Nietzsche: Ethical Egoism

For many, striving to attain first place in an athletic competition is explicable. Less explicable is striving to attain first place in a virtue (aretē) competition. Yet this latter dynamic appears in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. There is 4.3’s magnanimity, the crown of the virtues, which seemingly manifests itself in outdoing one’s peers in virtue. Such one-upmanship also seems operant with 9.8’s praiseworthy self-lover, who seeks to get as much of the fine (to kalon) as possible for herself. Contrary to many (...) interpreters, this paper argues that praiseworthy self-love and magnanimity involve one-upmanship. The relevant exemplars are not simply striving to be the best that they can be in respect to virtue (in virtuous activity), but to be better than others. The paper argues that Aristotle’s axiology, which sets activity (energeia) above state (hexis) and potentiality (dunamis), engenders one-upmanship. For only the level of activity substantially differentiates individuals, settling for inferiority is obviously objectionable, and equal achievement for Aristotle is not static but involves matching and surpassing the achievements of others. The paper concludes that modern discomfort with these dynamics is due to an axiology Nietzsche attributes to Christianity, one that bases human value fundamentally on non-differentiating potentiality. (shrink)

Owen (2009, 2017) contrasts Kant and Nietzsche’s strategies for dealing with self-love. Kant sees our self-love as ineliminable, and looks to adopt a strategy of subordinating or supressing it to the moral law. Owen sees Nietzsche, by contrast, as adopting a strategy of channelling self-love, directing it in ways that serve both individual and collective development. In this paper, I argue that we do not need to just supress, subordinate, or channel self-love, for we can also move away from it. (...) Doing this involves recognising our own dependence on and vulnerability to each other, and empathy. I contend that emphasis on these things also moves us away from Kant and Nietzsche. (shrink)

Many of the leading Freudian analysts, including in the early days, Jung, Adler, Reich and Rank, attempted to link the writings of Nietzsche with the clinical...