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Kaleb

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Kaleb is Currently Reading

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Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment

by Mary Anne Franks

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Jun 14, 2026 08:16PM

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Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right

by Laura K. Field

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Apr 07, 2026 06:10PM

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Nietzsche on Morality (Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks)

by Brian Leiter

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read in December 2022

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Kaleb said: " 12/07/2024 reread
Excellent job of interpreting Nietzsche. In academia, there have been two main interpretations of Nietzsche: the postmodern and the naturalistic. The former (done by Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and the like) argues that Nietzsche was 12/07/2024 reread
Excellent job of interpreting Nietzsche. In academia, there have been two main interpretations of Nietzsche: the postmodern and the naturalistic. The former (done by Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and the like) argues that Nietzsche was a radical critic of truth, the latter (Freud) that Nietzsche grounds his philosophical arguments/claims in the natural sciences (especially psychology). Leiter convincingly argues for the naturalistic interpretation.

Frankly, I would recommend this book before you read anything by Nietzsche himself. Nietzsche uses a lot of aphorisms which makes it difficult to come up with a coherent theory of it all. There's a lot here, but here are the highlights. Nietzsche is a moral anti-realist; moral values have no truth value nor are they given to us from above; instead, morals arise out of a historical process (which is covered in the Genealogy). However, Nietzsche (like the Sophists he admires) is a relationist about values; some values are objectively good, but only for certain types of people. For example: Christianity is great for the herd, but it's terrible for the "great men."

He criticizes Morality in the Pejorative Sense (MPS), like Kantianism, Platonism, Christianity and Buddhism, not necessarily because they are false (although according to Nietzsche they are false) but because they prevent the flourishing of "higher men." These "higher men" (such as Goethe, Beethoven, Nietzsche himself) are largely creative, artistic geniuses, but MPS, which values humility, selflessness, etc., prevents them from achieving their artistic goals, which require selfishness, pride, etc. This is a problem because MPS presents itself as the "universal" morality, and these "higher men" are susceptible to believing MPS, preventing them from flourishing.

This takes a lot of the steam out of Nietzsche's project; despite his often extreme and forceful rhetoric, he doesn't think MPS is bad for all of us, it's just bad for the "higher men." The end goal of Nietzsche's philosophy is to liberate these "higher men," tell them that they don't have to be bound by MPS. Nietzsche's audience is actually quite small; he is basically only writing to wake up these higher men, not for the rest of us.

Is any of this true? Nietzsche's philosophy raises more questions than it answers: are great artists really harmed by the demands of conventional morality? Are morals really created through this naturalistic process? Are the historical claims he makes in the Genealogy true? Leiter ends the book acknowledging that these are open questions; Nietzsche's philosophy leaves a lot of room for philosophers, historians sociologists, and moral psychologists to work with.

Quotes
"While for Freud, Nietzsche is the philosopher who anticipates psychoanalysis by trying to discover the deep, hidden facts about human nature which explain who we are and what we believe, for Foucault, Nietzsche is precisely the philosopher who denies that there are any ‘deep facts’ about human nature and who recognizes that all such putative facts are mere interpretations, mere contingent constructs."

"We shall see, in fact, that such a view of objective relational goodness is crucial for Nietzsche as well: for Nietzsche holds that particular moralities can be good for certain types of people, but bad for others"

"Thus, the general applicability of MPS is predicated on an assumption about similarity among persons and their interests: people are essentially similar, and so the MPS that is good for one will be good for all. It is this assumption that Nietzsche denies."

1st read
Amazing, one of my all time favorite books actually. Did a really good job of answering a lot of my lingering questions about Nietzsche in a very understandable way. Because he writes in aphorisms, its hard to get a big picture understandings of Nietzsche's philosophy, but this book did a great job of that. ...more "

Dec 07, 2024 02:32PM · see review

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Kaleb’s Quotes

“Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

tags: life, philosophy, wisdom

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“We fall in love for a smile, a look, a shoulder. That is enough; then, in the long hours of hope or sorrow, we fabricate a person, we compose a character.”
― Marcel Proust, The Captive / The Fugitive

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“But, then, what is philosophy today—philosophical activity, I mean—if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known? There is always something ludicrous in philosophical discourse when it tries, from the outside, to dictate to others, to tell them where their truth is and how to find it, or when it works up a case against them in the language of naive positivity.”
― Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure