.
João Evangelista Tude de Melo Neto is Professor at the Catholic University

of Pernambuco. He earned his doctorate from USP in 2013 with a disser-
tation on the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, the transvaluation of val-
ues, and the notion of tragic. He is a member of GIRN, and has published
several articles on Nietzsche in journals such as Cadernos Nietzsche, and
in several essay collections. He is currently working on the relationship
between Nietzsche and ancient philosophy.
Eduardo Nasser is a Postgraduate Researcher at the University of São

Paulo. He earned his PhD there in 2013, with a dissertation on the rela-
tion of time and the genesis of Nietzsche’s ontology. He is a member
of GIRN, and has published works on Nietzsche’s philosophy in Brazil
and abroad, including the book Nietzsche e a ontologia do vir-a-ser (São
Paulo, 2015).
Tiago Lemes Pantuzzi is a master’s degree researcher at the University of São

Paulo, currently writing on the beginnings of the reception of Nietzsche’s
thought in Brazil. He is a member of CENBRA and has published “Os juízos
de valor bom e mau, bom e ruim,” in Nietzsche e a interpretação, ed. Azerdo
and Silva (Curitiba, 2012).
Luís Eduardo Rubira is Professor in the Philosophy Department and also

in the Philosophy Postgraduate Program at the Federal University of
Pelotas. He earned his PhD from USP in 2009, and concluded his post-
doctoral studies at Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne in 2015
on the task of transvaluation in Nietzsche’s writing from August 1888 to
January 1889. He is a member of GIRN and author of Nietzsche: do eterno
retorno do mesmo à transvaloração de todos os valores (São Paulo, 2010).
He is currently investigating the meaning of the eternal return in the
Dionysos-Dithyramben.
Emmanuel Salanskis earned his doctorate from Université de Reims

Champagne-Ardenne in 2011, with a dissertation on Nietzsche’s concep-
tion of breeding. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at USP in 2013.
He is a postdoctoral researcher linked to the French Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique, a director of programs at the Collège International
de Philosophie, and also a member of GIRN. He recently published
Nietzsche (Paris, 2015), and several articles.
Ivo da Silva Júnior has been Associate Professor in the Philosophy

Department at UNIFESP (Federal University of São Paulo) since 2006. He
earned his PhD from USP in 2005, with a dissertation on Nietzsche and
the German culture, and finished his postdoctoral studies on Nietzsche’s
political philosophy at the Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne in
2010–11. He is the director of CENBRA, a member of GIRN, and editor-
in-chief of the journal Cadernos Nietzsche. He is author of Em busca de um
lugar ao sol: Nietzsche e a cultura alemã, filosofia e cultura (São Paulo, 2007)
and co-editor of Festschrift a Scarlett Marton (São Paulo, 2011). He has also
published several articles on Nietzsche in scientific journals and collections
of essays in Brazil, France, Italy, and Spain.
University of São Paulo

smarton@usp.br
Book Reviews
Martine Béland, Kulturkritik et philosophie thérapeutique

chez le jeune Nietzsche
Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2012. 404 pp. isbn :
978-2-7606-2289-0. Paperback, $34.95/€31.00.
Reviewed by Marta Faustino, IFILNOVA (Instituto de Filosofia da

Nova)/FCSH-UNL (msffaustino@gmail.com)
Martine Béland’s Kulturkritik et philosophie thérapeutique chez le jeune

Nietzsche is an important contribution to the scholarly literature on
Nietzsche in at least two respects. First, it exposes the therapeutic dimen-
sion of Nietzsche’s thought, which, despite recent interest (see especially
Michael Ure, Nietzsche’s Therapy: Self-Cultivation in the Middle Works [New
York: Lexington Books, 2008] and Horst Hutter and Eli Friedland, eds.,
Nietzsche’s Therapeutic Teaching [London: Bloomsbury, 2013]), is a topic
that remains largely unexplored. Second, it focuses on Nietzsche’s earliest
writings (the Basel period, 1869–79), which tend to be—with the notable
exception of The Birth of Tragedy—the least widely read of his texts and
those least commented on in Nietzsche scholarship.
The stated aim of the book is to unify and contextualize Nietzsche’s
early work within a central therapeutic concern with the culture of his time.
Connecting it with the Hellenistic conception of philosophy as medicine
for the soul, Béland claims that Nietzsche’s early philosophical project can
be identified as a “médecine philosophique pour la civilization allemande”
(19). According to Béland, this project takes the form of a Kulturkritik, ori-
ented toward the domains of education, literature, art, and knowledge in
general and aimed at a “transvaluation de la modernité” (20). Completely
at odds with the conception of philosophy practiced at the academy, this
project generated a conflict between Nietzsche’s job and his vocation, which

B O O K R E V I E W S | 489
eventually led him to quit the university and change the orientation of his
philosophical activity. This particular (practical, critical, and therapeutic)
understanding of philosophy, as well as its development in Nietzsche’s early
thought, is the main object of Béland’s book.
The volume is divided into four main parts, followed by an epilogue,
each of which corresponds to different levels of analysis of Nietzsche’s
activity as a “philosophical physician.” Part I, “Nietzsche à Bâle,” focuses
on the medical metaphor itself and seeks to describe it and contextualize
it within the texts written in Basel. It offers illuminating conceptual and
philological analysis not only of the expression “physician of culture” but
also of key interrelated concepts, such as Kultur, Bildung, and Civilization
(chapter 1). To these conceptual considerations, Béland adds information
on the biographical and historical background that helps to clarify the pro-
gressive development, orientation, and definition of Nietzsche’s practice as
a philosopher during his early years in Basel (chapter 2).
The second part of the book, “Symptomatologie,” is devoted to the
“descriptive level” (“plan descriptif ”) of Nietzsche’s project and describes
the methodology, diagnosis, and prognosis at its core. Focusing on the texts
from 1869 to 1876, Béland begins by analyzing Nietzsche’s “auscultation” of
culture, singling out the philological (interpretative) and the philosophi-
cal (normative) methods and stressing the similarity between Nietzsche’s
approach and the ancient Greek model (chapter 3). The three following
chapters are dedicated to the exposition of Nietzsche’s diagnosed symp-
tomatology at the level of politics (chapter 4), education (chapter 5), and
literature/language (chapter 6). According to Béland, each set of symptoms
manifests a certain imbalance of natural drives in the body of culture, the
role of the medical philosopher being to restore them to a healthy equilib-
rium. A final chapter anachronistically unifies the above symptoms under
the diagnosis of nihilism and presents the first steps of Nietzsche’s struggle
for the constitution of a new tragic and artistic culture (chapter 7).
The descriptive level is followed by the normative level (“plan norma-
tif ”) in part III, “Thérapie,” where Béland rightly emphasizes the active
dimension of Nietzsche’s early philosophy. The three chapters in this part
aim to clarify Nietzsche’s therapeutic and combative practice on three
different fronts. The first is the philological front, where Nietzsche is pre-
sented as struggling for the regeneration of German culture through Greek
Antiquity (chapter 8). On a second (musical) front, Nietzsche joins Wagner
to support the rejuvenation of tragic art in Germany (chapter 9). Finally,
490 | J o u r n a l o f Nie t z s c h e S t u d ies
Nietzsche is said to act on a pedagogical front by encouraging thorough

reform of the education system with the aim of restoring and promoting
the humanistic ideal of the classical model of education (chapter 10). The
expected prophylactic effect of these measures is, according to Béland, to
equilibrate the forces between knowledge and creation and to allow for the
rebirth of German spirit, and thus of authentic German culture.
The last part of the book, “Comment vivre en philosophe,” exposes the
reflexive level (“plan réflexif ”) of Nietzsche’s work in Basel by retracing
the process through which Nietzsche came to question the efficacy of his
early project, which ultimately led to a turning point in his philosophy.
The first chapter deals with several withdrawals that mark Nietzsche’s
career in Basel: the withdrawal from classical philology, from the polem-
ics surrounding his first writings, from the Wagnerian project, and finally
from the university (chapter 11). The second chapter exposes the two
main conflicts with which Nietzsche was confronted during his years in
Basel: on the one hand, the contrast between his job and his vocation (or
between public and private activity) and, on the other, the antagonism
between different types of philosophy (chapter 12). According to Béland,
Nietzsche’s ultimate dismissal of his professional and institutional activity
in 1879 shows not only that the public dimension of his early therapeutic
project had failed, but also that he had put into practice the ancient Greek
conception of philosophy as a practice directed toward knowledge and
therapy—not of culture, but of one’s own self: “le philosophe ne peut être
le médecin de la civilization . . . le philosophe doit plutôt se faire d’abord
médecin de soi” (366).
In the epilogue, Béland tries to ground this final thesis by reflecting on
the later development of Nietzsche’s thought in the 1880s. According to
Béland, this decade is shaped by Nietzsche’s progressive detachment from
the problem of culture in favor of a reorientation toward himself as a pri-
mary object of study: if the young Nietzsche in Basel was concerned with
the collective body of culture, the mature Nietzsche used philosophy as a
means of restoring health to his own private body (372). The philosopher’s
concentration on his own self might be a first precondition of his having
an effective philosophical impact on culture, but Béland notes that another
characteristic of Nietzsche’s mature thought is a growing disbelief in the
possibility that Western culture might recover. According to Béland, even
though a certain tension between an aesthetic (contemplative, private) and
political (active, public) orientation persists throughout Nietzsche’s entire
productive life, his early therapeutic project was definitely abandoned once
he left his public career in Basel.
This conclusion is not as convincing as the rest of the book, since it is
not at all clear that Nietzsche ever abandoned his therapeutic plans regard-
ing culture. It is true that Nietzsche retreated from institutional and openly
public activity, that he understood the inefficacy of his early Kulturkritik
for the recovery of German culture, that he was disappointed by the neg-
ative reception of his first work (and generally by the lack of good read-
ers throughout his life), and that his awareness of the difficulty of his task
grew exponentially following his first years in Basel. As a consequence, the
nature of his writings and philosophical activity does indeed also change
throughout the years, becoming more independent, personal, itinerant,
and, to some extent, private. But the fact that the specific means and form
of this project changed does not imply that its therapeutic aim changed as
well. In fact, most of the philological elements that Béland presents to sup-
port her attribution of a therapeutic project to the young Nietzsche—the
metaphor of the cultural physician, his concern for the sickness of culture,
the medical imagery centered on the pair sickness/health, the closeness of
his project to the Hellenistic therapeutic model of philosophy, his diagnosis
of “nihilism,” the idea of a “transvaluation of modernity,” among others—
are rather developed and intensified in Nietzsche’s mature thought. Indeed,
the scope of Nietzsche’s therapeutic project seems to be widened rather
than narrowed with the development of his thought: the target is no longer
Germany but Western culture as a whole; the field of intervention is no
longer limited to specific domains, such as art, language, and education, but
encompasses the whole system of values and beliefs; and the reorientation
toward the philosopher’s own body seems to serve as a means (of diagnosis,
experimentation, overcoming) rather than an end in itself.
Thus, what Béland interprets as a tension in Nietzsche’s mature thought
is no tension at all if one thinks of its aesthetic and political dimensions as
complementary rather than contradictory, as in fact they should be, con-
sidering Nietzsche’s own expectations of future philosophy. In a famous
passage from On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche, referring to “the
redeeming man,” clearly explains the correlation between them: “solitude
will be misunderstood by the people as though it were flight from reality—:
whereas it is just his way of being absorbed, buried and immersed in reality
so that from it, when he emerges into the light again, he can return with the
redemption of this reality” (GM II:24). Nietzsche’s conception of the “new
philosophers” does not seem far from this ideal, and the fact that Nietzsche
preserved his prophylactic and revolutionary plans regarding culture is
proven by “the most comprehensive responsibility” (BGE 61) that Nietzsche
ascribes to them in Beyond Good and Evil, as Béland herself recognizes
toward the end of the book, although she interprets it as part of the conflict
that she detects in Nietzsche’s late philosophy. It may be that Nietzsche’s
conception of philosophy remained more stable than Béland suggests, and
his “great politics,” together with the “transvaluation of all values,” is simply
the final and ultimate form of his lifelong therapeutic project, the roots of
which Béland so acutely identifies and illuminates.
These reservations about Béland’s reading of the further development
of Nietzsche’s mature thought aside, the book is certainly worth reading
and studying; it is written with a high level of rigor, clarity, and mastery of
the sources and provides an erudite account of their historical and cultural
background. All in all, the book certainly fills an important gap in Nietzsche
studies and will hopefully encourage further research on the topic.
Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Ethics and Politics

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 328 pp. isbn : 978-0199371846.
Cloth, $65.00.
Reviewed by Jonathan Mitchell, University of Warwick

(Jonathan.Mitchell@warwick.ac.uk)
Maudemarie Clark is best known among Nietzsche scholars for two

monographs, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990) and The Soul of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), the second coauthored
with David Dudrick. The focus of these works was metaphysical-cum-
epistemological, in the first instance distinguishing Nietzsche’s views on
truth from the (at the time) popular association with postmodernism,
in the second providing an “esoteric” rereading of book 1 of BGE in an
attempt to rebuff central aspects of naturalistic readings like that of Brian
Leiter (Nietzsche on Morality, 2nd ed., London: Routledge, 2015). The
present collection of fourteen essays surveys Clark’s views on a different
range of topics under the heading of “Ethics and Politics.” While there is
something of interest in each chapter, this review considers three of the

most thought-provoking contributions.
Chapter 3, “Nietzsche’s Contribution to Ethics” (originally published
in 2010), begins by examining how we should understand Nietzsche’s
self-characterization as an “immoralist” in a way that can make sense of
the fact that his writings provide ethical recommendations. It is now fairly
commonplace that if we are to resolve the issue of the “scope” of Nietzsche’s
critical project, a distinction has to be made between the morality he is
opposed to and some alternative ethical outlook he is in favor of. However,
something that remains problematic is how to define morality in the sense
that Nietzsche is opposed to it. Here Clark engages with Leiter’s influential
reading that specifies the critical object as “morality in the pejorative
sense” (MPS), a piecemeal tapestry of substantive normative commit-
ments such as the promotion of happiness and the avoidance of suffer-
ing, and argues that Nietzsche’s fundamental objection to MPS is the way
in which the norms characteristic of it are inimical to the flourishing of
nascent higher-types (cf. Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality, 58–61, 91–110). Clark
suggests that there is the potential for a gap to emerge between some of
the norms characteristic of MPS for Leiter and certain prima facie features
of morality as traditionally understood. For example, MPS is said to pro-
mote the norms of avoiding suffering and promoting happiness, yet this
is not obviously true of the ascetic morality Nietzsche describes in On the
Genealogy of Morality.
Clark’s alternative is to provide a “historical account of morality”
(65), which finds some of the components of the phenomena Nietzsche is
opposed to in the three essays of the Genealogy: the evaluative framework
of slave morality, a moralized form of bad conscience involving guilt, and
the ascetic ideal. However, one worry is that this approach might exclude
from Nietzsche’s “critique of morality” ethical standpoints not obviously
involving these features (and certainly not the conjunction of them all). For
example, one might think of utilitarianism or Aristotelianism, which are
lambasted as instances of “Morality as Timidity” in section 198 of Beyond
Good and Evil. Presumably it is the sheer variety of ideas that Nietzsche
brings under the umbrella of his critique of morality that motivates a heu-
ristic definition like Leiter’s.
Finally, Clark’s own suggestion concerning Nietzsche’s objection to
morality is that he considers it “not adequate medicine for the sickness it was
meant to cure” (5). The “sickness” Clark is referring to is that of socialized
human beings no longer able to freely express aggressive instincts—that is,

the “bad conscience” of GM II. Morality, under the direction of the ascetic
priests, offers a solution to this, redirecting those aggressive instincts
against the self, and using the notions of guilt and responsibility to provide
such activity with meaning. However, once the notion of a divine being is
introduced, and as a consequence one’s nature is interpreted as inexpiably
guilty, any lasting resolution to this “sickness” is rendered impossible; one is
“sick” by nature. Now, this might be Nietzsche’s view about the way in which
moralization intensifies the psychological mechanisms of bad conscience.
But that it is his ultimate objection to morality is not so clear. Recall his
claim that despite the fact that the ascetic ideal made such suffering “deeper,
more internal, more poisonous . . . it brought all suffering within the per-
spective of guilt . . . man was saved, he had a meaning” (GM III:28). So, if at
least part of what Nietzsche thinks man “suffers” (his “sickness”) is a lack
of meaning, then for those “slaves” who lack the strength (and historically
lacked the means) for alternatives, morality does provide something of a
medicine, albeit a bittersweet one. In this sense, morality per se might not
be “good” for the slaves, but it is a less bad alterative for such types than “not
willing anything at all” (GM III:28).
Chapter 4, “Nietzsche on Free Will, Causality, and Responsibility”
(published here for the first time), attributes to Nietzsche a type of com-
patibilism about free will and moral responsibility. The main body of the
essay provides a reading of section 21 of Beyond Good and Evil, arguing
against Leiter’s claim that this passage supports his view of Nietzsche as
a non-libertarian incompatibilist (cf. Nietzsche on Morality, 69–81). Clark
begins by agreeing with Leiter that in this passage Nietzsche rejects as erro-
neous any libertarian conception of free will. But she proceeds to discuss
what Nietzsche could mean when he says that we should also do away with
the notion of an “unfree will,” and that this notion involves a “misuse” of
cause and effect (BGE 21). Here Clark rejects Leiter’s claim that this can
be explained by Nietzsche’s commitment to neo-Kantian skepticism about
causation, according to which causality is an a priori category of cognition
which we bring to objects, and not characteristic of “things in themselves.”
Clark argues against this, claiming that the “in itself ” in this passage should
be read as referring to the empirical world contrasted with the world of val-
ues, emotions, and so on, rather than the Kantian “thing in itself.” Once we
accept this, Clark claims that the “reification” of cause and effect Nietzsche
claims to be typical of belief in an “unfree will” is in fact indicative of a
view of causation as necessary connection. The point of this is to attribute

to Nietzsche the Humean claim that belief in determinism does not involve
belief in necessary compulsion, such that the fact that our actions are caused
does not mean they are “forced.” So when we think that the causal determi-
nation of behavior rules out freedom and responsibility, we are implicitly
holding the wrong picture of causality (88).
This is a persuasive reading, but worries about Clark’s account arise
from how focused it is on this particular passage of Beyond Good and Evil,
one that, as her debate with Leiter shows, does not wear its meaning on
its sleeve. One suspects that Nietzsche’s views in the passage are not fully
developed, and that any view that it is possible to extract from it should
therefore be attributed to him only on the basis of other supporting textual
evidence. Still, if Clark could adduce such additional evidence for her view
of Nietzsche as a Humean compatibilist, then that would be a significant
result.
Moving on from the “Ethics” section, the most substantive contribu-
tion under the “Politics” heading is chapter 9, “Nietzsche’s Antidemocratic
Rhetoric” (originally published in 1999). Here Clark argues that we should
resist reading those passages most pregnant with political implications,
like the chapter “What Is Noble?,” in Beyond Good and Evil, as evidence
of Nietzsche’s commitment to aristocratic political institutions. She begins
with the standard view that Nietzsche rejects both modern liberal ideas and
the political institutions that support them, blaming such “democratic poli-
tics” for making men “small, cowardly, and hedonistic” (TI “Skirmishes of an
Untimely Man” 38). As a response Nietzsche is supposed to propose a future
aristocracy, which aims at cultivating the “highest human beings” through
aristocratic political institutions that are ruled over by his new philosophers.
Clark argues that none of the relevant passages from BGE motivate this
interpretation. According to her, Nietzsche does not explicitly claim (a) that
philosophers of the future should have political power, (b) that these phi-
losophers should impose their values on society, or (c) that the political
structure of this future aristocratic society should itself be aristocratic.
Concerning (a) Clark provides a reading of section 257 of Beyond Good
and Evil, which distinguishes between Nietzsche’s account of what origi-
nally makes “enhancements” of the human spirit possible in terms of the
pathos of distance in actual political aristocracies, and what is required now
for the “enhancement of the type man” (176). Yet, in denying (c) that the
political structure of this future aristocratic society should be aristocratic,
Clark is claiming something counterintuitive. After all, what is it that con-

stitutes an aristocratic society if not, at least in part, aristocratic institutions,
at least some of which would be political? Clark answers that what makes a
society aristocratic for Nietzsche is its “underlying value orientation” (171),
and more specifically a belief that “the ultimate value or telos of human
society lies in the higher types of human being it makes possible” (173).
What is said to be problematic about democracy is that it undermines belief
in a categorical difference of value between persons, and therefore is inim-
ical to the development of those “highest states of the soul,” which require
some such pathos of distance (BGE 257).
This raises the question of whether democracy does undermine
such striving for excellence. According to Clark, Nietzsche is not mak-
ing the implausible claim that democratic societies stop people realizing
excellences per se, but rather insisting that a society in which the ideal of
democracy, and a certain kind of equality between persons, dominates as
ideology (that is, regardless of whether the society itself realizes genuine
equality) results in a debasement of “our standards of what constitutes
success and excellence” (176). Clark’s explanation for this is that a society
dominated by a democratic ideology is likely to recognize only those values
(and “states of the soul”) that are at least in principle achievable (or possi-
bly experienceable) by all (177). On this basis, Clark is then able to suggest
that Nietzsche wrote these sections of BGE in awareness of a distinction
between democratic political institutions, to which he was not explicitly
opposed, and democratic values or “democratic ideology,” which he does
think is incompatible with the kind of striving and human excellence he
wants to promote.
Overall, this collection of essays presents a comprehensive account of
Clark’s thinking about a number of issues in Nietzsche’s thought. The writ-
ing is lucid, and her attention to the detail of the texts is admirable. While
I have focused on what I consider to be the most interesting contributions,
there are others that would have also warranted comment—indeed, every
essay from the “Ethics” section deserves to be read carefully. However,
it bears noting that a number of essays from the “Politics” section have
dated. This is not to say the views that Clark expresses in them are any less
persuasive—in fact, it might be precisely because her rebuttals to some, at
times inane, misinterpretations of Nietzsche are so convincing (see “Bloom
and Nietzsche,” “Nietzsche’s Misogyny,” and “On Queering Nietzsche”) that
these debates are no longer at the forefront of Nietzsche studies.
Two further positive features of this contribution should be noted.

First, Clark’s awareness, displayed in every chapter, of the ways in which
Nietzsche’s thought develops is exceptional. Second, her willingness to
reexamine her own previous interpretations, scrutinizing them in just as
much detail as those of other interpreters, exhibits an anti-dogmatic streak
that is welcome. In closing, I think at the very least that the chapters high-
lighted in this review should be read by all with an interest in these debates,
and that they will no doubt generate much further discussion.
Matthew Meyer, Reading Nietzsche Through the Ancients:

An Analysis of Becoming, Perspectivism, and the Principle of
Non-Contradiction
Boston: De Gruyter, 2014. xiii + 304 pp. isbn : 9781934078419.
Cloth, $127.00.
Reviewed by Joel E. Mann, St. Norbert College

(joel.mann@snc.edu)
For some years, Matthew Meyer has labored at a comprehensive interpre-

tation of Nietzsche’s oeuvre that understands his philosophical and literary
output as a revival of a particularly (and particular) Greek mode of thought.
This volume represents the culmination of much, but not all, of this previ-
ous work, and it serves also as a promise of future work in the same vein.
The title, Reading Nietzsche Through the Ancients, is therefore a trifle mis-
leading: Meyer is not reading all of Nietzsche through all the ancients, but
only some of Nietzsche through some of them. That is all for the good, so
far as I am concerned, since I am usually suspicious of ambitions to resolve
Nietzsche’s debt to antiquity in a single study.
Which Nietzsche, then, and which ancients? Meyer reads Nietzsche’s
ontology and epistemology by the ancient fire of Heraclitus and Protagoras.
Nietzsche’s infatuation with these two figures—one hesitates to say “phi-
losophers,” but more on that momentarily— at various points in his
career is well documented, if not well understood or received. I must
confess at the outset a deep sympathy for just this sort of project, which I
myself have wanted for years to undertake but have found myself unable,
resigned instead to nibbling around the edges of Nietzsche scholarship,
gesturing dumbly at textual parallels and suggestive imagery. After poring

over Meyer’s book, I understand better why this is the case. Like Meyer, I
have grown up under the tutelage of Nietzsche’s analytic interpreters, who
seek to return Nietzsche to respectability among the professional philoso-
phy crowd. At the same time, many of these interpreters play up Nietzsche’s
infatuation with the bad boys of the Western intellectual tradition. So Brian
Leiter, who defends what Meyer calls a “point-of-view” version of perspec-
tivism that privileges science as a route to real facts about the world. This
version is grounded in a vision of Nietzsche as a naturalist, and Nietzsche’s
evident passion for the Greek sophists is attributed to a reverence for his
irreverent naturalist progenitors. This is not wrong, exactly, though the
sophists have historically been associated with epistemological relativism,
and relativism is usually thought to be incompatible with naturalism, which
typically grants epistemic privilege to the results of the natural sciences.
Leiter is adamant that Nietzsche’s interest in the sophists has nothing to
do with relativism, and he leans on scholarship that tends to downplay the
sophists’ relativistic streak. But while it is true that the sophists have been
subject to more merciful and nuanced treatment by recent commentators,
few such commentators would deny that, of all the sophists, one stands out
as a flagrant and unrepentant relativist: Protagoras of Abdera. As Leiter and
Meyer recognize, and as I have harped on in a few papers, Protagoras is the
sophist nearest and dearest to Nietzsche’s heart. (See Brian Leiter, Nietzsche
on Morality [London: Routledge, 2002], 39–53 and 106–8; Meyer 24–33 and
153–58; Joel E. Mann, “Nietzsche’s Interest and Enthusiasm for the Greek
Sophists,” Nietzsche-Studien 32 [2003]: 406–28; and Getty Lustila and Joel E.
Mann, “A Model Sophist: Nietzsche on Protagoras and Thucydides,” Journal
of Nietzsche Studies 42 [2011]: 51–72.)
This leaves respectable analytic interpreters of Nietzsche with nothing
but hard choices. We can, like Leiter, acknowledge the sophistic affinities
but mute the relativism. Or we can follow the lead of Thomas Brobjer,
who denies the affinities themselves. (See “Nietzsche’s Disinterest and
Ambivalence toward the Greek Sophists,” International Studies in Philosophy
23 [2001]: 5–23; and his response to my 2003 essay in “Nietzsche’s Relation
to the Greek Sophists,” Nietszche-Studien 34 [2005]: 255–76.) I have misgiv-
ings about both of these options (especially the latter) and so have spent
the past few years fumbling about in the dark for traces of a third way.
Meyer, meanwhile, has been blazing his own trail: using Plato’s refuta-
tion of the homo mensura in the Theaetutus and Aristotle’s defense of the
principle of non-contradiction in the Metaphysics, he has reconstructed a

“Protaclitean” framework for Nietzsche’s ontology and epistemology. The
result is a first-order relativism (perspectivism) that emanates from a rela-
tional ontology, that is, a relativism that leaves some room (at the second
order) for non-relative facts established by certain theories on offer from
the natural sciences.
Can Meyer make it work? He divides the project, and thus the book, into
seven parts: an introduction, five chapters of argument, and an epilogue. In
the introduction, he lays out with admirable candor and detail the princi-
ples he will apply in interpreting Nietzsche’s corpus, including his position
on what exactly counts as such. On this question, Meyer strives for a mean
between the analytic tendency to dismiss much, if not most (if not all), of
Nietzsche’s Nachlass material and the Continental quest to discover therein
an image of the “real” Nietzsche. Meyer opts instead to follow the “prior-
ity principle,” namely, the view that “Nietzsche’s positions in the published
works have priority over those in the Nachlass . . . and that the primary
but not exclusive value of the Nachlass consists in helping the interpreter
explain and expand upon the view expressed in the published works” (17).
This strikes me as an utterly reasonable attempt at reconciling the two sides.
Indeed, moderation is the virtue of Meyer’s interpretive sensibilities: he
seeks balance between the developmental trajectories described by analytic
commentators, who prefer the “mature” Nietzsche of the later works, and
a unified view—more common among Continental c ommentators—that
understands Nietzsche’s early work as programmatic. There are real devel-
opments in Nietzsche’s project, on Meyer’s account, but mainly at the liter-
ary level. Nietzsche’s basic philosophical position remains fixed: from early
on, and for the rest of his career, he endorses a “tragic philosophy” rooted
in an ontology of dynamic relations (19).
By “ontology of dynamic relations,” Meyer means the view that there
are no self-identical, unified, and independent beings possessing intrinsic
properties (58). His goal is to show (1) that Nietzsche extracts this ontology
from Greek philosophy; (2) that Nietzsche accepts this ontology through-
out his career; (3) that this ontology underwrites Nietzsche’s perspectivism;
and (4) that the results of the natural sciences, properly practiced, under-
write this ontology. All five of Meyer’s chapters contribute to all four of
these theses in interesting and unique ways, although some chapters con-
tribute more to some theses than others. In the first chapter, “Becoming,
Being, and the Problem of Opposites in Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the
Greeks,” Meyer makes his bid to establish thesis 1. But further support for
thesis 1 is meant to follow also from his second and fourth chapters—titled,
respectively, “Aristotle’s Defense of the Principle of Non-Contradiction in
Metaphysics IV” and “Heraclitean Becoming and Protagorean Perspectivism
in Plato’s Theaetetus.” Chapter 3, “Naturalism, Becoming, and the Unity of
Opposites in Human, All Too Human,” and chapter 5, “Heraclitean Becoming,
Protagorean Perspectivism, and the Will to Power in Beyond Good and Evil,”
both bolster the case for thesis 2, although the former also serves thesis 4 and
the latter thesis 3.
All this sounds terribly complicated, but it really is not. Meyer wants to
convince his readers that Plato and Aristotle, whatever their differences, are
allied against common enemies: the relationalist ontology of Heraclitus and
the relativist epistemology of Protagoras. Nietzsche’s philosophical project
is to take up the gauntlet and advocate these historically discarded posi-
tions in an attempt to return to an early Greek—that is to say, tragic—way
of looking at the world. He is helped in this both by Ruggero Giuseppe
Boscovich’s physics (considered closely in Meyer’s third chapter) and
Gustav Teichmüller’s metaphysics and epistemology (treated at length in
the fifth). Once we understand how relationalism and relativism were con-
nected both in antiquity and in the modern era, we will understand how
and why Nietzsche adopts them with such enthusiasm in his own work.
Many of the arguments adduced by Meyer are elaborate and the evidence
painstakingly piled up; I find myself wanting to be persuaded by quite a bit
of what he writes. But still I balk. Meyer observes, quite rightly, that both
Aristotle and Plato lump together not only the “doctrines” of Heraclitus and
Protagoras, but also that of Cratylus—the view that meaningful language is
impossible and ought therefore to be abandoned (189–91). There is no con-
stancy or persistence in the beings to which language refers, according to the
relationalist ontology, and so every attempt at linguistic description necessar-
ily falsifies the world it aims to represent. As many recent commentators have
pointed out, Nietzsche appears to embrace a similar falsification thesis, espe-
cially early in his career. But Meyer argues, contrary to some of these com-
mentators, that Nietzsche never rejects the falsification thesis. It is, on Meyer’s
interpretation, part and parcel of Nietzsche’s tragic philosophy (118, 222–32).
There is a satisfying symmetry to the picture. Nietzsche picks up the
fallen flags of Heraclitus, Protagoras, and Cratylus in a revolution against
Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle. Heraclitus’ flux becomes Nietzsche’s rela-
tionalism; Protagoras’ relativism becomes Nietzsche’s perspectivism; and
Cratylus’ linguistic quietism becomes Nietzsche’s falsification thesis. None

of this, however, should comfort the naturalist, especially Meyer, who sees
in Boscovich’s physics the source of scientific, objective truth that Nietzsche
needs to justify his ontology. For, on Meyer’s understanding of the falsifica-
tion thesis, Nietzsche holds that all language, logic, and number necessarily
falsify reality (222–32). But scientific theories, including even a physics of
dynamic force, are expressed in linguistic, logical, and mathematical terms.
The problem this poses for Meyer’s interpretation, particularly for thesis 4
above, is as obvious as it is devastating.
It is often forgotten that Protagoras, for all his uncompromising empir-
icism and bold agnosticism, was overtly hostile to the sciences. Aristotle
memorializes a famous argument Protagoras made in refutation of geom-
etry, and Plato reports that Protagoras published a work that taught lay-
men how to publicly embarrass scientific experts (Metaphysics 997b–998a4;
Sophist 232d–e). In the light of these lesser-known parts of the Protagorean
project, the “mature” Nietzsche’s insistence (meticulously documented by
Meyer, especially at 244–59) that scientific theories, too, falsify reality takes
on an ominous glow.
Christian Niemeyer, Sigmar Stopinski, Caroline Eisold, Sven

Werner, and Sandra Wesenberg, eds., Friedrich Nietzsche:
Neue Wege der Forschung
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2014. 262 pp. isbn :
978-3-5342-6449-0. Paperback, €29.95.
Reviewed by Anna Barth, Humboldt University of Berlin

(anna.barth@gruv.de)
According to Christian Niemeyer, professor of social education in Dresden,

Germany, we are currently witnessing “a crisis of overproduction” in
Nietzsche research. For several years, an “actual Nietzsche industry” has
provided “a plethora of introductions, commentaries, monographs, read-
ers, and editions for an apparently still hungry audience” (10). Though
acknowledging that there are many important books among them,
Niemeyer, first, deplores the fact that many “postmodern” interpreters mis-
take Nietzsche’s programmatic lack of system as carte blanche for ignoring
scholarly methods and thereby arbitrarily producing a “highly idiosyncratic

Nietzsche” (16). Second, he harshly criticizes two prominent “schools” of
German scholarship that are dominated by the philosophical “gate keepers”
of Nietzsche research (9), namely Volker Gerhardt and Werner Stegmaier.
Niemeyer complains that they, along with their many doctoral students,
ignore or refuse to discuss alternative methods and readings of Nietzsche.
His third point of criticism is directed against Anglo-American research,
which, in his perception, fails to consult the critical edition of Nietzsche’s
letters as well as the early German publishing history of Nietzsche’s works
and correspondences.
Therefore, Niemeyer and his (former) assistants have selected ten
essays that they consider conform to the rules of good scholarly practice
and represent the most relevant approaches to Nietzsche research. The arti-
cles, mainly of German-language scholarship, were written over the course
of the past thirty years and mostly published in Nietzsche-Studien and
Nietzscheforschung. They are arranged under five headings, beginning with
“Biographically Oriented Research.” In his foreword, Niemeyer emphasizes
the importance of considering Nietzsche’s biography in order to interpret
his work. As I agree with him on this point, I find his selection most unfor-
tunate, since both opening essays confuse biographically oriented herme-
neutics with the questionable method of arbitrary psychologism.
In her 1995 essay “The Alchemists’ Trick to Make Gold from Feces,” Pia
Daniela Volz deals with the “special odor” (43) in Nietzsche’s use of met-
aphors. She points out that Nietzsche deems human beings omnivorous
animals that greedily devour whatever they find tasty and useful. Though
physically disgusted by their excrements, Nietzsche observes them being
mentally quite generous and shameless: “We dung mankind with the undi-
gested matters of our mind and experience” (KSA 9:14[13]). Thus, Nietzsche
warns against “dyspeptic authors who only write when they cannot digest
something” and “try unconsciously to disgust the reader” (AOM 152). By
contrast, “writing should always indicate a victory, indeed a conquest of
oneself which must be communicated to others for their benefit” (AOM
152). Nietzsche illustrates the difficulties of this self-conquest by means of a
literary dialogue. In The Gay Science, he gives insight into his struggle with
“nature’s call” of all writing, with which he is “annoyed or ashamed” (GS 93).
Volz interprets these metaphors as symptoms of Nietzsche’s “regres-
sion toward pre-genital, oral, and anal stages” (49). After the outbreak of
the “progressive paralysis,” his latent “coprophilia” utterly broke through.
She confirms her diagnosis by means of the patient register of the Jena
psychiatric clinic, according to which Nietzsche smeared his excrements,
wrapped them in paper, put them into drawers, and even ate them. Applying
Freud’s theory of the “developmental-psychological significance of the anal
complex” to “the psychodynamics” of Nietzsche’s “psychosexual develop-
ment” (48), Volz infers that the early loss of his father caused Nietzsche’s
“neurotic depression” and the “inability to evolve a mature object love” in
terms of a “sexually satisfying relationship.” His “emotional ambiguities”
after the “unfortunate outcome of the Lou-affair” drove him “close to sui-
cide” and forced him into the “desperate search for a creative solution” (49).
Volz demonstrates this by means of a letter to Franz Overbeck from
1882, wherein Nietzsche says that he would be lost if he did not invent the
alchemists’ trick of making gold from feces (cf. KSB 6, p. 312). Given that
the transmutation of inferior material to gold was the most prominent aim
of alchemy, it is surprising that Volz does not take into account Nietzsche’s
choice of words, which, after all, she took as the title of her article. In my
eyes, a further hint that points to the importance of Nietzsche’s “alchemistic”
goal of writing is given in his Zarathustra. Twice his “devil and archenemy,”
the “spirit of gravity,” addresses Zarathustra as a “stone of wisdom” (Z III:
“The Vision and the Enigma” 1), which represents the missing medium for
the alchemistic creation of gold. Although Volz delivers an interesting and
unusual text selection, she pays more attention to the alleged impact of the
author’s mental disorders than to the text itself.
The same occurs in Sander L. Gilman’s article, “Heine, Nietzsche, and
the Idea of the Jew,” which was published in Jacob Golomb’s 1997 collec-
tion, Nietzsche and Jewish Culture. Based on the abstruse assumption that
“the function of the ‘Jews’ in all of their stereotypical representation . . .
was to externalize many of the qualities associated with Nietzsche’s psy-
chic life” (58), he means to investigate “what Nietzsche understood by the
generalized terms ‘Jews’ or ‘Semite’ or ‘Hebrew’” (54). The terms remain
totally unspecified, though. Instead, Gilman makes psychological specula-
tions about the death of Nietzsche’s father and his “syphilitic infection” (57),
and he puts forward the dubious thesis that “[s]exuality and corruption, the
idea of the woman, form the centerpiece for Nietzsche’s understanding of
the Jew” (73).
At its core, the essay sketches Nietzsche’s changing attitude toward
Heinrich Heine, which Gilman explains by two principles at war within
Nietzsche: “the hidden Teuton” (72) and “the hidden Jew, the stigma of
disease and madness” (74). Apart from the fact that Gilman’s argument is
generally hard to follow, I especially regard his uncritical use of words as
unacceptable in critical research. Formulations like “the pathology of the
Jews” (58), “this damn Jew” (59), “the evil essence of Jewishness,” “the rab-
binical sophistries” (73), and the “arch-Jew” (63, 75) leave it to the reader’s
good will to distinguish between Gilman’s rhetoric and his sarcastic imita-
tion of nineteenth-century anti-Semitism.
The second chapter, “Source Criticism and Editing Policies,” contains
Hans-Erich Lampl’s 1986 essay, “Ex Oblivione: The Féré Palimpsest,” and
Dieter Fuchs’s 1997 “Will to Power. The Birth of the ‘Main Work’ from the
Spirit of the Nietzsche Archive.” The good thing about Lampl’s article is
that he provides further scholarly thought regarding Nietzsche’s response
to Charles Féré, a nineteenth-century French physician and scientist deal-
ing with the physio-psychological conditions of “normal” and “abnormal”
individuals. Disappointing is that any given information is next to incom-
prehensible due to Lampl’s turgid and unclear diction.
By contrast, Dieter Fuchs convinces with exemplary precision. He puts
Nietzsche’s theorem and abandoned literary project “Will to Power” in quo-
tation marks, while notating Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche’s falsified compila-
tion of her brother’s manuscripts in italics. By comparing Nietzsche’s notes
and the “dubious text recycling” (112) that his sister made along with Peter
Gast, Fuchs examines their editing of the text that “enabled Nietzsche’s uti-
lization for the people and fatherland” (109). With many examples, he first
shows that Förster-Nietzsche’s deliberate alterations contain the elimina-
tion of all explicit disparagements of religion, church, and Reich, as well
as the misogynist, the anti-anti-Semitic, and the anti-idealistic attacks.
Second, Fuchs demonstrates how these excised fragments were system-
atically arranged in order to present Nietzsche’s notes as his posthumous
“theoretic-philosophical main prose work” (so Förster-Nietzsche in her
foreword of the Will to Power edition from 1906), which still shapes the
image of Nietzsche’s philosophy today, due to uncritical reprints and quota-
tion, especially in Anglo-American scholarship.
The third section, “Source Research,” contains articles by Jörg
Salaquarda and Andreas Urs Sommer, both published in 2000. While
Sommer debates “The Uses and Disadvantages of Critical Source Research”
in general, Salaquarda analyzes “Friedrich Nietzsche and the Bible with
Particular Regard to Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” Salaquarda attests that most
of Nietzsche’s current readers are not as well versed in the Bible as Nietzsche
could have expected from his contemporary audience. Consequently,

researchers do not sufficiently take into account the many biblical allusions
and quotations in Nietzsche’s work, especially in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Although Salaquarda observes a huge interest in source research among
many Nietzsche scholars, he misses the transfer of both the results and
methods of the historic-critical research of biblical studies. According to
biblical exegesis, Salaquarda pleads for “literary hermeneutics,” which com-
bines the philological insights of Nietzsche’s work with the reader’s own
“life experience” (144).
The forth section addresses the “Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Works.” In
his 1996 essay, “The Fable of the World as Fable,” Niemeyer offers a reinter-
pretation of the prominent section, “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became
a Fable” from Twilight of the Idols. Against the predominant, “pessimis-
tic” interpretation that Nietzsche therein negated both the “true” and any
“apparent” world, Niemeyer presents a more “optimistic Nietzsche” (164)
by means of reading his fable section in the context of The Gay Science’s
dictum: “There is another world to discover—and more than one! On to the
ships, you philosophers!” (GS 289). The most recent article in this volume
is Heinrich Detering’s 2009 essay, “Sing Me a New Song.” It is a preliminary
work for his 2011 monograph, The Antichrist and the Crucified, in which he
explores Nietzsche’s so-called madness letters.
The last two essays fall under the title “Research on Reception and Impact.”
Whereas Harald Lemke’s 2000 essay considers Nietzsche’s “Critical Theory
as Ethics,” Weaver Santaniello provides “A Post-Holocaust Re-examination
of Nietzsche and the Jews vis-à-vis Christendom and Nazism,” which was
also published in Golomb’s collection mentioned above. In this excellent
study, Santaniello points out the fundamental importance of the distinc-
tion between the nineteenth-century’s “Christian and anti-Christian anti-
Semitism” (201). Indeed, her terminological differentiation helps examine
the complex phenomenon of Nietzsche’s anti-Christian anti-anti-Semitism,
which has led to misinterpretations ever since. Within his “mature writ-
ings,” Santaniello convincingly shows that Nietzsche’s ambivalent attitude
toward Judaism is due to his double opposition toward two different types
of anti-Semitism. I strongly recommend this essay to any scholar dealing
with Nietzsche’s relation to religion, race, or politics.
The volume concludes with a selective bibliography of anthologies,
encyclopedias, annuals, source editions, introductions, and registers of
secondary literature about Nietzsche in general and his published works
in particular. Unfortunately, a subject and name index is missing, as are

notes on the contributors. Not all articles meet the standard of quality
that Niemeyer emphasizes in his foreword. Because of the variety of issues
addressed and methods applied, this collection is nonetheless useful for all
who seek “orientation in the dense jungle of Nietzsche research.”
George J. Stack, Nietzsche’s Anthropic Circle: Man, Science,

and Myth
Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005. xv + 271 pp. isbn :
1-58046-191-3. Hardcover, $65.00.
Reviewed by Peter Murray, Independent scholar

(pdurnomurray@yahoo.com.au)
The central claim of George J. Stack’s Nietzsche’s Anthropic Circle is that

Nietzsche becomes trapped in a vicious or “anthropic” circle insofar as
he makes exaggerated, and even metaphysical, claims concerning the
universality of will to power—claims that exceed the interpretational or
perspectival framework that he himself considers to delimit all thinking.
This criticism is of central importance, for it suggests that Nietzsche either
invalidates his hypothesis of the will to power or undermines his theory of
perspectivism. An additional claim of Stack’s is that in conceiving of will
to power as affirmation, with joy occurring at a deeper level than woe or
suffering, Nietzsche presents a metaphysics of affirmation.
In addressing the first issue, Stack rightly reads Nietzsche’s perspectiv-
ism as treating all claims about the world as the perspective of an author
and as statements based in “human analogy” (55). The issue for Stack con-
cerns Nietzsche’s legitimacy in making any claims that value one view of
the world over another, or some metaphors over others. Stack begins with
the “aesthetic metaphysics” of the earlier works, which attribute to the
artist-philosopher a better—by implication, more truthful—connection
with nature than others and the ability to give a form to this that transmits
its truth—for example, through music or philosophy. Stack is right to sug-
gest that some of Nietzsche’s claims seem to exaggerate the abilities of the
artist-philosopher. For example, Nietzsche’s discussion of the relationship
between naked nature, the playwright, the satyr, and the spectator seems to
suggest that something true of naked nature can be directly t ransmitted in

some way (BT 10). However, any understanding of this relationship must
take Nietzsche’s theory of the metaphoricity of all language into account,
especially as the nature being translated is “naked,” in the sense of pos-
sessing a necessity prior to the attribution of laws. Stack also argues that
Nietzsche’s aesthetic metaphysics is largely rejected in Human, All Too
Human through the application of a “scientific spirit” (3), which respects
the “small truths” of science, while also realizing that a better perspective
requires a discerning analysis of scientific theory (27).
However, Stack finds that Nietzsche is soon frustrated with the com-
pleteness of the fictionalization he imposes, and on which his notion of
language as metaphor is based, and that in his later work he therefore intro-
duces a “trans-phenomenal” context that transgresses the boundaries of
his epistemological skepticism (35). For Stack, Nietzsche should have been
content with a “radical phenomenalism,” taking a circumspect view of the
phenomenal world, rather than locating a “process theory of nature” (37)
behind appearance, a theory that is later named “will to power.”
Nonetheless, while Stack finds that at “crucial points” Nietzsche is unable
to resist making claims that slip into “ontological assertions” concerning will
to power, he does not accept that in making such claims Nietzsche is arguing
that will to power is “in agreement with reality” (93, 95). Thus, Nietzsche is
not supposed to claim that will to power is an essential force or substance,
despite his use of universalizing rhetoric (101, 206). Rather, Stack claims,
Nietzsche produces an “exoteric fable” of will to power (109–10), intention-
ally evoking a mythmaking mechanism as an alternative way to approach
concepts that arise from a still present metaphysical drive, and notwithstand-
ing his own skepticism concerning metaphysical claims. Stack appears to
find it acceptable that Nietzsche adopts a form of pragmatism, whereby gen-
eral claims can be made as long as they concede that they are mythmaking,
while also relying on current scientific theories. However, he wonders why
Nietzsche persists in making statements which seem to exceed these limits,
and argues that proceeding with the hypothetical scientific method would
have been a better course. Stack approves of such an approach as antirealist
(114), with will to power understood as a useful concept for explaining events
as well as for undermining commonsense materialism (118), and as a form
of “instrumentalism” that posits not only practical scientific-like constructs,
but also fictions that are useful for life (119). Stack even argues that Nietzsche
posits the Übermensch to assist humanity in this instrumentalism, and thus
give direction to human thinking without an overstated “supra-historical

tendency” invoking eternal truths (159) or “transhistorical states of being and
thought,” which he associates with some of Nietzsche’s claims about will to
power, eternal return, and Dionysus (160). He suggests that the Übermensch
should rather be understood primarily as embodying a capacity to set
boundaries for thought which are true to the earth.
Stack also suggests that the “hypothesis of a plurality” in will to power is
an attempt to overcome nihilism by means of a new myth that, while going
beyond science, is compatible with a contemporary scientific point of view
(166). He also argues that the notion of human beings striving to enhance
power is a “viable psychological hypothesis” that “stands apart from the
myth of a universal will to power” (172). In suggesting that the notion of
mythmaking is needed to mitigate the universalization of the psychological
phenomena of power-enhancing behavior, then, he restates his “anthropic
circle” criticism. However, it is questionable whether the mythmaking
model is required. The interpretation of will to power as a psychological
phenomenon that Nietzsche applies as a universal form of explanation
analogously to life and to the earth seems true to many of his statements,
but qualifying such claims with the notion of mythmaking does not seem
credible. For Nietzsche, there is no alternative but to make such an analogy;
we cannot adopt a trans-perspectival position to make such claims. All uni-
versal claims are therefore already qualified as analogies.
Stack finds the striving for more power to be related to an underlying
drive to dominate that can become “spiritualized” into higher forms (173).
This orientation is found to occur at the level of the body as a “deeper cona-
tus” (“deeper” compared with that of conscious willing), located in the con-
tinuous flow of forces in the world. This raises the question of how we can
consider sovereignty to be primary in such a completely relational world
of flux, in which thinking seems to be responsive rather than autonomous,
and in which what is most one’s own seems to be a unique history of gener-
ally ill-judged, preferred interpretations, moving forward at each moment.
Perhaps this flawed conatus can be seen to be pointing to something like
Heidegger’s Being, Levinas’s Other, or Nietzsche’s Dionysus, all of which
would emphasize a non-moralizing form of will to power related to the
“innocence of becoming,” or what Stack calls a “will to freedom” (177).
Stack argues for a psychology founded on such a model of will to power
(182), which could encourage thinking that is authentically grounded
in innocence. For him, however, this psychology would complement
a cosmology that treats will to power as a mythical world conception,
creating a new basis for culture in a “cosmic” fable that Stack describes as an
“amalgam of philosophical, artistic, and scientific perspectives” (187). In this
context, the will to power myth is found to be a pragmatic “quasi-scientific,
quasi-metaphysical mask concealing a Dionysian chaos” (202). While this
seems to be a plausible humanization of Schopenhauer’s will, it also appears
as something of an Apolline veiling of the Dionysian, a veiling criticized by
Nietzsche, for whom the Dionysian chaos of earth and life is without tran-
scendental underpinning and necessarily impacts on all thinking.
Stack’s will to freedom designates an inspired and inspiring engagement
with the world of becoming, presented by Nietzsche in full rhetorical flow,
which attempts to persuade us to sustain a faith in “the awesome phenome-
non of life itself ” (207). To exert a will to freedom in a meaningful way, it is
necessary to be free from the constraints of the metaphysical and religious
denial of the value of life, an undercurrent in modern thought which under-
mines any attempts to be true to the earth. Stack claims that by emphasizing
“objective nihilism” (205) and an overt awareness of the limits of knowledge
Nietzsche ultimately avoided making metaphysical claims, but nonetheless
charges Nietzsche with misusing rhetoric in exhorting us to acknowledge
the world of will to power.
Against Stack, however, it can be argued that even here Nietzsche is not
asking us to affirm the world of will to power as a metaphysical totality and
thus to exceed perspectivism. Rather, he asks us to actively aspire to develop
an affirmative ethical stance, or ethos, in which will to power occurs as
ethical evaluation. Here we stray from Stack’s world of science and myth
in an attempt to develop a primarily ethical interpretation of human will
to power, albeit one that might, nonetheless, provide a response to Stack’s
concerns. For Nietzsche’s world of will to power can be understood as
underpinned in two ways: by Dionysian raw nature, considered as chaotic
becoming, which, as necessity, must be affirmed if one is to be true to the
earth; and by an intellectual process of enhancing power through increas-
ing levels of affirmation called “spiritualization,” taken to the point where
will to power becomes justice and is associated with the “kind and gentle
ruler,” Dionysus (BT 10). With this model of the Dionysian, we are able to
go beyond the debate concerning the metaphysical status of will to power,
in order to recognize the role that the resistance posed to our will to power
has on our ethical evaluation (cf. BGE 295). It can be argued that the process
of developing justice relies on the agonistic relationship produced by the
resistance of others to the imposition of our perspective. And this notion
of possible resistance and, thus, of recipients of justice, can be applied to all
possible others: considered both as elements of raw nature and as existents

who are also seeking to enhance their power by relying on the circumspect
resistance of others. In this sense, Stack’s will to freedom would entail a
liberation from injustice based in a continual attempt to share and affirm a
more broadly based conception of existence, achieved through an interac-
tion with others that is primarily ethical.
The questions that Stack raises are important for Nietzsche studies.
The argument that Nietzsche’s claims concerning will to power contravene
his own perspectivism has the potential to undermine his philosophy. Yet,
in this regard, it can be argued that Nietzsche is not making ontological
claims, but rather trying to achieve an ethical goal—namely, convincing us
of the worth of his basic insight that we should be true to the earth while
also creating a just, interpreted world for others and a future beyond our
own finitude. Throwing the dice is the metaphor Nietzsche chooses for such
thinking, for at each moment we attempt to counterbalance the ineffabil-
ity of the temporal flow of existence without veiling it, and in doing so to
be both true to the immediacy of our world and to promote eternity. For
Nietzsche, the inability to find transcendent or immanent meaning is tragic,
but this is what we are required to affirm in all interhuman engagements,
along with the ineffable immediacy of raw nature. By thinking through the
optics of the Dionysian, Nietzsche’s world of will to power can be consid-
ered not as an illegitimate metaphysical or mythical claim, but as an ethical
affectivity that liberates humanity and provides it with its dynamic force.
Christine Swanton, The Virtue Ethics of Hume and Nietzsche

Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. 248 pp. isbn : 978-1-118-93939-0.
Cloth, $99.95.
Reviewed by Matthew Dennis, University of Warwick

(M.Dennis@warwick.ac.uk)
and Andre Okawara, Monash University
(Andre.Okawara@monash.edu)
Having established her pluralistic account as an influential position

within contemporary virtue ethics, in this work Christine Swanton offers
a virtue-ethical reading of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche with the
aim of showing how they can further the development of virtue ethics
beyond the Aristotelian and ancient eudaemonist traditions (xi). Readers

of Swanton’s other major work, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), may recall that many of its philosophical
resources were drawn from Nietzsche and, to a lesser extent, from Hume.
This new study can be seen as offering a fuller and more historically
grounded reading of the work of both thinkers. Swanton has also published
on Hume and Nietzsche separately, and four of her previously published
articles have been extensively revised for this volume. For this reason, The
Virtue Ethics of Hume and Nietzsche can be seen as Swanton’s most consid-
ered contribution to the interpretation of both these thinkers. We believe
it adequately reflects her sustained effort to make Nietzsche’s voice heard
in mainstream debates in virtue ethics over the past fifteen years. Since the
psychological assumptions common to Hume and Nietzsche that underlie
her response-dependent readings of these thinkers are discussed only in
the first part of the book and their normative ethics and metaethics are not
compared in detail, the second and third parts of the book can be infor-
matively read as two separate monographs, one on Hume and the other
on Nietzsche. Following the main interest of the readership of this journal,
we focus on Swanton’s reading of Nietzsche, referring to Hume only when
doing so elucidates Swanton’s project as a whole.
Swanton sees Hume’s and Nietzsche’s examinations of a wide variety of
virtuous character traits described by so-called “thick” concepts—qualities
such as being “honest” or being “benevolent”—as the key contribution
these thinkers make to the overarching virtue-ethical concern with what
constitutes “a good life proper to human beings” (xii). She argues that
the relevance of these thinkers for contemporary ethics is most salient if
we view them as developing a kind of response-dependent virtue ethics,
according to which virtues and values are made intelligible by their capac-
ity to arouse appropriate sensibilities and responses (23). Such sensibilities,
Swanton tells us, “make available a basic distinction between the polarities
of virtue and vice” (27), although she emphasizes that this does not entail
that ethics is based on subjective emotional responses. Once the “world of
ethics” is made intelligible by one’s sensibility, the fittingness of one’s virtues
to specific situations is determined by criteria that take reason and the find-
ings of the human and natural sciences into account (33–37).
Swanton starts her discussion of Hume’s ethics with his view of sen-
timent as the source of distinctions between virtue and vice, which also
allows her to clarify the sentimentalist basis of the response dependent vir-
tue ethics presented in chapter 2. The main task of chapter 3, in turn, is to
argue for the response-dependent reading of Hume as a strong alternative

to subjectivist, skeptic, and noncognitivist accounts. For Swanton, Hume
remains convinced that ethics can be “a form of reliable, objective interac-
tion with the world, permitting critical purchase on both people’s behaviour
and emotions through objectively and socially accessible notions of virtue
and vice” (45). In chapter 4 Swanton shows that Hume can retain a standard
conception of justice in her response-dependent reading, so that the char-
acteristic motive of the just person is seen as a sense of duty that is indepen-
dent of consequences or self-interest (71). In her view, the required sense of
duty can be produced by the combination of a “mere regard” for justice and
a properly Humean natural motive such as compassion (78). Chapter 5 dis-
cusses in more detail Hume’s “pluralistic account of the sources of the moral
sentiment, the taxonomy of virtue, and most importantly, the criteria of
virtue” (87). Opposing Roger Crisp’s view that Hume is best read as a virtue
consequentialist (the view that a trait is a virtue due to its tendency to pro-
mote good consequences), Swanton argues that Hume’s pluralism betrays
features characteristic of virtue ethics in general, and that the plurality of
the emotional makeup described by Hume is best seen as a set of natural
properties that make virtues intelligible in a response-dependent reading.
Swanton begins her detailed discussion of Nietzsche in chapter 6, by
focusing on what she describes as the “greatest obstacle to reading him in a
virtue-ethical way,” namely, his “self-ascription as an egoist and his attacks
on altruism” (111). She argues that the “virtuous” or “mature” form of ego-
ism that Nietzsche defends must be distinguished from both nonvirtuous
egoism and nonvirtuous altruism. Swanton takes Nietzsche’s attacks on
Christian morality as, among other things, an attempt to distinguish his
aretaic conception of altruism from the nonvirtuous kind, one that “oper-
ates in the spirit of self-sacrifice where the self wilts away” (111). But it is the
contrast between virtuous and nonvirtuous forms of egoism that provides
the platform for Swanton to discuss the depth-psychological differences
that Nietzsche uses to explain virtue and vice more generally. Drawing
on her three publications on “virtuous egoism,” including “Nietzsche and
the Virtues of Mature Egoism” (in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality: A
Critical Guide, ed. Simon May [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011], 248–308), Swanton argues that Nietzsche’s egoism is best understood
as a benign form of self-love that is ontologically grounded in his account
of the will to power (118). Vicious character traits, she suggests, constitute
“distortions” of an individual’s will to power, whereas virtuous ones allow
an individual’s will to power to express itself “without distortion.” Swanton

further argues that, for Nietzsche, the self-love and life affirmation of the
mature egoist not only are compatible with certain forms of altruism, but
also require a social identity that reflects the mature egoist’s taking a stake
in “his society and individuals other than himself ” (128–29).
In keeping with the earlier-stated view that the criteria for virtues need
to be informed by the human and natural sciences, Swanton seeks support
in psychology for her reading. She discusses four major types of distortion
of will to power with reference to the work of psychologists influenced
by Nietzsche such as Erich Fromm and Alfred Adler: the “perversion of
cruelty,” the “neurosis of cruel punitivism,” the “neurosis of resentment,”
and the “resignatory neurosis of the ascetic ideal” (139). In each case, she
argues, the distorted development of one’s will to power can be seen as
determining Nietzsche’s understanding of what makes a character trait
vicious (115).
Adopting the same approach in chapter 7, Swanton contends that the
existentialist strand of Nietzsche’s thought can be compatible with read-
ing him as a virtue ethicist. She argues that Julian Young, in his The Death
of God and the Meaning of Life (London: Routledge, 2003), is mistaken in
holding that Nietzsche’s existentialism regards the individual as a blank
slate, “characterized by nothing but the power of free choice,” and thus
not a good candidate for a traditional virtue ethical agent (96). Swanton
argues that Nietzsche rather sees the self as uniquely determined by its hid-
den depths—the site of dispositions that drive the ascription of value in
a response-dependent conception of virtue (136). In this sense, existential
concerns ground rather than resist ascriptions of virtue or vice to charac-
ter traits—Nietzsche’s concern with the undistorted development of one’s
will to power can be seen as addressing similar human shortcomings to
those identified by others in the existentialist tradition. In particular,
Swanton compares it to Søren Kierkegaard’s endorsement of the “objective
life,” Martin Heidegger’s call for the “courage of anxiety,” Jean-Paul Sartre’s
championing of “integrity,” and Albert Camus’s call to “embrace the absurd”
(137–38). Like Aristotelian thought, she contends, the existentialist concern
with avoiding “escape from self ” is aimed at identifying “central tendencies
and failings in human beings for which the cultivation of certain attitudes
is a corrective” (136).
Having addressed the challenges posed by Nietzsche’s egoism and exis-
tentialism, Swanton presents an account of what she calls an “Aristotelian
Nietzsche,” arguing that the differences between the two thinkers have been
exaggerated (158). She notes that both Aristotle and Nietzsche ostensibly
offer what could be called an “ethics of self-realization.” Each thinker starts
from a thin conception of human nature—human rationality for Aristotle
and will to power for Nietzsche—and develops this into a thick notion by
the “normative transformations” that ground their accounts of virtue and
vice (158). In Nietzsche, the basic account of will to power as venting of
strength is transformed into a substantive conception of life affirmation
that can be contrasted with a variety of neuroses or perversions. Swanton
points to this understanding of the basis for virtue as the development of
human nature to explain the relationship between a more abstract and uni-
versal conception of virtue and a “differentiated” one, which recognizes that
virtue concepts “have a different profile according to such factors as indi-
viduals’ roles, their types, and their historical and cultural circumstances”
(172). There is merit in attributing to Nietzsche a two-tier account that
views more generally described virtues as becoming differentiated when
developed by a specific individual, as this makes sense of the astonishingly
wide range of virtues praised in Nietzsche’s texts while preserving more
general and universal conceptions of those virtues.
In the final chapter Swanton discusses what Nietzsche has to contrib-
ute to contemporary debates in virtue ethics, examining in detail what she
considers to be his most important contribution: the affirmation of one’s
own life (195). Swanton views this feature as producing “a virtue ethics of
becoming” grounded not on a teleological picture of virtue aiming at an
end state or an ideal of perfection, but rather on a conception of excellence
achieved through a dynamic process of self-overcoming. In contrast with
elitist interpretations of Nietzsche’s moral philosophy, this account suggests
that virtues can be closely calibrated to an individual’s life circumstances
and psychological strength, such that virtue and self-overcoming are attain-
able by any individual at any stage of her life.
By using her initial sketch of response-dependent virtue ethics as the
interpretive backdrop for presenting the philosophical projects of Nietzsche
and Hume, Swanton is able to develop accounts of their ethics that con-
stitute viable alternatives to consequentialist readings. Overall, the book
provides an insightful and productive interpretation of Nietzsche’s moral
philosophy, betraying affinities between his ethics and Swanton’s pluralistic
conception of virtue. Swanton has made significant moves in addressing
persistent doubts that have often prevented commentators in the virtue
ethical tradition from taking Nietzsche as seriously as they ought, especially

those concerning his egoism and his existentialism. Beyond this, Swanton
offers novel perspectives on distinctively Nietzschean themes such as cre-
ativity, agonism, perspectivism, will to power, and life affirmation—themes
that will be of interest to Nietzsche scholars more generally.
Christian Wollek, Die lateinischen Texte des Schülers Nietzsche.

Übersetzung und Kommentar
Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2010. 307 pp. isbn: 978-3-8288-2356-3.
Paperback, €29.90.
Reviewed by Jing Huang, Free University of Berlin

(jinghuang.berlin@gmail.com)
In 2010, Christian Wollek published his doctoral thesis Die lateinischen

Texte des Schülers Nietzsche. Übersetzung und Kommentar (henceforth
LT)—a German translation of Nietzsche’s Latin writings with an introduc-
tion and commentary. This book represents the breadth of Nietzsche’s Latin
writings (his poems, school essays, translations, and excerpts from other
authors) and his vast learning (Homer, Greek tragedy, lyric poetry, Horace,
Cicero, etc.) while he was a student at the Naumburg Domgymnasium
and Schulpforta. As Wollek tells us in the introduction, LT aims both to
highlight the relevance of Nietzsche’s early writings, which he argues have
been too often ignored, even in recent scholarship (20–26), and to develop
a picture of Nietzsche’s education and reading in Naumburg, especially
Nietzsche’s training in philology (29).
Wollek is not the first to translate Nietzsche’s Latin texts. In her 1993 dis-
sertation Antikes Denken und seine Verarbeitung in den Texten des Schülers
Nietzsche, Renate G. Müller also provides a translation of these texts. While
Müller’s dissertation cannot be found in most libraries, LT, which is avail-
able through online bookstores, makes the translation accessible to a wide
readership. According to Wollek, his book is also a more complete collec-
tion of Nietzsche’s Latin writings. Unlike Müller’s dissertation, which lim-
its itself to the texts printed in BAW, Wollek’s book includes several texts,
such as “Stoeckerts Thesen” and the excerpt from Friedrich August Wolf ’s
“Prolegomena,” which are published only in KGW 1:2 and 1:3, edited by
Johann Figl and Hans Gerald Hödl (22–23). Wollek’s introduction offers
a survey of scholarship on Nietzsche’s Latin writings and his early training
in philology. The commentary of LT has been designed with the aim of
providing important historical background, offering text-critical analysis
of Nietzsche’s writings, and informing the reader about the composition
of these texts, their various sources, their content, and their structure (30).
There is no doubt that this new translation of and commentary on
Nietzsche’s Latin texts is a contribution to Nietzsche scholarship. In
my review, however, I focus on some of the aspects of LT that I regard
as problematic. I use Wollek’s treatment of Nietzsche’s school essay
“Primum Oedipodis regis carmen choricum” to illustrate some general
problems of LT.
Nietzsche’s essay “Primum Oedipodis regis carmen choricum,” writ-
ten at Pforta in 1864, is a commentary on the first stasimon of Oedipus
Tyrannus. The essay was written in three different languages, with some
sections in German, others in Latin or Greek. In this essay, Nietzsche
touches upon several issues central to his theory of tragedy, such as the
origin of tragedy, its effect, and its relationship to religion. Both Barbara
von Reibnitz and Thomas H. Brobjer maintain that this essay foreshadows
The Birth of Tragedy in a variety of underappreciated ways (Reibnitz, Ein
Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsche, “Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste
der Musik” (Kap. 1–12) [Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992], 11–12; Brobjer, “Sources
Of and Influences On Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy,” Nietzsche-Studien
34 [2005]: 279–80). I focus on the essay not only because of its importance
for our understanding of Nietzsche’s theory of tragedy, but also because the
longest section of LT (fifty-four pages) is devoted to it.
As mentioned earlier, LT was originally Wollek’s dissertation. His com-
mentary, which is intended as a piece of Nietzsche scholarship, is addressed
to a specialist readership rather than to the general reader. In his discussion of
Nietzsche’s Oedipus essay, however, Wollek provides a summary of the story
of Oedipus Tyrannus, which seems unnecessary for specialists and research-
ers (214). After the summary, Wollek attempts to establish the sources used
by Nietzsche. Following Hermann Josef Schmidt, he draws attention to
one source for Nietzsche’s text—Gustav Dronke’s book Die religiösen und
sittlichen Vorstellungen des Aeschylos und Sophokles (215–16). But Dronke
was not Nietzsche’s only source. As Brobjer has made clear, Nietzsche
“plagiarized” several authors in the Oedipus essay without acknowledging
them. Wollek does not even mention Nietzsche’s other sources like Gustav
Freytag’s Die Technik des Dramas, Franz Brendel’s Geschichte der Musik
in Italien, Deutschland and Frankreich. Von den ersten christlichen Zeiten
bis auf die Gegenwart, and Adolf Schöll’s Gründlicher Unterricht über die
Tetralogie des attischen Theaters und die Kompositionsweise des Sophokles.
In his purportedly text-critical analysis of Nietzsche’s essay, Wollek notes
that there are errors in Greek in the transcripts previously published in BAW
and KGW (221–22). He takes these mistakes to be made by the editors and
decides to correct them without consulting the original manuscripts in the
Weimar archive. Wollek makes no allowances for the alternative possibility
that the mistakes are Nietzsche’s. It is naïve to think that the Greek text
Nietzsche wrote as a school student would be error free. In fact, even when
he was a professor, Nietzsche still made Greek mistakes in his lectures, some
of which are slips of the pen. For example, in his lecture on Greek religion,
Nietzsche transcribed the word “Sphondylomantie” back into Greek and
wrote σπονδυλομαντεία (the outcome should be σφονδυλομαντεία) (KGW
2:5, 483; cf. http://www.nietzschesource.org/facsimiles/DFGA/P-II-14a,12).
Wollek’s textual emendation is flawed. I provide another example: In
the third part of the essay, which was written in German and bears the
title “Die Wirkung der Tragoedie und ihr Plan,” Nietzsche refers to a key
concept in Aristotle’s Poetics: reversal (peripeteia). However, he spelled it
incorrectly as Peripatie. Both the BAW and KGW editions have faithfully
reprinted Nietzsche’s mistake (BAW 2, 370; KGW 1:3, 335). In Wollek’s
book, instead of retaining the exact spelling of the word as it appears in
Nietzsche’s manuscript and writing “[sic],” he corrects Nietzsche’s text and
prints “Perip[e]tie,” without giving the original spelling in the apparatus
(187). Wollek’s editorial decision needs to be reevaluated, for the misspelling
has significant implications: it is evidence to support Brobjer’s thesis that
in this school essay Nietzsche copied several passages from Freytag’s Die
Technik des Dramas (“Sources Of and Influences On Nietzsche’s The Birth
of Tragedy,” 284–85). Since the incorrect spelling “Peripatie” for “Peripetie”
also appears in Freytag’s book (Die Technik des Dramas [Leipzig, 1863], 148),
we can conclude that Nietzsche did “plagiarize” Freytag, and that the young
Nietzsche had limited knowledge of Aristotle’s Poetics while at Pforta (for
otherwise he would have corrected this error).
In his commentary, Wollek explores several noteworthy passages
in Nietzsche’s essay. For example, he discusses Nietzsche’s references to
Aristotle (217). Nietzsche first refers to several merits of Oedipus Tyrannus
and says that it is because Oedipus Tyrannus conforms to all of Aristotle’s
requirements for tragedy that this drama is for Aristotle “the tragedy par
excellence” (BAW 2, 370). In the part concerning the chorus, then, Nietzsche
expresses an idea that is a recurring theme in his writings starting with The
Birth of Tragedy, and that is crucial to his theory of tragedy, namely that
not Handlung, but pathos is the core of tragedy. And he clearly connects
this idea with the brief account of the “Pathosscenen” in the Poetics (Poet.
1452b10–13) and with Aristotle’s qualification of Euripides as τραγικώτατος
(“the most tragic”) (Poet. 1453a29–30). For Nietzsche, Aristotle calls
Euripides τραγικώτατος because of the musical-lyrical elements in his trag-
edies and their strong emotional effect. He contrasts the Greek concept of
the tragic, of which he regards Aristotle’s Poetics as a representative exam-
ple, with what the moderns take to be tragic: while the moderns wrongly
associate the tragic with Handlung, the Greeks rightly connect it with music
and emotion (BAW 2, 375).
Referring to Nietzsche’s second reference to Aristotle, Wollek says
that “Nietzsche [nimmt] die Aristoteles gerade erwiesene Reverenz wie-
der zurück.” This statement is likely to give the reader the misleading
impression that Nietzsche rejects (what he took to be) Aristotle’s theory of
the tragic. In fact, in the Oedipus essay Nietzsche offers a charitable pic-
ture of Aristotle’s theory. He not only gives credit to Aristotle for rightly
understanding the merits of Oedipus Tyrannus, but also believes that he
and Aristotle are in agreement on the crucial question of what the tragic
is. Instead of analyzing Nietzsche’s understanding of Aristotle’s assessment
of Euripides and Nietzsche’s idea that tragedy is centered on pathos rather
than Handlung, Wollek merely comments that “Dies ist missverständlich:
Euripides war der für Aristoteles der τραγικώτατος eben wegen der trag-
ischen Handlungskonflikte und gerade nicht wegen der musikalisch-
lyrischen Partien.” Yet the key point here is that even if Nietzsche is wrong,
it is more important to explore the way in which the wrong idea contributes
to Nietzsche’s theory of tragedy than to point out Nietzsche’s mistake by
appealing to the mainstream interpretation of Aristotle.
Wollek then discusses a Greek formulation in the second part of the
essay—“τῶν τοῦ Σοφοκλέους ἰ δεῶν ἀλλότριον θεόν τινα” (BAW 2, 368).
Müller translates the phrase as “according to the ideas of Sophocles a hos-
tile god.” Wollek argues that the phrase is better rendered as “a God who
is alien to the ideas of Sophocles,” since the word ἀλλότριος means, above
all, “alien” (231). According to Nietzsche, it is this god who makes Oedipus
mentally deranged. Wollek declares that the power of this god is similar
to what Nietzsche calls “the Dionysian” in his later works (232). In my

view, it is an open question whether ἀλλότριος means “alien” or “hostile”
here, and Wollek’s reading is an interesting possibility. He seems to suggest
that, as a school student, Nietzsche already had an inclination toward the
Dionysian, arguing that Nietzsche ascribes “many chthonian attributes” to
an “unknown god” in an untitled poem (BAW 2, 428). Wollek, however,
gives no hint of which attributes of this god are chthonian. In fact, it is dif-
ficult, pace Wollek, to find clear chthonian attributes. Only the verses “[. . .]
und ich fühl’ die Schlinge<n>, / Die mich im Kampf darniederziehn” could
be loosely associated with one of the attributes of the chthonian divinities,
namely the serpent. Wollek also claims that this god “who is reaching deeply
into my soul” contrasts with the Christian god who resides in heaven. The
contrast is obviously untenable because in the Christian tradition, God is
clearly described as having an intimate relationship with individuals: he
does not merely reside in heaven.
Some carelessness in Wollek’s book is also conspicuous. It seems that
Wollek’s translation of the essay is mainly based on the KGW edition, and
that he follows the section numbers in the BAW edition. On page 186, how-
ever, the section number “III.” is missing from his transcription. And on
page 193, the section number “II.,” which was inserted by the BAW editors,
is omitted. In his translation of Nietzsche’s essay, Wollek uses three abbre-
viations, “[dt.],” “[gr.],” and “[lat.],” to inform the reader in which language
different sections were written. Yet on page 213, Wollek forgets to note that
the phrase “Good luck!” at the end of the essay was written in Greek. There
are also many misprints. For example, on page 214, “Steinhart” is incor-
rectly rendered as “Steinhard” and “unzureichend” as “uzureichend.” On
page 220, “Ödipusarbeit” is misprinted as “Odipusarbeit.” In Wollek’s book,
the quotation format varies without any clear principle. Book titles appear
sometimes in italics, sometimes in quotation marks, and sometimes in both
italics and quotation marks. To take just one example: on page 219, we have
“Geburt der Tragödie,” “‘Hiketiden,’” and “‘Oper und Drama.’” Finally, the
book lacks a general index, which would help the reader find her way with
relative ease to particular points.
I do not wish to leave readers with the impression that Wollek’s book
does not deserve their consideration. His translation is trustworthy.
Scholars who are interested in Nietzsche’s Latin writings can profit from
his translation.

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A bb revi ations and Citations of Friedrich

The same citation format is utilized throughout the journal. References to

Abbreviations for titles of published works

AOM = Vermischte Meinungen und Sprüche (in Menschliches,

Abbreviations for other frequently cited posthumous and private publica-

FEI = “Über die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten”; translated as “On

In my letter published in the last issue, I announced my efforts to facilitate

JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2016

Abstract: The aim of this article is to provide a novel reading of Nietzsche’s

Keywords: self-overcoming, will to power psychology, self-evaluative

Introduction: Self-Overcoming and Will to Power Psychology

Nietzsche often writes in praise of self-overcoming (Selbst-Überwindung).

JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2016

in trials: they take pleasure in self-overcoming” (A 57). With a ­different

and overcoming resistance in the suitable first-order activities. Reginster,

1. Self-Overcoming as a Re-evaluative Activity

So, we need an account of self-overcoming that says something about “the

we make assessments of our ethical conduct, and therefore shifting the

requires something more of those engaged in it than can be cashed out

telling us “when someone suffers an identity crisis, as we call it, what is

2. Beyond Good and Evil

In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche describes the project I have in

frameworks. In this sense it is correct to say that the ­overcoming of m ­ orality,

account, namely the ends of Nietzschean self-overcoming (what it is an

the world (primarily qualities of persons) in order to enact an “imaginary

3. Self-Overcoming as a Continual Activity

This section gives an account of what self-overcoming is an ­overcoming

We can provide an answer to this question by considering Nietzsche’s

serve the function of always holding open, as a possibility, those “future

the theoretical or evidential limitations of a certain hypothesis in favor of a

and find no good reason, pace a kind of arbitrary self-skepticism, to again

However, such continual attempts at ethical self-transformation would

So even if converted Buddhists or born-again Christians, by virtue

My central aim is this article was to provide a novel reading of Nietzschean

1. Translations used are Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, in The Anti-

2. Some notion of self-overcoming is also present in Zarathustra’s concept of

a subtle kind of seeing-doing-and-responding dynamic in the artistic performance

Abstract: Nietzsche, I argue, did not have an ethical theory tradition-

Keywords: Nietzsche, ethics, mutuality, recognition, social philosophy

There is a common understanding of Nietzsche’s views on ethics according

JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2016

principles, even if they were formally available to everyone, would likely be

None of all these ponderous herd animals with their unquiet

This starts by seeming to be a repudiation of impersonal morality in favor of

In Nietzsche’s view, by contrast, responsibility is not a relationship that

For Nietzsche, however, the individual’s responsibility for him-

To be responsible, on this picture, is to be responsible to someone, or per-

Nietzsche’s account of responsibility turns out to be an account of the con-

could imagine such creatures, would be entangled in social relations. Most

How much reverence has a noble person for his enemies—and

stand any enemy except those in whom there is nothing to

Nietzsche draws a contrast between two conceptions of enmity, one of

For a society to have such consciousness of power it would not

This is what, according to Nietzsche, the complete realization of power

purpose, so pointless aggression would not count for much as an exercise

Equality before the enemy—first precondition of an honest duel.

There are some subsidiary considerations: where the main consideration,

equality, however, but only to certain forms of egalitarianism. In general, he

might be normative: disparities in standing might generate legitimacy

4. Love and Other Ways of Belonging

to extreme cases of familiar but usually inarticulate concerns to make gen-

“And love?”—What? Even an action from love is supposed to

Nietzsche rejects the idea that love is either egoistic or unegoistic.

in trials: they take pleasure in self-overcoming” (A 57). With a different

frameworks. In this sense it is correct to say that the overcoming of m orality,

This section gives an account of what self-overcoming is an overcoming

stimulation of my curiosity by the exposure to its puzzling or m ysterious

I am inclined to think is deeply mistaken, throughout the constitutivist

according to Nietzsche, are we to affirm ourselves, insofar as we r ecognize