Nietzsches Ethical Revaluation SIMON ROBERTSON

ietzsches most sustained philosophical contribution is his ethics. Yet, for a variety of reasons, stylistic and substantive, its reception within mainstream moral philosophy has long been circumspect at best. But things are gradually changing. Skepticism about content withstanding, there is a growing appreciation that, however novel his methods and radical his conclusions, many of Nietzsches central concerns arise from and engage with the same traditions that shape contemporary ethical thought; and so it is a welcome sight to see an increasing number of commentators connecting his ethics to ongoing topics of contemporary inquiry. This article examines some points of contact, to make clearer where Nietzsches contributions to ethics may lie. It takes as an organizing theme Nietzsches revaluation of all values a multifaceted project, both critical and positive, normative and metaethical.1 Negatively, it involves a critique of prevailing morality, which in turn has two elements: one evaluative, in which the value of morality and moral values is called into question; the other metaethical, by which Nietzsche challenges the objectivist foundations underpinning moralitys claim to authority. The positive component then presents some alternative demoralized ideal. This much should berelativelyuncontroversial. It also indicates where Nietzsches central contributions lie, namely, in challenging both the value and the authority of morality and in presenting an alternative conception of ethical life. Yet even this broad outline raises a number of obvious issues, the details of which provoke considerable scholarly disagreement. Before turning to specifics, it may be useful to first locate some of these interpretative disputes.2 Nietzsche is perhaps best known as an ardent critic of morality. Two issues have received particular attention in recent literature. One concerns the scope of Nietzsches critique. Given that he both criticizes morality and endorses some alternative ideal, any account needs to distinguish these and thereby circumscribe the critical target while leaving the positive ideal immune to whatever objections inform the critique (Clark 1994, 2001; Leiter 1995, 2002, especially chaps. 34; Owen 2007; Robertson forthcoming). The second concerns its content. Undeniably, Nietzsches primary objection is to the effects he believes morality has. But any more than this is mootfor instance, whether he thinks morality disvaluable because of its effects on certain people (and then who these people arebe it all of us [Owen 2005, 2007; Ridley 2005] or only those few capable of the highest forms of human flourishing [Leiter 1995, 2001, 2002]),
JOURNAL OF NIETZSCHE STUDIES, Issue 37, 2009. Copyright 2009 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

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whether he instead objects to the ways morality frustrates impersonal goods like excellence (Hurka 2007), and how exactly morality generates the relevant effects (be it through the content of its values [Leiter 1995, 2002, chap. 4], the structural features like obligation holding them in place [Clark 2001; Robertson forthcoming], or certain conceptions of agency [Clark 2001, 105ff.; Leiter 2002, chap. 3; Owen 2005, 2007, especially chaps. 57; Williams 1993]). For Nietzsches critique to prove defensible, it then needs to be shown that morality does generate the effects he objects to and that its doing so is objectionable. Regarding his positive program, Nietzsche has been variously read as a protoexistentialist (Jaspers 1965; Magnus 1978), egoist (Foot 1994, 2001; Nehamas 1985; see Hurka 2007 for criticism), virtue ethicist (Hunt 1991; Solomon 2001), quasi-aesthete (Foot 1994, 2001; Leiter 2002), consequentialist (Hurka 2007), and more (though see Williams 1993 for an argument against Nietzsche holding a systematic positive ethics). A significant core of philosophers now regard Nietzsches positive ideal as a form of perfectionism, at least in the very broad sense that he advances a conception of human good consisting in or significantly involving the realization of excellence. But even the barest contours of such a perfectionism are disputedwhether, say, it marks a radical individualist ideal (Leiter 2002, chap. 9) or some wider sociopolitical agenda (Clark 2001; Hurka 2007; Owen 2007; Ridley 2005); what exactly excellence consists in (cf. Hurka 2007; Leiter 2002, chap. 4; Reginster 2007); and how elitist, inegalitarian, and immoral Nietzsches ideal is (cf. Conant 2001; Foot 1994, 2001; Hurka 2007). Views on these issues in turn yield contrasting views about the role of morality after revaluation, how extensive a devaluation Nietzsche envisages, and how influential he intends the revaluation to be (cf. Hurka 2007; Leiter 2002; Owen 2007; Ridley 2005). A further set of issues concerns Nietzsches metaethical views. Many remarks indicate that he thinks the objectivist commitments underpinning morality erroneous. Nonetheless, his guiding critical interest is not metaethical error per se but an evaluative or normative one: to destabilize faith in the values those errors sustain (Janaway 2007; Leiter 2002, 79). Arguably, he also needs some positive metaethical view so as to respond to a worry, recently dubbed the authority problem (Ridley 2005; cf. Leiter 2000), which threatens the structural coherence of his whole revaluative project. There is no canonical statement of the problem, but the generic concern is this: If Nietzsche denies the objectivity of value upon which moralitys claim to authority rests, he thereby deprives his own positive values of a legitimate claim to objectivity and authority; in that case, the values constitutive of his own positive evaluative outlook are no more objectively justified than or superior to those he rejects; there may then be no objective justification for the claim that we should alter our evaluative commitments or pursue the revaluation through to completion. There has recently been a notable increase in attention to Nietzsches metaethics, an implicit aim being to avert the worries

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the authority problem may raise (see, e.g., Leiter 2000, Part II: Metaethics; Reginster 2006, chaps. 2 and 4). Finally, there are significant interpretative questions about how such notions as nihilism, will to power, and eternal recurrence fit into the overall program (e.g., Leiter 2002; Reginster 2006). These many interweaving strands, as well as the diversity of views about them, make any presentation and assessment of Nietzsches project complex. I shall focus on four themes connecting most obviously to contemporary disputes: 12 examine two aspects of Nietzsches critique of moralityfirst its objectivity, second its value; 3 considers Nietzsches positive evaluative ideal; 4 concludes with some remarks on the metaethical picture accompanying it. Each of the topics broached requires considerably more detailed analysis than I can give here; the relatively modest aim of the article is to identify what the relevant issues are and indicate ways they might fruitfully be developed further. In particular, I argue in 12 that central to Nietzsches revaluation is the thought that morality lacks the normative authority traditionally afforded it and that Nietzsches challenge to the value of moral values has bite against moral theory; 3 draws attention to a range of issues a systematic treatment of Nietzsches perfectionism should address; and 4 offers an alternative approach to understanding Nietzsches metaethics that connects it to contemporary disputes in theories of practical reason.

1. Moralitys Authority
I stipulate at this stage that we might partially characterize morality, the object of Nietzsches critique, via the following commitments: 1. Morality embodies a claim to objectivity, such that (a) there are objective moral facts, truths, and values; (b) morality is normatively authoritative, in that compliance with it is categorically required; and (c) morality is universal in scope or jurisdiction. 2. Morality endorses at least some of the following values: happiness, the alleviation of suffering, altruism, equality, social utility, pity, harmlessness, extirpation of the instinctstheir opposites being disvaluable.3 This section considers aspects of (1). In explication of (1a) let us supposevery roughlythat moral values, facts, and truths are objective if their obtaining in the manner they do does not depend solely on individuals beliefs about or attitudes toward them. That Nietzsche denies the objectivity of moral values is evinced by the following representative passages:

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To deny morality . . . to deny that moral judgments are based on truths . . . it is errors which, as the basis of all moral judgment, impel men to their moral actions. . . . Thus I deny morality as I deny alchemy, that is, I deny their premises. (D 103) There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena. (BGE 108) There are no moral facts whatever. Moral judgment has this in common with religious judgment that it believes in realities which do not exist. Morality is only an interpretation of certain phenomena, more precisely a misinterpretation. (TI Improvers 1)

A supposition behind these passages is that, were there any moral values, they would be objective; Nietzsches substantive claim is that there are no such values. This strongly indicates a (proto) error theory about morality: Nietzsche thinks moral claims erroneous because the presuppositions underpinning (and used to justify) them are.4 Furthermore, he often claims that moral values are human inventions (e.g., Z:I Of a Thousand and One Goals; GM P:3), manifestations of human drives and affects (D 119), and the result of projective error (HH 3940, 56; D 3, 119; GS 301; TI Errors 3; WP 590). The error involves treating moral values as objective constituents of reality when they are not. However, not all conceptions of morality Nietzsche opposes conceive of moral objectivity in such metaphysically laden fashion.5 Notably, Kant did not. Kant certainly thought that there are objective moral truths; but he did not think that moral claims are made true by (or correspond to) mind-independent, metaphysically robust, moral facts or properties woven into the fabric of the universe.6 Rather, they are objectively true in virtue of satisfying formal criteriain turn designating requirements of rationalitythe validity of which, like truths and requirements of logic, does not depend on individuals thoughts about them. If Nietzsche is an error theorist about morality, including Kantian morality, he will therefore have to extend his moral anti-objectivism beyond a denial of the existence of moral values construed as metaphysically robust items. Although many moralists combine a metaphysically robust construal of (1a) with (1b), some (like Kant) hold that the claim to normative authority represented by (1b) suffices for moral objectivity. The notion of normative authority is itself notoriously complex. But the basic idea is that, if compliance with morality is categorically required, then one ought to comply with it irrespective of whether doing so serves or conflicts with ones subjective desires, aim, ends, interests, and the likeor, as we may collectively call these, ones motives (see GS 5, 345; BGE 46, 18688, 198202, 263; GM II:2122, III; A 11; EH Destiny 78). Compliance can here be understood broadly to include doing whatever is required by, or appropriate in light of, relevant moral norms, values, ideals, obligations, prohibitions, and so on. Morality is both normatively authoritative and universal to the extent that everyone is categorically required to comply with it.

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Four further points: First, it follows from the normative authority thesis that one does not escape morality merely if or because compliance with it conflicts with ones motives. Second, the normative authority thesis incorporates the traditional thought that particular moral obligations are categorical, such that if you have a moral obligation to do x, you ought to do x irrespective of whether doing x serves your motives. Third, different moral traditions offer different accounts of the source of moralitys authority (be it a transcendent metaphysics, pure practical reason, social utility, intrinsically normative facts, etc.). Nonetheless, they have in common that this is independent of, or external to, agential motives. Fourth, it is by presenting itself as normatively authoritative, inescapable, and universal that morality holds in place the specific values it advances. One of Nietzsches innovative contributions to moral philosophy is to deny the normative authority of morality and thereby its objective standing. One aspect of this denial emerges from Nietzsches observation that the death of Godthe decline of faith in religious authorityhas not prompted a parallel weakening of faith in the authority of morality and its values (GS 108, 125, 343, 345, 35758; BGE 186; TI Skirmishes 5; see Owen 2003, 253ff., 2007, 25, 27ff.). Part of his point is that if morality has been thought authoritative in virtue of the authority of religion, and if the authority of religion is no longer accepted, there is reason to question the authority of morality and hence the currency of moral values. Nietzsche remarks: They have got rid of the Christian God, and now feel obliged to cling all the more firmly to Christian morality. . . . When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. For the latter is not self-evident. . . . Christianity is a system. . . . If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one has nothing of any consequence left in ones hands (TI Skirmishes 5). There is a strong and weaker way to read this passage. The strong version, indicated by its final sentence, concludes that without faith in Christian religion the moral values we have inherited from it lack any justification or authority. However, this rests on the dubious premise that faith in received moral values can consistently or rationally persist, and morality be held authoritative, only in the context of the religious framework from which it is derived. (This may commit a version of the fallacy of division.) Elsewhere Nietzsche gives reason to doubt the underlying form of that assumption. For instance, he allows that anything which exists . . . can be reinterpreted in the service of new intentions, repossessed, repeatedly modified to a new use by a superior power . . . in the course of which the previous meaning and aim must necessarily be obscured or completely effaced (GM II:12). While skeptical that any attempt (secular or otherwise) to furnish the rational ground of morality and reveal the foundation of ethics (BGE 186) will succeed, he should not (and does not always) deny the intelligibility of such attempts. There is nonetheless a weaker and more stable reading, drawing upon the claim that

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when one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality: without the religious framework upon which morality and its values were originally held authoritative, one is not entitled merely to assume that morality is authoritative or that moral values should be retained. Nietzsche of course believes that they should not be retained (at least not by all). But he too must, and does, argue for that conclusion. Thus part of his project in GM is not just to call into question the value of moral values but also to challenge the claim to authority through which morality makes compliance with its values categorically required. The very need to do this arises because, despite the death of God, morality continues to be accepted as authoritative and to exercise a deep hold.7 GM provides a naturalistic debunking account not just of the geneses of moral values but of the structures holding them in place as objective and authoritative.8 The lengthy processes Nietzsche recounts culminate in the emergence of Christian moralitya system of values and duties justified through the authority of a God whose commands are authoritative and unconditional and to which compliance is categorically and universally required (GM II:1922; see especially Clark 1994, 20ff.). He seeks to explain morality away, and destabilize persisting allegiance to modern secularized versions of it, by showing that it is neither borne of nor justified by some transcendent realm but is, instead, the contingent product of a complex fusion of distinctively human, sociopsychological phenomena. One implication is that the moral values we have inherited thereby lack the objectivity and authority customarily afforded them. Leiter (2002, 146; cf. chaps. 58, 2001) suggests that GM gives an argument to or from best explanationa form of argument common among contemporary error theorists and anti-objectivists (e.g., Harman 1977, chap. 1; Mackie 1977, chap. 1). Such arguments face well-documented difficulties that Nietzsches inheritsnot least because many of his critical targets, notably Christian and Kantian morality, deny the naturalistic presumptions upon which his genealogy proceeds. Nonetheless, to the extent he provides a coherent rival explanation of the inception of morality and our faith in its authority, he at least presents a challenge to those who think morality authoritative.9 So one of Nietzsches contributions, I suggest, is to show that the authority of moralityand with it the content of moral valuescannot be taken for granted. Moreover, Nietzsche thinks that morality is positively disvaluable. It is to this that we now turn.

2. The Disvalue of Morality

Nietzsches main motivation for challenging moralitys objectivist commitments is to undermine confidence in the values they hold in place. There is considerable

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dispute over the nature of this critique. Leiter (especially 2001, 2002, chaps. 34) offers probably the most systematic analysis to date; so I shall use this as a basis. But I begin by noting a similar-looking style of objection developed by a number of more recent critics of moral theory (e.g., Williams 1981b, 1985, chap. 10; Wolf 1982; cf. Leiter 2001). These critics argue that morality (on traditional deontological and consequentialist models) requires individuals to systematically sacrifice significant nonmoral goods, since it gives priority to the impartial demands of moral life over the pursuit of nonmoral personal goods that give an individuals life meaning. One way morality does this is by making moral obligations, derived from that privileged impartial standpoint, both pervasive and overriding. Leiter distances Nietzsche from such critics in several respects, in part by arguing that Nietzsche is concerned not with how morality might impede the good life for many of us but with how it thwarts the excellence of the few. Indeed, Leiter argues, Nietzsches central objection is that the moral values listed under (2) in 1 are detrimental to nascent higher individuals capable of excellence (e.g., GM P:6; BGE 62, 228; A 5, 43; EH Destiny 4). The crux of the objection runs as follows. Leiter argues that for Nietzsche a person is constituted by various psychophysical facts, or type-facts, that determine the type of person one is. What is good for a person then depends on the type one is;10 this may vary across persons (Leiter 2002, 105ff.). Morality, however, claims that all people are essentially similar in relevant respects, whereby the [morality] that is good for one will be good for all (Leiter 2002, 80, 104ff.). It is on this false premise that morality presents itself as universally applicable, since it claims to be appropriate [or good] for all (Leiter 2002, 80). Since morality has succeeded in so presenting itself, nascent higher types think morality good for them; they thereby come to accept and internalize moral values (Leiter 2002, 28, 104ff., 176, 195). But such values are antagonistic to their flourishing and the realization of the excellences they are capable of (Leiter 2002, 113ff.). Central to Nietzsches conception of excellence is an ideal of creativity (Leiter 2002, 129ff.), the pursuit and achievement of which require a readiness to suffer, prioritizing ones own goals, standing apart from others, channeling ones instincts creatively, and so on. Most of us may be unable to achieve genuine excellence; but someone who is, if he or she has also internalized moral norms (promoting, say, the alleviation of suffering, altruism, equality, extirpation of instincts), will devalue and hence avoid conditions necessary for great achievement. Thus morality is harmful because, in reality, it will have the effect of leading potentially excellent persons to value what is in fact not conducive to their flourishing and devalue what is, in fact, essential to it (Leiter 2001, 243, 2002, 133). And, Leiter believes, Nietzsches primary aim is to free these nascent higher types from . . . their false belief that the dominant morality is, in fact, good for them (2002, 28; cf. 176, 195).11

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Leiter (2001, 239ff., 2002, 13234) considers a response moral theorists might offer to the critique so far: Even if morality endorses values inimical to excellence, it need not outright prohibit relevant excellences; therefore, it does not preclude their pursuit or achievement as Nietzsches objection supposes. This response, Leiter notes, mirrors that given to contemporary critics of moral theory. Faced with the charge that moral theory is too demanding because it requires us to forgo significant nonmoral goods, many moralists respond by amending the moral theory, for instance by making moral obligations less demanding and pervasive, thereby accommodating the legitimate pursuit of nonmoral goods (cf. Brink 1986; Darwall 1987; Railton 1984; Scheffler 1992). Leiter, however, regards Nietzsche not as a pioneering critic of moral theory but as a critic of morality understood as an everyday cultural phenomenon. He claims that morality is harmful not because its specific prescriptions and proscriptions explicitly require potentially excellent persons to forgo that which allows them to flourishthat is, Nietzsches claim is not that a conscientious application of [moral theory] would be incompatible with the flourishing of higher men (2001, 243). Rather, a culture in which moral norms prevail, and thus become internalized by potentially excellent individuals, will be one that in practice thwarts excellence. So even if moral theory might be modified to accommodate Nietzschean excellences, Nietzsches critique is directed against the moralized culture we continue to inhabit. To the extent the values listed under (2) form an ineradicable part of morality thus construed, morality cannot escape Nietzsches critique. Here I shall accept Leiters guiding interpretative motifthat Nietzsches central objection to morality is that it thwarts human excellencebut raise three broad queries. The first two concern the roles played by relevant similarity between persons and internalization in the argument, and the third, whether there remains room for a Nietzschean critique of moral theory. Suppose we agree, first, that Nietzsche attributes to morality a universality thesis but denies that all people are relevantly similar. However, we should query Leiters further claim that, according to morality, morality is appropriate for all because all people are relevantly similar. He usually presents the explanans as a descriptive thesis: All people are essentially similar because characterized by the same basic type-facts, due to which they have the same generic interests. Thus the general applicability of [morality] is predicated on the assumption about similarity among persons and their interests: people are essentially similar, whereby morality infers that the [morality] that is good for one will be good for all (Leiter 2002, 104). An implication of Leiters account, though, is that according to morality on Nietzsches conception of it, whether a person falls under its jurisdiction is conditional upon that persons interestsit just happens, according to morality, that everyone has the right sorts of interests, namely, those served by morality, and so falls within its jurisdiction.

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I doubt that either traditional moralists or Nietzsche regard morality like this, however. Rather, one is required to comply with morality, and thus falls within its jurisdiction, irrespective of whether morality serves ones interests and motivesthat is, morality claims to be normatively authoritative. That is precisely why on most views morality claims to apply even to those whose interests it conflicts with; and traditional moralists are keenly aware that peoples individual interests are not guaranteed to harmonize with morality. (Nietzsches account of the slave revolt in GM I suggests that an original motivation behind morality was to constrain those whose interests were, and were recognized as, antagonistic to the slaves good.) Yet this implies that morality does not claim that all people are essentially similar; nor, then, as Leiters account requires, would morality claim itself universally applicable on that basis. However, if compliance with morality is not (by moralitys lights) conditional on agential interests, the descriptive claim central to Leiters argumentthat all people are essentially similarseems redundant with respect to explaining how morality constrains nascent higher individuals. For if compliance is not conditional on agential interests, then whether people have essentially similar generic interests is irrelevant to whether they fall under moralitys jurisdiction. It is instead the normative authority thesis that explains how morality constrains such individuals: they cannot escape morality, and are required to comply with it, irrespective of whether doing so is conducive to their flourishing or excellence. In response Leiter might concede to morality that people can have significantly different interests; but, he might add, according to morality such differences are not normatively relevant, that is, not relevant to whether a person falls under moralitys jurisdiction (cf. 2002, 105). Yet this effectively concedes the normative authority thesis. So either Leiter must deny moralitys commitment to the normative authority thesisa claim I suggested (in 1) there is good reason to think Nietzsche attributes to moralityor he can accept it but render the relevant similarity thesis surplus to the explanation of how moralitys claim to universality constrains nascent excellent individuals. A second doubt is that, on Leiters account, nascent higher individuals internalize moral norms because they mistakenly believe morality good for them or in their interests. Without denying they may think this, there remains a question of how they come to this mistaken belief and why they internalize moral values, given that morality may conflict with their interests in quite obvious ways.12 A full explanation is beyond the present scope. Nevertheless, a central part of it may be that nascent higher types internalize moral values because, despite the death of God, they continue to accept morality as normatively authoritative. Given moralitys success, such individuals (through upbringing, socialization, etc.) simply accept moral values and comply with them because they believe it right to do so, even if that conflicts with their own interests. In fact it may be

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doubted whether Nietzsches critique makes adequate sense without this. For if morality were not presented and accepted as authoritative and thus nonoptional, nascent higher types would not be or feel constrained by it. In which case, morality would not have exercised the power and influence over them Leiters argument assumes; morality would not then need to be overcome. Third, characterizing Nietzsches critical target in terms of a commitment to normative authority also brings him closer to some contemporary critics of moral theory. Some object to both the categoricity of moral obligation and the way they believe a system of impartial, pervasive obligations requires the sacrifice of significant nonmoral goods (e.g., Williams 1985, chap. 10). Since the normative authority thesis leaves open how pervasive and demanding moral obligation is, the categoricity of moral obligation does not by itself necessitate the thwarting of excellence. Nonetheless, there may be other features of morality connected to moral obligation and the normative authority thesisthat generate these effects. Even relatively undemanding moral theories that preserve space for the legitimate pursuit of nonmoral goods seem committed to the thought that moral considerationsthose pro tanto considerations that can contribute to or generate moral obligationsare pervasive. Even if such considerations do not generate an unremitting series of actual particular overriding obligations, they continually remain relevant to what one ought and ought not do. There may then be a residual pressure to ensure that in pursuing ones own projects one does not thereby violate a moral obligation, for instance by overlooking a moral obligation to do something else. Since an agent would be morally blameworthy were he or she to overlook some such obligation, then given the traditional view that agents are morally blameworthy for violating moral obligations, it follows that agents are morally required to ensure that they do not overlook any moral obligations. Agents may therefore be morally required to structure their deliberations in terms of the sorts of moral considerations that can contribute to moral obligations, even if their deliberative conclusion turns out to be that they are morally permitted to pursue their personal project, that is, that there is no moral obligation not to. This presents an analogue to the complaint Leiter levies against a moralized culture, now applied to moral theory (including those theories seeking to accommodate nonmoral goods), according to which the conscientious application of moral theory may in practice make Nietzsches nascent higher individuals more susceptible to moralization. For if, as Leiter himself suggests, Nietzsches nascent higher men are more likely [than thoughtless brutes] to take seriously moral considerations (2001, 250), and if even relatively modest moral theories require agents to take seriously such considerations in their deliberations, morally conscientious nascent higher beings are more likely to internalize, and/or structure their experiences in terms of, the moral values inimical to their flourishing or excellence. This requires considerably more careful execution; but the immediate point is that, even if Nietzsches main

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critical target is the effects of moralized culture, there may remain room for a Nietzschean critique of moral theory. The discussion has proceeded on the assumption that it is overall a bad thing that relevant forms of excellence and flourishing be impeded. Whether that assumption has any traction against moralists will depend on many further considerationsincluding the nature and value of relevant excellences, plus how morally objectionable the means taken to achieving them may be. Leiter also supposes that Nietzsches revaluation involves freeing only the few individuals capable of the highest excellences from the grip of morality (though I do not think that his criticism need be limited that way). Others think Nietzsche envisages some more wide-ranging ethical transformation. To make further headway on these issues, let us turn to Nietzsches positive project.

3. Nietzsches Positive Ideal

In elucidating Nietzsches positive ideal in terms of the sorts of human excellence it involves and the ways these are sought, we need to distinguish varieties of perfectionism and the bearers and characteristics of excellence. While these matters have been discussed in various places in the literature, a comprehensive account is still lacking. In this section, I highlight the minimal contours such an account should include and identify important further considerations.

(A) BROAD AND NARROW PERFECTIONISM

Hurka (2007) distinguishes two forms of perfectionism. Broadly, perfectionism is any [ethical] view centred on a conception of the good that values excellences regardless of how much a person enjoys or wants them. Narrow versions ground values in a more abstract ideal of realizing human nature, such that the human good consists in developing whatever properties are fundamental to human nature (Hurka 2007, 10). Commentators generally agree that if Nietzsche has a conception of human nature, it is one rooted in will to power, to the effect perhaps that all human activity is a striving to realize power (e.g., Clark 1990, 2000; Reginster 2006, chap. 3, 2007; Richardson 1996). If he is a narrow perfectionist, then, the goodexcellencemight consist in realizing power. Whether Nietzsche does conceive of human nature or all human activity as a function of will to power, and how plausible it is for him to do so, is disputed. It is also debatable whether any evaluative conclusion, for example, that it is good to realize power, could be derived from nonevaluative claims about human nature (Hurka 2007; Leiter 2000). But even denying the view of human nature and the derivation, one could accept the evaluative claim itself. The question, then, is whether Nietzsche thinks the good consists in realizing power and whether that consists in developing properties fundamental to human nature.

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(B) VALUE MONISM VERSUS PLURALISM

Very roughly, value monists think there is a single ultimate value that any good instantiates or contributes to or to which its value is reducible.13 Value pluralists deny this because they think that there is an irreducible plurality of values. Plausibly, Nietzsche regards excellence as finally valuable (i.e., valuable as an endthough it is debatable whether he thinks excellence the only such value). If Nietzsche is a value monist, likely candidates for a unitary base value include power and creativity; the monism/pluralism issue then concerns whether the value of any person or activity is suitably reducible or related to one of these. Note, though, that power and creativity are realizable in many ways; a monistic view would therefore have to show that all their valuable manifestations reduce to a unitary notion. Further, Nietzsche probably does not think that all activities manifesting power or creativity realize excellence. Not only might ones ends be mundane, mediocre, or plain horrific (however powerful or creative one may have to be in achieving them), he thinks the inception of slave morality an act of creativity (GM I:10) and agrees that morality exerts immense power; but he does not think that they represent the highest forms of human excellence. A Nietzschean account of value therefore needs to identify and discriminate those persons or activities that do and do not realize genuine excellence.

(C) WHAT ARE THE ULTIMATE BEARERS OF THE HIGHEST VALUE EXCELLENT INDIVIDUALS OR ACHIEVEMENTS?
On one hand, central to Nietzsches positive ideal is a vision of an ideal type of personfor whom he offers various epithets: free spirit (GS 347; BGE chap. 2), higher type (BGE 62; A 4; EH Destiny 4), noble person (GS 55; BGE chap. 9, 287), great person (WP 957), and arguably also bermensch (Z P:3; A 4; EH Books 1, Destiny 5). As prospective exemplars he supplies an initially diverse-looking assortment of individuals, including Caesar, da Vinci, Goethe, Beethoven, and Nietzsche himself. And he repeatedly cites a selection of capacities or qualities of character (often in association with such exemplars) that might variously be understood as preconditions for, or in some cases partially constitutive of, being a great individualnotably certain self-oriented qualities, including an independent self-determining will (BGE 29, 60; GS 290, 347), self-mastery (D 109; BGE 200, 260; TI Expeditions 49; WP 46), self-sufficiency and readiness for solitude (GS 55; BGE 44, 212, 260, 274, 284), self-discipline needed to endure suffering (BGE 212, 225, 260, 270), and self-reverence (GS 287, 290).14 Much of Nietzsches emphasis falls upon what it is to be a great individual; and he typically extols individuals because they manifest these self-oriented qualities rather than their particular achievements. Fundamental to Nietzsches conception of great individuality and human excellence is an ideal of creativitynot just artistic but, more significantly, the creation of ones own values and oneself (BGE 260; GS 55, 290, 335;

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A 11; WP 957).15 Thus the noble type of man feels himself to be the determiner of values . . . he creates values (BGE 260; cf. HH 225)he is the author of his own imperatives (A 11). On the other hand, though, it seems that individuals may possess and exercise such qualities yet direct their activities toward goals we (or Nietzsche) would deny manifest excellence. If so, they may fail to count as genuinely excellent individuals. In light of this, we might distinguish four Nietzschean possibilities: 1. The highest final value resides in individuals; such individuals are excellent in virtue of exercising certain qualities of character, irrespective of the content of the goals they pursue. 2. The highest final value resides in excellent achievements; individuals who achieve these are mere conduits of value, not themselves finally valuable. 3. The highest value is embodied both by individuals who achieve great things and by their achievements. 4. The highest final value resides in great individuals rather than their achievements; but such individuals would not be great unless the goals they achieve are also suitably impressive. Accepting any of (ii)(iv) raises the following question.

(D) WHICH ACHIEVEMENTS ARE EXCELLENT?

A striking feature is that Nietzsche nowhere seems to offer a substantive account of which activities or achievements are most valuable. This has recently led some commentators to suggest that he instead offers, or implies, a formal account of value (e.g., Hurka 2007; Janaway forthcoming; Reginster 2007; cf. Hunts 1991 procedural account of Nietzschean virtue). Hurka summarizes matters thus: Nietzsches account is distinctively formal. He does not hold that there are substantive goals that perfection requires people to pursue, such as knowledge, virtue, or the creation of beauty. Instead he evaluates goals in terms of formal qualities . . . compatible with many different substantive contents. It is not its specific aim that determines an activitys degree of worth, but how far that aim instantiates certain formal properties (2007, 23). A formal account specifies which goals/achievements are, and are not, valuable by deploying criteria of assessment that are specifiable independent of the content of the particular goals/achievements assessed by them. Reginster (2007) offers an account that is partly formal, developing a sophisticated version of the idea that an achievements difficulty adds to its value. Reginster acknowledges, though, that the difficulty of an achievement is [only] a necessary [not also sufficient] condition of its being great . . . because the determinate content of the achievement must itself be valuable (2007, 43). Whereas Reginster concedes that we need

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some further substantive criteria (which he [2007, 43] agrees Nietzsche does not provide), Hurka (2007, 23ff.) offers a more thoroughgoing formal analysis, emphasizing two main features. The first is the goals extent: the more objects or persons ones achievement exerts power over, the greater ones achievement. The second is what he calls unity-in-diversity among goals: the greater number of diverse goals one subsumes under a single overarching goal, the greater the achievement. Whatever the plausibility of these specific criteria, the adequacy of any such approach, whether solely or partly formal, depends on dealing with a number of issues both technical and substantiveincluding how the (potentially conflicting) results of different criteria combine to give an overall verdict on the value of an achievement and whether those criteria distinguish in the right ways those achievements Nietzsche thinks excellent from those he does not. This last consideration raises a further important issuewhether the criteria for determining the value of an achievement do or should countenance morally objectionable activities. To circumscribe this issue more narrowly, we might focus on the following question.

(E) DOES THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE JUSTIFY MORALLY ABHORRENT MEANS?

Sometimes Nietzsche countenances a noble person treating others as a mere means (contrary to central moral tenets [SE 6; BGE 258, 273; WP 962]). Yet he also suggests that many actions called immoral ought to be avoided and resisted (D 103); that hurting others is a sign that we are still lacking power (GS 13); and that when an exceptional human being handles the mediocre more gently than he does himself or his equals, this is not merely politeness of the heartit is simply his duty (A 57; cf. BGE 260). The question is how such apparently conflicting strands might be reconciled. The beginnings of an approach might appeal to Nietzsches notion of self-sufficiency: the more self-sufficiently one achieves ones goals (e.g., without using or hurting others as means), the more excellent one is. Even so, doing so (though signaling lack of power) may sometimes be necessary. We might thereby understand self-sufficiency as (a formal condition) partially constitutive of what it is to be an excellent individual, in turn yielding a (defeasible) constraint on conduct: Nietzsches higher men have good reason not to hurt others, since doing so stains their character by showing them suboptimally self-sufficient and thus less excellent (see also Z:II The Pitiful). Much more needs to be said here; but it indicates a direction by which to avoid the abhorrent conclusions some passages initially imply.

(F) DOES NIETZSCHES POSITIVE IDEAL MARK A RADICAL INDIVIDUALISM OR A WIDER ETHICAL PROGRAM?
Although much of Nietzsches emphasis falls on what it is to be a great individual, a crucial issue is whether this exhausts his positive project. Some think

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Nietzsches aim is to free only nascent higher individuals from morality; Leiter (2002, chap. 9), for example, denies that Nietzsche envisages a wider sociopolitical agenda. Many disagree. Here it may be useful to set out three possible viewpoints. According to one, Nietzsche advances a radical individualism, to the effect that 1. His ideal consists in realizing only the good of those most capable of the highest forms of excellence. 2. The highest final value lies in great individuals, regardless of whether they (or their achievements) benefit others. 3. Such individuals should aim only at their own perfection. 4. Others generally have no reason to promote the good of great individuals. 5. Nietzsche is generally indifferent to how the nonexcellent conduct themselves (Leiter 2002 may endorse some such individualism; cf. Foot 1994, 2001). On a second view, Nietzsche intends some wider nonelitist ethical transformation that incorporates the good of many (contra [i], [ii], and [v]). For instance, his critique of morality aims to uncover the deleterious effects it has not (just) on nascent higher types but on people more generally. The positive ideal then specifies how relations between people are to be rearranged, for instance, without commitment to features like obligation, blame/guilt, or certain conceptions of agency, perhaps because these thwart various goods in principle open to more than the few (e.g., self-understanding; Ridley [2005], Owen [2005, 2007], and Clark [2001] may be sympathetic to such an approach). A third option is to hold that Nietzsche seeks a sociopolitical transformation directly affecting all members of societyone involving a radical aristocratic, elitist, and inegalitarian order of rank. Hurka provocatively argues that Nietzsche advances a consequentialist perfectionism structured through a maximax principle combined with an agent-neutral conception of the good and right. (In effect, this satisfies [i] and [iii] but denies [iv] and [v].) According to Hurka, Nietzsches perfectionism adheres to standard consequentialist (or teleological) outlooks in that it evaluates acts by the total amount of good they produce (or embody [2007, 1617]); unlike classical utilitarianism, though, the good is conceived as excellence. Hurka then argues that distinctive of Nietzsches perfectionism is its view about social aggregation, whereby the value in a society depends not on the total or average perfection of all its members but on the excellence of its few most perfect members (2007, 1718). This represents not merely a maximizing but a maximax principle (that Hurka explicitly contrasts to the maximin principle central to Rawlss theory of distributive justice), according to which the greatest value is realized by maximizing only the

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excellence of the few (Hurka 2007, 18). This in turn has strong antiegalitarian implications, since it favours unequal distributions of resources and opportunities and can require that the majority . . . sacrifice themselves entirely for the good of their betters (Hurka 2007, 18, 20). Moreover, it generates an agent-neutral framework by which all agents are assigned [and all should seek] the same moral goal, namely, maximizing the perfection of the best (Hurka 2007, 21). To adequately articulate Nietzsches perfectionism and what his revaluation of values contributes to contemporary developments in this area of ethics, each of these crucial areas must be systematically addressed and further analyzed. Moreover, with the advancement of this research, we might be in a better position to understand the positive metaethical views available to, or required by, his revaluative project. By way of conclusion, I sketch a few routes by which this might be pursued.

4. A Positive Metaethics?
In my section 1, I presented Nietzsche as a (proto)error theorist about morality. However, this may generate the first premise of the authority problem roughly, that if Nietzsche rejects as erroneous the kinds of objectivity by which morality claims itself authoritative and justified, he may thereby deprive his own positive ideal of a legitimate claim to objectivity and hence justification. Responding to this takes us into metaethical territory. Nietzsche did not have a well-worked-out positive metaethics (any more than his contemporaries did), if by that we mean to include clear views about the metaphysics and semantics of his positive ethical claims. Nonetheless, we might conceive metaethics more broadly to encompass various aspects of the nature and justification of first-order ethical claims. I shall assume that Nietzsche needs some metaethical stance in this broader sense and will briefly sketch three prominent proposals about it, followed by an alternative suggestion. Three prefatory comments: First, I take seriously Nietzsches remark that those effecting his positive ideal create values (BGE 260). This could mean many things; one set of things I think it must involve is that Nietzsches higher type sets his own goals, that his achieving those goals can be valuable, and that he may have reason to pursue the goals he sets. Second, the predominant scholarly focus is with value narrowly construed, that is, that domain centering around what is good. The first three proposals I consider follow suit, whereas the alternative direction focuses on normative claims (about action), that is, what one ought and has reason to do. How and whether the evaluative and normative domains connect are controversial; here I will not assume that evaluative claims uniformly entail normative claims. Third, in presenting Nietzsche as an error theorist I have so far left open two

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options: that the error theory applies either to all practical evaluative-normative claims or only to some subset of them, notably those of morality. We shall encounter both readings.

OBJECTIVE VALUE REALISM

Many have held that, although Nietzsche denies the objectivity of moral value, he does not deny the objectivity of value per se; thus he is not an error theorist about all (objective) value (Clark and Dudrick 2007; Hunt 1991, chap. 7; Hurka 2007; Kaufmann 1974, 199200; Poellner 2007; Ridley 2005; Schacht 1983, 34849, 39899; cf. Hussain 2007, 17677; Leiter 2000; Reginster 2006, chap. 4). There are two ways to develop this. One could argue that morality is committed to an untenable conception of objectivitybut endorse an alternative conception to which morality is not entitled (perhaps because it precludes, or else does not suffice for, the kind of objectivity morality seeks). A more common tactic is to accept a standard notion of objectivity but argue that the values satisfying it are Nietzschean (e.g., nonmoral perfectionist) values, not moral values. For instance, we might characterize moral realism as involving the claim that there are objective moral values, where something is objectively valuable if its being valuable does not depend solely on individuals beliefs or attitudes. Nietzsche could then accept a form of realism about perfectionist values if he accepts an analogous claim about their objectivity. This effectively reduces the dispute between Nietzsche and moralist to a substantive disagreement about what is valuable or what plays the value-constituting role. One worry with such an approach is that Nietzsche frequently seems to deny that there are any values objectively construed (see, e.g., Hussain 2007). To cite one oft-quoted example: Whatever has value in our world does not have value in itself, according to its naturenature is always value-less, but has been given value at some time . . .it was we who gave and bestowed it value (GS 301). This is less conclusive than sometimes supposed, though. It seems to deny a rather particular conception of evaluative objectivity, which we may now associate with just some accounts of intrinsic value that rest on a metaphysical picture by which evaluative properties, to be objective, would have to exist as ontologically robust items. While Nietzsche rejects that picture, it remains to be seen whether he denies all conceptions of evaluative objectivity. To assess this, we really need a rather more fine-grained taxonomy of value than Nietzsche or his commentators usually provide (one that I cannot usefully begin here). So I leave this option open for further inquiry.

VALUE ANTIREALISM
Subject to one proviso, Leiter argues that Nietzsche is an antirealist or antiobjectivist about all value and that his positive evaluative claims reflect only his own subjective taste; they are no more justified than those he rejects. Thus, although Nietzsche thinks higher types better than lower, he does not think them

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objectively better. But this is not a problem since Nietzsches aim is a causal oneto free nascent higher individuals predisposed to accept the values he favors. He therefore does not need his favored values to be objectively justified or valuable. The proviso is this: facts about relational prudential goodness are objective because they consist in objective natural facts about what is in ones interests, or conducive to ones flourishing, given the type of person one is. Nonetheless, since different people may be relevantly different, what is good for one may not be good for another.16 Some may object that this is too subjectivistthat Nietzsche (surely) is presenting more than his own subjective opinion and regards some forms of excellence or flourishing as objectively better than others. However, it is worth indicating a different line of critical inquiry. Suppose with Leiter that the only (objective) values are those connected with individuals prudential good and that the kind of flourishing a higher type realizes is not objectively more valuable than that of a lower type. From this, plus a basic aggregative assumption to the effect that, all else equal, a world in which more objective value is realized is an objectively more valuable world than a world in which less is realized, it follows that a world in which the prudential good of numerous lower types is realized could be objectively more valuable than one in which the prudential good of the few higher types is realized. It could even be objectively more valuable if higher types do not flourish (i.e., if more value is realized in such a world). Yet, if that were so, Nietzsches subjective preference for higher types may (on Leiters account) be in conflict with, perhaps undermined by, his own objectivist commitments. This seems an undesirable bullet to bite.

FICTIONALISM
Nadeem Hussain (2007) attributes to Nietzsche a global error theory about value but develops a fictionalist rejoinder: Nietzsches higher men are able to engage honestly in a fiction, in which they make-believe that the values they create are valuable even though they know that nothing is valuable in itself.17 There is much to analyze in Hussains account. I shall focus on one set of issues: why higher men need to engage in such a fiction. Hussain regards engaging honestly in evaluative fictions as partially constitutive of what it is to be a Nietzschean higher person (without commitment to the claim that higher men, or honest fictions, are valuable in themselves). He specifies various success conditions that higher men satisfy when they make-believe (or conditions the satisfaction of which is necessary to be a higher man). First, the make-believe involves being honest, that is, engaging in it while realizing that what one values is not valuable in itself. Second, there are various phenomenological constraints (Hussain 2007, 174): that the things valued be experienced as ends standing above and beyond ones other desires, that they nonetheless engage ones emotional and motivational repertoire, and that the make-belief provides one with a sense that ones life has a goal and purpose. Note that these success conditions are

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content neutral with respect to the things valued and may be multiply realized. One might satisfy them by honestly engaging in an evaluative fiction involving make-belief in God or the value of slave morality. Such fictions, we would expect, are not fictions Nietzsches higher men engage in. So we need some further criteria by which to distinguish the ends higher men would (or perhaps should) value from those they would (or should) not. It remains to be seen how such additional criteria are justified on the fictionalist picture. But there is a further worry. Why would Nietzsches higher men (have to) engage in some simulacrum by which they make-believe that things are valuable in themselves? According to Hussain, generating an honest evaluative illusion with respect to x requires valuing x as an end (or experiencing x as a valuable end). First, though, this is something one can do without also make-believing that x is valuable in itself; indeed, the claim A values x as an end is a claim about the way A values x and is distinct from any claim about whether x is (or is make-believed to be) valuable in itself.18 Second, A may believe (not just make-believe) that x is valuable as an end; and that belief may be true (outside any evaluative fiction) insofar as x is finally valuable or A treats it as such (though x need not also be valuable in itself). Third, A may value x as an end precisely because valuing x chimes suitably with As motivational/emotional repertoire; and it could be because A thereby has some motivational/emotional commitment to x that, by making x one of his actual ends, A has the sense that his x-directed activities have a worthwhile goal or purpose. Yet, given these three points, it is unclear why we need to conceive value in fictionalist terms. For it allows that there are truths about final value satisfying the success conditions Hussain sets out; plus the phenomenology of valuing Hussain seeks to capture need not involve a practice of make-believe serving as a simulacrum for believing that things are valuable in themselvesit can be the more straightforward practice of valuing things as ends. Hence there is no need to engage in some make-believe that things are valuable in themselves; indeed, there is no need to make-believe at all. This probably makes the position too close to the subjectivism Hussain disavows on textual grounds; although unconvinced by those grounds, I leave aside these further interpretative issues for now. These worries are not intended as knockdown objections. However, I think it worth considering another approach that avoids them. Although much of Nietzsches focus is on value, his positive project must also concern what higher men ought and have reason to do.19 His aim, after all, is to transform not merely peoples evaluations but what people do. The following cursorily sets out a number of theses I think attributable to Nietzsche that indicate a position familiar within contemporary debates about practical reason but aspects of which are also distinctively Nietzschean. First, normative judgments are, or can be, cognitive, that is, express beliefs; and they can be true. But a true normative judgment is not a representation of

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a world constituted by metaphysically robust normative properties, since there are no such properties. Rather, normative judgments are essentially interpretative. We interpret the world normatively, in terms of what there is reason to do in light of it; and we judge of certain features and considerations that they are, that is, interpret them as, reason-giving. Second, how one does and is able to interpret things normatively is shaped and constrained by ones subjective motivesones desires, aims, ends, interests, and the likeas well as the underlying dispositions of character and sentiment that shape the kind of person one is and projects one chooses to pursue. Thus, which features and considerations a person is sensitive to as reason-giving depends on that persons motives; this may vary across persons. Third, different people could have reasons for very different kinds of actions; so we need some account of why this is, in particular why some agentsNietzsches higher men, saymay not have reason to do as morality demands but may instead have reason to pursue certain nonmoral excellences. There are various ways to develop this. For instance, we might say that for some feature or consideration y to provide A with a reason to do x, A must be able to recognize (interpret, judge) y as reason-giving. Thus, if a Nietzschean higher type is simply incapable of grasping the supposed point of considerations like equality and respect, he may have no reason to act in light of them. In turn, if the particular considerations one is able to interpret as reason-giving depends on ones motives, a further constraint follows: what a person has reason to do depends on that persons motives. This represents what in recent literature is often called reasons internalism, a basic version of which claims that
(RI) A has a reason to do x only if A has some motive that would be served by doing x.20

This provides a (satisfiable) truth condition for reason claims (without commitment to reasons literally being metaphysically robust properties). It is worth drawing attention to two further points about it. First, RI functions at two levels. At one, it presents a constraint on correct reason attributions and thus yields substantive claims about who has what reasons. At a metalevel, though, RI opposes moralitys claim to normative authority and thereby supports an error theory about any conception of morality so committed (though avoiding a global error theory about practical normativity). Second, RI leaves open further issues about both the source of reasons and what further conditions must be satisfied if a person is to have a reason. For instance, the source of reasons could be agential motives, whereby we might then provide a sufficient condition for true reason claims integral to which is some essential reference to agential motives. Or one could combine RI with an objectivist account of value, so that value is the source of reasons and values generally provide reasons, but a person who has no motive that would be served by pursuing a particular excellence thereby has no reason to pursue it. Either way, to the

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extent that the content of the excellences a person has reason to pursue depends in part on that persons motives, and insofar as the individual plays a part in determining which excellences he or she has reason to pursue, we have a way to (begin to) explain how a person creates his or her own goals and values. It also offers one response to the authority problem: for there are objective truths regarding what we have reason to do; it is just that all true reason claims have subjective conditions specified in terms of agential motives. These topics have yet to be explored sufficiently in the Nietzsche literature and need careful execution if they are to prove attributable to Nietzsche and philosophically plausible. More nuanced conceptions of Nietzsches perfectionism and how it bears on the details of a positive metaethics are rich areas for further research and mark the leading edges of Nietzsche studies.
University of Southampton S.J.Robertson@soton.ac.uk

NOTES
I would like to thank everyone with whom I have had conversations about Nietzsches ethics over the past yearespecially Chris Janaway, David Owen, and Aaron Ridley. I am also very grateful to the editorial committee at the Journal of Nietzsche Studies and again to Chris and David, for useful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. Special thanks go to Christa Davis Acampora for her help and patience throughout. 1. As is often noted, although Nietzsche abandoned a four-volume work subtitled Attempt at a Revaluation of all Values (cf. WP 69, plus editors n. 39, 44ff.), much of his published work contributes to that project. Note the sprinkling of remarks to this effect throughout EH. 2. It is now common (in Anglo-American circles) to view (the later) Nietzsche as a philosophical naturalist. Disagreement reigns over what form this takes (cf., e.g., Emden 2005; Janaway 2007, chap. 3; Leiter 2002 [especially chap. 1]; Schacht 1983, 2001; Wilcox 1974; Williams 1993); here I assume that Nietzsche is a naturalist in some suitably broad sense but leave open the many vexing issues (exegetical and philosophical) this raises. 3. This is not an exhaustive characterization of the commitments Nietzsche associates with morality or the features he objects to (cf. Leiter 1995, 2002, chaps. 34; Owen 2007). I provide further justification and detail in Robertson forthcoming. I suspect the combination of (1b) and (1c) is necessary for an outlook falling among Nietzsches critical targets, with the conjunction of (1bc) and (2) being both necessary and sufficient, though I will not assume this in what follows. Not everyone agrees that Nietzsche does object to the content of the values specified in (2), though. Aaron Ridley has suggested (in conversation; see also Ridley 2005) that Nietzsches objection concerns the way we relate to these values (in light of the conceptions of agency morality propagates) rather than their content as such. 4. Cf. Joyce 2001; Mackie 1977, chap. 1. On Nietzsche as error theorist, see Clark and Dudrick 2007; Hussain 2007; Leiter 2002, 136ff.; Pigden 2007; Reginster 2006. The errors Nietzsche attributes to morality are not restricted only to its objectivist conception of moral truth; they extend to various conceptions of blame and agency. Nietzsches critique is thus more wide ranging than (e.g.) Mackies and more akin to Williamss (especially 1985, chap. 10). 5. Since Nietzsche denies that there are objective moral values but does not deny the existence of natural facts, he may be assuming that moral values would have to be metaphysically distinct from natural facts. This indicates a view of moral objectivity akin to that assumed by

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Mackie (1977) but that contemporary naturalist moral realists deny (e.g., Railton 1986). Nietzsche, I suspect, might say that if moral values just are natural items, they lack the intrinsic evaluative significance arguably needed for compliance with them to be categorically required. 6. This is a point well made by Williams (1995, 175) in demonstrating the limitations of Mackies error theory. On the point that morality is not committed to ontologically robust conceptions of moral truth, see contemporary irrealists like Scanlon (1998, chap. 1), Skorupski (2006), and, in the context of Nietzsche, Blackburn (2007). 7. Despite some oft-noted similarities, Nietzsches point therefore differs in a crucial respect from Anscombe 1958. Anscombe suggests that an obligation/law conception of ethics is insufficiently intelligible without the theistic worldview from which it is derived. Nietzsches complaint is that it has not become unintelligible enough. He offers several strands of explanation for this, including that we have inherited a vision of morality as the only option (BGE 202); moral values have become internalized and ingrained in our culture and psyche; and these values express ideals of submissiveness and obedience (GM I:14), allegiance to which fosters an unquestioning herdlike mentality (BGE 199), in turn breeding automatons dependent on external authorities (GM III:1; BGE 199; GS 347). 8. For detailed commentary of GM, see, e.g., Acampora 2006; Clark 1994, 20ff., 2001, 107ff.; Janaway 2007; Leiter 2002; May 1999 (especially chaps. 35); Owen 2007; Ridley 1998. 9. It is worth adding that Nietzsche does supplement the genealogical argument with more specific attacks on particular moral theories and their claims to justification. For criticisms of Kant (especially the universality and purity of practical reason upon which Kantian normative authority depends), see, e.g., HH 225; D 109; GS 5, 347; BGE 6, 11, 187; GM III:12; A 11; EH Destiny 7 (for relevant recent secondary literature, see Hill 2003, 215ff.; Leiter 2002, chap. 3; Risse 2007). For criticisms of utilitarianism, see especially BGE 225, 228 (cf. Leiter 2000). An adequate exposition of Nietzsches objections goes beyond what I can do here; but they do merit further attention. 10. Leiter (see especially 2002, 104ff.) treats good for as a species of relational prudential value, explicating it several ways: what is in a persons interests, conducive to ones flourishing, and presumably (for those capable of it) conducive to realizing their excellence. These may come apart; but I leave such complications aside. Note also that Leiter usually frames the objection in terms of the effects morality has on individuals, though sometimes as the impeding of excellence itself, which again may come apart; see also 3. 11. Leiter thus gives definite answers to many of the interpretative issues raised in my introductory section regarding the content of Nietzsches critique: Morality in practice frustrates the realization of excellence by those few individuals capable of it. It does so by propagating a range of values inimical to excellence. These values are held in place by moralitys claim to universal applicability, in turn predicated on the mistaken view that all people are essentially similar. That morality has these effects is objectionable because it is bad for those nascent higher individuals whose flourishing it thwarts, and perhaps also because it impedes excellence itself. Each thesis is contestable; and there is more to explore in Leiters reading than I can dedicate space to here. 12. GM III explains how morality may initially have got a grip on those whose interests it thwarts: roughly, Christianity gave suffering meaning. But with the death of God, that explanation will have limited application now. 13. For some discussion on value monism versus pluralism, see Hurka 2007. 14. Cf. the lists of more unassuming virtues at D 556 and BGE 284. See Leiter 2002, 115ff., for systematic discussion of Nietzsches ideal type. 15. See Berkowitz 1995, chap. 5; Leiter 2002, 11516; Nehamas 1985, especially chap. 6; Reginster 2007; Ridley 2007. 16. This may count as a version of what Hussain (2007, 161) labels subjectivist realism (cf. Langsam 1997), according to which the truth conditions of evaluative claims involve some

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essential reference to an agents states, at least if we include under agential states those properties of agents to do with their objective interests (which Hussain at one point seems to). 17. Cf. Blackburn 2007; Reginster 2006, chaps. 2 and 4. Although not certain what valuable in itself means, I here use it as Hussain seems to. 18. I rely here on a distinction akin to that drawn by Korsgaard (1983) between final and intrinsic value, one I think there is independent reason to regard as important for Nietzsche. 19. As I use these terms, oughts signal conclusive normative verdicts and entail (pro tanto) reasons, so that if you ought to do x, then you have a reason to do x. 20. See, e.g., Williams 1981a. It is perhaps no coincidence that both Williams and Foot, two of Nietzsches pioneering analytic readers, were both reasons internalists. Reginster (2006, chap. 4) sympathetically considers Nietzsches commitment to some such position (which he calls motivational internalism), though his (2006, 151, 155) discussion is at times confused, conflating three rather different claims we may want to keep separate: that A has a reason to do x only if As doing x would serve As desires, that As doing x is good only if doing x would serve As desires, and that A accepts that x is good only if As doing x would serve As desires.

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