Activity, Power, and the Foundations of Ethics

Abstract

This concluding chapter summarizes the book’s argument and reviews the ways in which Nietzschean constitutivism differs from Korsgaard’s and Velleman’s versions of constitutivism. The chapter shows that the chief differences are that the Nietzschean theory is a posteriori or empirical, that it is non-foundationalist, and that it is bipartite. These aspects of the theory render it particularly appealing: they enable it to avoid certain problems that plague alternative versions of constitutivism. The chapter concludes by contending that a Nietzschean version of constitutivism can answer the foundational question in ethics by showing how normative claims are justified. In particular, normative claims are grounded in the fact that human action aims jointly at agential activity and power.