Ethics as Social Philosophy: Nietzsche on Mutuality

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nietzsche, I argue, did not have an ethical theory traditionally structured around impersonal (or self-interested) considerations with a strangely hierarchical content; his ethical thought, rather, is untraditionally structured around very conventional content—e.g., enmity, love, responsibility—considered relationally. 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. The main focus of reflection is accordingly 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.