Society or Solitude?
Chapter 4 considers the influence exerted by Nietzsche’s reading of Emerson on the former’s critique of the morality of compassion and on his working out of a moral proposal alternative to this modelled on the relation of friendship. Emphasizing the value of individualism for the well-being of the collective, Emerson brings Nietzsche to understand that pursuing one’s personal advantage, if it is correctly understood, not only does not conflict with the welfare of society but nourishes and supports it. On this basis, Nietzsche on the one hand develops a critique of compassion and altruism as forms of the loss of the self and humiliation of the other, while on the other hand reassessing the value of egoism or, better put, distinguishing egoism as the pursuit of pleasure from a “higher egoism” that consists in pursuing one’s own vocation. Friendship is the relation that best sustains the development both of one’s own and others’ individualities.