Error Theory and Naturalism

This is the first of two chapters examining Nietzsche’s attacks on morality’s foundational presuppositions. Presenting him as an error theorist about morality and its categoricity, the chapter distinguish two approaches to arguing for it: ‘metaphysical’ and ‘conceptual’. The rest of the present chapter considers his metaphysical arguments. These comprise naturalistically motivated arguments from queerness and best explanation against the existence of metaphysically robust, categoricity-conferring, moral properties. Such arguments are standard antirealist fare; but they face significant problems. This motivates the need for an alternative approach, pursued in Ch.4. Nonetheless, the chapter shows that we can redeploy some of the same resources used in the earlier arguments to generate a series of challenges that together make it incumbent on the moralist to show there actually are categorical requirements.

Introduction

This opening chapter explains the book’s overarching aims, themes, structure, and approach. The book’s aim is to critically assess Nietzsche’s ethical thought and its significance for contemporary (broadly analytic) moral philosophy. It does this in two main ways: by developing a charitable but critical reconstruction of his ethics; and by using Nietzsche to contribute to a range of longstanding issues within normative ethics, metaethics, value theory, practical reason, and moral psychology. The chapter locates Nietzsche’s ethical project in his ‘revaluation of all values’, outlining a variety of interpretive and philosophical puzzles this raises. It then gives a chapter-by-chapter overview of the book’s topics and direction, and addresses some methodological matters bearing on its interpretive and philosophical ambitions.

Metaethical Loose Ends

This final main chapter tidies up some loose ends concerning the metaethical credentials of the evaluative and normative claims going into Nietzsche’s perfectionism. Nietzsche did not have a well-worked-out metaethics; furthermore, his texts often underdetermine whatever views he might have intended. Nonetheless, the strategy is to gauge how well various positions (each with some textual support) satisfy certain basic interpretative desiderata, fit his revaluative purposes, and serve his wider philosophical needs. The chapter raises worries for a range of extant readings: realist, quasi-realist, fictionalist, and a hybrid realism/antirealism. It then attributes to Nietzsche a form of irrealism on which there are normative/evaluative truths but no metaphysically robust normative/evaluative properties.

A Sentimentalist Moral Psychology

This chapter attributes to Nietzsche a sentimentalist moral psychology, according to which our normative judgements and motivational responses are ineradicably shaped and constrained by our antecedent motives. This can be contrasted to rationalist views, which accept a purity thesis. After precisfying the sentimentalist view, the chapter suggests that standard philosophical arguments both for and against it are inconclusive. To make headway, it then turns to empirical evidence. Even if empirical evidence could never definitively rule rationalism out, there is a wealth of evidence strongly supporting sentimentalism. This completes the case against those defences of categoricity like Kant’s resting on a purity thesis; sentimentalism will also be important for the model of normativity developed later.

Morality’s Disvalue

The central objection animating Nietzsche’s critique is that morality impedes the highest human excellences and hence value. The objection shares certain affinities with worries levied by more recent morality critics, who argue that moral theories are unable to accommodate the legitimate pursuit of various non-moral goods crucial to a minimally good life. One common response on behalf of morality is to defend a less demanding moral theory that does accommodate relevant non-moral goods. This chapter reconstructs Nietzsche’s objection via two arguments, showing that his version has bite even against undemanding moral theories: such theories would still impede the highest excellences. It then examines how the objection can be extended: how morality impedes not just the highest excellences but our lesser flourishing too.

Nietzsche’s Critical Target

This chapter characterizes ‘morality’, the object of Nietzsche’s critique. It locates the discussion within a wider interpretive issue, commonly called the Scope Problem, that bears on the coherence of his revaluative project: how to separate his critical target from positive ideal, while leaving the latter immune to the objections informing the critique. As a first step to resolving the Scope Problem, the chapter characterizes Nietzsche’s critical target via two sets of conditions. One of these identifies various values he associates with morality. The other concerns morality’s foundational commitments. Central to these is the idea that morality is normatively authoritative: compliance with it is categorically required. The chapter explains what this involves and why opposing morality’s normative authority is crucial to Nietzsche’s critique.

Normativity

This chapter attributes to Nietzsche, and uses him to develop, a novel ‘motive-value’ model of practical normativity. The model combines both a motive-condition and a value-condition into the truth-conditions for ‘reason’ claims, thereby delivering an internalist account supplemented by an evaluative condition the content of which is given by the substantive view of value from Ch.10. The resulting model inherits various attractions of extant internalist and externalist accounts of reasons, whilst avoiding the most serious problems besetting each. Its basic structure can be accepted independently of many of the more specific Nietzschean elements going into it and may thereby be of interest to those working in these contemporary debates.

Morality’s Disvalue

This and the next chapter turn to Nietzsche’s worries about the value of moral values. The present chapter focuses on objections he raises to specific moral values and features: Mitleid, equality, and blame/guilt. However, it argues, although his objections may be psychologically astute, as arguments against morality they are unconvincing. Nevertheless, there is a deeper concern underlying his objections, which gives rise to a different and more promising line of criticism, explored in Ch.6. The present chapter also includes an excursus on the value of pain and suffering, introducing two ideas we return to at various points: that pain/suffering can be constitutively (not just instrumentally) valuable; and that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are not entirely separable.

Perfectionism

This exegetically focused chapter outlines the perfectionism I attribute to Nietzsche. It suggests that he is a value-pluralist rather than (power-based) value-monist. It then raises doubts about certain political and ethical readings (though gives a developmental story about his changing ambitions), and instead attributes to him an individualist perfectionism focused on the highest forms of human flourishing and excellence (with strong quasi-aesthetic and anti-theoretic leanings). This gives part of the resolution to the Scope Problem. The chapter then considers how immoral the resulting perfectionism is and examines how it might be justified.

Moral Psychology

Nietzsche gives an important role to psychology in his revaluative project. This and the next chapter focus on those aspects that concern the explanation of action and motivation. Many commentators place ‘will to power’ at the centre of his philosophical psychology. The present chapter considers two forms this takes: one treats power as a content of motivation; the other sees will to power as a thesis about the structure of motivation. Both face similar and serious difficulties. The chapter concludes that we should reject the kinds of totalizing power-based psychology often attributed to Nietzsche.