Nietzsche, Friedrich

Abstract

Abstract The importance of the philosophy of Nietzsche (1844–1900) in the history of ethics is no longer in dispute, but the nature of this importance very much is. It is commonly believed to lie in his sharp critique of the authority of morality. Moral values are assumed to have two kinds of authority – they are universal and overriding – and Nietzsche challenges both. Moreover, this critique of morality also assigns a controversial role to psychology , particularly in On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), which is widely considered his most important work on the subject. Although this common view certainly captures an important strain of Nietzsche's ethical thought, it also overlooks another which is arguably of equal importance, namely his development of a distinctive new conception of happiness as an alternative to the traditional, and in his view unrealistic, conception of it in terms of fulfillment . I shall accordingly divide this essay in two main sections: I shall devote the first section to Nietzsche's critique of morality and attempt to elucidate the role of psychology in it, and I shall focus on his new conception of happiness in the second section.