Nietzsche and the Morality Critics

Author(s): Brian Leiter

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Source: Ethics, Vol. 107, No. 2 (Jan., 1997), pp. 250-285
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Nietzsche and the Morality Critics*
Brian Leiter

I. INTRODUCTION
Nietzsche has long been one of the dominant figures in twentieth-
century intellectual life. Yet it is only recently that he has come into
his own in Anglo-American philosophy, thanks to a renewed interest
in his critical work in ethics.' This new appreciation of Nietzsche is

* For helpful comments on earlier versions of some or all of this material, I am

grateful to Elizabeth Anderson, Frithjof Bergmann, Maudemarie Clark, Stephen Dar-
wall, Ken Gemes, David Hills, Thomas Pogge, and, especially, Peter Railton. I have also
benefited from the comments and questions of philosophical audiences at Rutgers
University (New Brunswick), and the Universities of Arizona (Tucson), California (San
Diego), and Texas (Austin). Finally, I thank the editors and anonymous referees for
Ethics for their useful comments on the penultimate draft.
1. A very different Nietzsche has engaged thinkers elsewhere, notably on the
European continent and in literature departments in the United States. There the key
themes have been perspectivism, the primacy of interpretation (and, at the same time,
its indeterminacy), and the impossibility of truth. This Nietzsche is well represented by
Paul de Man, in Allegoriesof Reading (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979),
esp. chaps. 5 and 6, and by many of the essays in D. Allison, ed., The New Nietzsche
(New York: Delta, 1977); it has received its most sophisticated articulation, however, in
Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche:Life as Literature(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1985), a book which, accordingly, gives only cursory attention to Nietzsche's
moral philosophy. The problems with this reading of Nietzsche-which are, I think,
many-are discussed in my "Nietzsche and Aestheticism,"Journal of theHistoryof Philoso-
phy 30 (1992): 275-90, and my "Perspectivism in Nietzsche's Genealogyof Morals," in
Nietzsche, Genealogy,Morality, ed. R. Schacht (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1994). Compare Maudemarie Clark, Nietzscheon Truthand Philosophy(Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1990), chaps. 1-4. Interestingly, the last explosion of Anglo-
American philosophical interest in Nietzsche-roughly, from 1900 until the end of
World War I-was also driven by an interest in his ethics (and esp. its connection to
evolutionary theory and positivism). See, e.g., Maurice Adams, "The Ethics of Tolstoy
and Nietzsche," Ethics 11 (1900): 82 - 105; Alfred W. Benn, "The Morals of an Immoral-
ist- Friedrich Nietzsche," Ethics 19 (1908-9): 1-23, 192-211; A. K. Rogers, "Nietzsche
and Democracy," PhilosophicalReview 21 (1912): 32-50; William M. Salter, "Nietzsche's
Moral Aim," Ethics 25 (1915): 226-51, 372-403; Bertram Laing, "The Metaphysics of
Nietzsche's Immoralism," PhilosophicalReview 24 (1915): 386-418. One may hope that
no philosopher today would write, as one dissenter from the Nietzsche revival did then,
that "nothing ... quite so worthless as 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' or 'Beyond Good and
Evil' has ever attracted so much attention from serious students of the philosophy

Ethics 107 (January 1997): 250-285

? 1997 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0014-1704197/0702-0003$01.00

250

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 251
reflected in the work of many philosophers. For Alasdair MacIntyre,
for example, Nietzsche is the first to diagnose the failure of the project
of post-Enlightenment moral theory-even though, according to Mac-
Intyre, Nietzsche wrongly thinks that such theory is the last hope for
moral objectivity.2 For Annette Baier, he is one of those "great moral
philosophers" who show us an alternative to the dominant traditions
in modern moral theory, an alternative in which we "reflect on the
actual phenomenon of morality, see what it is, how it is transmitted,
what difference it makes."3 For Susan Wolf, he represents an "ap-
proach to moral philosophy" in which the sphere of the "moral"comes
to encompass those personal excellencies that Utilitarian and Kantian
moral theories seem to preclude.4 For other recent writers, he figures
as the exemplar of a philosophical approach to morality that these
writers either endorse (e.g., Philippa Foot) or reject (e.g., Thomas
Nagel, Michael Slote).5 Indeed, in looking at the claim common to
critics of morality like Slote, Foot, Wolf, and Bernard Williams-that
"moral considerations are not always the most important considera-
tions"-Robert Louden has recently asked, "Have Nietzsche's 'new
philosophers' finally arrived on the scene: 'spirits strong and original
enough to provide the stimuli for opposite valuations and to revalue
and invert "eternal values"'?" (BGE, 203)6
In this paper, I propose to investigate and delineate more precisely
the real similarities and differences between Nietzsche "the immoral-

of morals" (Herbert Stewart, "Some Criticisms on the Nietzsche Revival," Ethics 19

[1909]: 427-28).
2. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1981), esp. pp. 107-11.
3. Annette Baier, "Theory and Reflective Practices," in Posturesof theMind (London:
Methuen, 1985), pp. 207-27, p. 224.
4. Susan Wolf, "Moral Saints,"Journal of Philosophy79 (1982): 419-39, p. 433.
5. See, e.g., Michael Slote, Goods and Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), p. 79;
Thomas Nagel, The Viewfrom Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p.
196; Philippa Foot, "Nietzsche: The Revaluation of Values," in Nietzsche: A Collection
of Critical Essays, ed. R. Solomon (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
1973), esp. p. 163; see also her "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives?"
reprinted in her Virtuesand Vices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
6. Robert Louden, "Can We Be Too Moral?" Ethics 98 (1988): 361-80, p. 361.
Louden begins his essay by quoting Nietzsche's call for "a critique of moral values, the
value of thesevalues themselvesmustfirstbe calledin question"(GM, pref.). A note on citations:
I cite Nietzsche's texts using the standard English-language acronyms: The Birth of
Tragedy (BT), UntimelyMeditations(U), Dawn (D), The Gay Science (GS), Thus SpokeZara-
thustra (Z), Beyond Goodand Evil (BGE), On the Genealogyof Morality (GM), Twilight of the
Idols (TI), The Antichrist (A), Ecce Homo (EH), Nietzsche Contra Wagner (NCW), and The
Will to Power (WP). Roman numerals refer to major divisions or chapters; arabic numer-
als refer to sections, not pages. Translations, with occasional minor emendations, are
by Walter Kaufmann and/or R. J. Hollingdale; for purposes of making emendations, I
rely upon the Samtliche Werkein 15 Banden, ed. G. Colli and M. Mottinari (Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1980).

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252 Ethics January 1997
ist" and the recent critical writers in moral philosophy. Doing so will
require first saying something about the distinct strands in the recent
critical literature, since not all of these have made equal-or equally
interesting-claims on Nietzsche. After surveying briefly the land-
scape of recent critical work, I will examine in detail just one aspect
of this work-that associated with those philosophers I will call the
"Morality Critics." I hope to show that, notwithstanding some superfi-
cial similarities, Nietzsche is in fact engaged in a critique of morality
in terms quite foreign to recent discussion in the Anglo-American
world. For what distinguishes Nietzsche, I will argue, is that he is a
genuine critic of moralityas a real cultural phenomenon, while recent
Anglo-American writers are only critics of particular philosophicaltheo-
ries of morality. Nietzsche, unlike these writers, situates his critique
of morality within a broader "cultural critique," in which morality is
attacked as only the most important of a variety of social and cultural
forces posing obstacles to human flourishing. This approach to cri-
tique places Nietzsche, not in the company of Anglo-American morality
critics, but rather in that European tradition of modernist discontent
with bourgeois Christian culture that runs, we might say, from Baude-
laire to Freud, with faint echoes audible in the critical theories of
Adorno and Marcuse.7 Like these critics, Nietzsche is concerned with
the condition of a culture, not the shortcomings of a theory, and in
particular with the character and consequences of its moral culture.
Because of this fundamental difference between Nietzsche and recent
Anglo-American philosophy, Nietzsche's critique also represents a far
more speculative challenge to morality. In the concluding section of
this paper, I will pose some critical questions about the plausibility of
Nietzsche's attack.
II. THEORY CRITICS AND MORALITY CRITICS
We must begin, however, with some distinctions: first, between moral-
ity and moral theory; and, second, between types of criticism of moral
theory. When I say that recent Anglo-American work has been critical
only of particular theories of morality, but not of morality itself, the
distinction I have in mind is simple enough: it is the difference be-
tween, on the one hand, morality as an everyday cultural phenomenon,
the stuff of common sense and common opinion, guiding the conduct
of ordinary people; and, on the other hand, morality as more or less
systematized, improved, and codified in some theoretical framework
produced by a philosopher. Of course, most moral theorists presum-
ably think that their theory captures what is essential to morality as
an everyday cultural phenomenon. They may or may not be right in

7. See the useful overview in Robert Pippin, Modernismas a PhilosophicalProblem

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), pp. 4-7, 30.

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 253
this claim. But even if the theory does capture what is conceptually
central to morality as an everyday cultural phenomenon, a critic may
still worry about the effects of the unsystematic, uncodified, unim-
proved moral beliefs that comprise the daily life of the culture. Such
a critique might invite the philosophical rejoinder that the deficiencies
of "ordinary" morality simply need to be cured by good philosophy.
I shall, in fact, return to this type of objection after we have set out
Nietzsche's own critique in greater detail.
Recent Anglo-American criticism, in contrast to Nietzsche, has
taken as its target moral theory, but it has done so in two quite distinct
senses. Let us call the "Theory Critics"-philosophers like Annette
Baier, Charles Larmore, Charles Taylor, and sometimes Bernard Will-
iams-those who think that our "particular moral assessments and
commonsense moral principles" are not the sort of things about which
one should or can have a theory(in some precise and technical sense
of the word 'theory').8 The qualification here is important, for the
position of the Theory Critics is not a rank anti-intellectualism or some
sort of ethical particularism.9 What, then, are the marks of "theory"
in this objectionable sense (hereafter Theory)? A survey of the recent
literature suggests that a Theory is often characterized by two aims
in particular:
i) Reduction: Theory tries to reduce all value to a single, uni-
tary source;,1
and
ii) Mechanical Decision: Theory tries to articulate an explicit,
mechanical decision procedure for generating answers to ethical
questions (or explicit criteria for ethical decision and a decision
procedure for their application)."

8. See Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton, "Toward Fin de siecle
Ethics: Some Trends," PhilosophicalReview 101 (1992): 115-89, p. 181. This forms the
subject matter of normativetheory, which these authors, following Baier, identify as the
primary target of those I am calling the Theory Critics.
9. See Jonathan Dancy, "Ethical Particularism and Morally Relevant Properties,"
Mind 92 (1983): 530-47.
10. Bernard Williams, Ethicsand theLimitsof Philosophy(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1985), pp. 16-17, cited hereafter in the text as ELP; Thomas Nagel,
"The Fragmentation of Value," reprinted in Mortal Questions(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979), pp. 131-32; Charles Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 138; Charles Taylor, "The Diversity
of Goods," reprinted in Philosophyand the Human Sciences:PhilosophicalPapers 2 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Elsewhere in Ethics and the Limits of Philoso-
phy, Williams worries about a different kind of reductionism, i.e., the attempt to reduce
all practical reasoning and all obligation to moral reasoning and moral obligation. See
esp. chap. 10.
11. Bernard Williams, "Preface," in Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981), p. x; Larmore, p. ix, chap. 1; Taylor. Something similar seems to be
Annette Baier's target in "Theory and Reflective Practices," and "Doing without Moral

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254 Ethics January 1997
These pernicious aspects of Theory are closely related, for it is pre-
cisely Theory's reduction of value to a single source that makes possible
Theory's goal of a Mechanical Decision procedure, namely, one that
uses the privileged basic value to "churn out" (we might say) moral
directives.'2 Against these aims, the Theory Critics argue that value
is not unitary (there is, in Taylor's phrase, a "diversity" of goods) and
that (partly as a result) Mechanical Decision procedures are simply
impossible in the ethical life: ethical decision and action, these critics
say, requires practical wisdom, virtues, or sensitivity to the particular
context, all things which (allegedly) cannot be captured within the
confines of Theory.
Anyone familiar with the recent literature knows that it appears
to contain more complaints-and certainly more epithets-than just
these: Moral Theory is said to be too abstract, too general, too system-
atic, too foundationalist, too simplistic, and too contemptuous of non-
Theoretical forms of reflection.13 I would suggest, though, that all
these complaints are most helpfully thought of as variations on the
critique of Reduction and Mechanical Decision. For example, it is
becauseTheory reduces value to a single source that it is too simplistic.
Similarly, it is becauseTheory wants a Mechanical Decision procedure
that can generate answers in any particular case that Theory ends up
being too general and too abstract.
Focusing the critique of Theory in this way is useful because of
a certain tension in the writings of the Theory Critics, for a common
refrain among them is that the rejection of Theory (in the technical
sense) does not entail the rejection of ethical reflection.'4 But if reflec-

Theory?" (reprinted in Posturesof the Mind, pp. 228-45), esp. in her talk of the theorist's
hierarchical ordering of more principles "in which the less general are derived from
the more general" ("Doing without Moral Theory?" p. 232) on the model of a legal
system ("Theory and Reflective Practices," p. 214) (where the latter is thought of, in
a pre-Legal Realist sense, as involving the deduction of particular decisions from
general rules).
12. Taylor aptly calls this the ambition for a "single-consideration procedure," a
label which suggests the unity of Reduction and Mechanical Decision, and objects that
such a procedure cannot do justice to "the real diversity of goods that we recognize"
(pp. 245, 247).
13. See Baier, "Theory and Reflective Practices" and "Doing without Moral The-
ory?"; and Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy,esp. pp. 115-17, 127, 202.
14. For example, Baier argues for ethical reflection without "normative theory
in the Kantian sense" while noting that "reflectiveness about our practices requires
at the very least noting whether they are counterproductive to their expressed aims"
("Theory and Reflective Practices," p. 226). Williams wonders throughout Ethics and
the Limits of Philosophy "why reflection should be taken to require theory" (p. 112)
and claims that "philosophy in the modern world cannot make any special claim to
reflectiveness" (p. 3). Taylor goes further and concedes that even if there are a
plurality of goods, "people ... are faced with the job of somehow making them

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 255
tion is not simply to lead us back into Theory, then we must have
some clear idea of what Theory is-something more than that it is an
account of morality that is too simple or too abstract. Indeed, it would
seem that if something is to count as reflecting at all-as opposed, say,
simply to emoting-then it must aim for some degree of abstraction,
simplification, generality, and coherence. To reflect at all must involve
abstracting from the particular case and identifying (some of) the
general features which permit comparison and harmonizing with other
cases. Theory in the objectionable sense must require something else,
otherwise all reflection would involve Theory. I have suggested that
this something else is captured by the joint aims of Reduction and
Mechanical Decision: it is these that mark the line between bad Theory
and good ethical reflection.
Yet these considerations suggest something further. For some
degree of abstraction, generality, and coherence-the minimal re-
quirements of all reflection-are also surely among the minimal desid-
erata of all theoryconstruction. In that case, we ought to say that theory
in this minimalist sense really is part of ethical reflection. Thus, by
ordinary usage, it would be misleading to describe the complaint of
the Theory Critics as directed at theory per se, since they only target
those theoretical ambitions (i.e., Reduction and Mechanical Decision)
that go beyond the minimal requirements. The difference between
the Theory Critics and the mainstream of the modern tradition is,
ultimately, one of degree, not kind.'5
Those I will call the "Morality Critics," by contrast, are those-like
Michael Slote, Michael Stocker, Susan Wolf, and, again, Bernard Will-
iams-who criticize moral theory, not because of its theoretical ambi-
tions, but because of its moral commitments (more precisely, either
the substantive content of the morality endorsed or the weight assigned
in practical reasoning to moral demands). Admittedly, the Morality
Critics often present themselves as critics of morality itself-in that
sense they echo Nietzsche-but, on examination, it is clear that their
targets are specific theories of morality, consequentialist and deonto-
logical. The Williams of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophyis illustrative
in this regard, for he might seem, at first sight, a counterexample to

compatible in their lives" (p. 236) and that, as a result, "the demand for a unified
theory" is a "demand we cannot totally repudiate"- (p. 245).
15. This is clearest in the case of writers like Nagel and Larmore, who explicitly
affirm both the tenability of moral theory and the indispensable role of something like
Aristotle's practical wisdom orjudgment in our moral life. See Nagel, "The Fragmenta-
tion of Value," pp. 135-37; and Larmore, chap. 1, p. 151 ("My intention ... has not
been to deny the possibilities or importance of moral theory. I do not believe that
the complexity of morality is so great, so boundless, that it baffles any attempt at
systematization.").

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256 Ethics January 1997
this characterization.'6 After all, Williams calls "morality""the peculiar
institution" and says this morality "is not an invention of philosophers
... [but rather] the outlook, or, incoherently, part of the outlook, of
almost all of us" (ELP, p. 174). He goes on to worry about the "several
natural ways in which" this morality's special notion of obligation "can
come to dominate a life altogether" (ELP, pp. 181-82). In passages
like these, Williams seems to be objecting not that the best moral theory
requires obligation to dominate life, but rather that once moral obliga-
tion is allowed to "structure ethical thought" (ELP, p. 182), it has a
"natural" tendency to rule out all other considerations.
Yet appearances here are deceiving. While Williams plainly wants
to align himself with Nietzsche as a critic of morality as a genuine
cultural phenomenon-hence the rhetoric about "the peculiar institu-
tion" and morality not being "an invention of philosophers"-it is far
from clear that the notion of moral obligation he discusses is anything
other than a philosopher's "invention" or, at best, such a severe system-
atic reworking of the ordinary notion as to be only a distant relative
of the unsystematic, uncodified notion of obligation actually at work
in our culture.
Morality's purportedly threatening notion of "obligation," for ex-
ample, is constructed by Williams entirely from the works of Kant and
Ross, with no gesture at showing what relation their philosophically
refined notions of "obligation" bear to those in play in ordinary life.
Yet where is the evidence, one might ask, that real people treat "moral
obligations] [as] inescapable" (ELP, p. 177) and that they accept the
idea that "only an obligation can beat an obligation" (ELP, p. 180)?
Surely the evidence is not in the way people actually live, in the way
they actually honor-or, more often, breach-their moral obligations,
a point Nietzsche well understood.'7 What is the evidence that, in our
relativistic culture, individuals think that "moral obligation applies to
people even if they do not want it to" (ELP, p. 178)? Even Williams,
in leading up to the specter of morality dominating life, says that "the
thought can gain a footing (I am not saying that it has to) that I could
be better employed than in doing something I am under no [moral]
obligation to do, and, if I could be, then I ought to be" (ELP, p. 181,
emphasis added). But surely this "thought" might only gain a footing
for Kant or Ross, or some other philosopher who followed out to its
logical conclusion a deontological theory. It is a pure philosopher's
fantasy to think that real people in the moral culture at large find
themselves overwhelmed by this burdensome sense of moral obliga-

16. I take the preceding sentence to be a more obviously apt characterization of

some of Williams's earlier work in ethics.
17. See the further discussion in Sec. V.

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 257
tion. Like the other Morality Critics, Williams writes as though he is
attacking "morality," when what he is really attacking is "morality" as
conceived, systematized, and refined by philosophers. Such a critique
may be a worthy endeavor, but it is far different from worrying about
the "dangers" of ordinary morality as understood-unsystematically
and inchoately-by ordinary people.
What, then, distinguishes a Morality Critic from a Theory Critic
if both are ultimately talking about moral theory?Roughly, the idea is
this: for the former, there is always room, in principle, for a better
theory to thwart the criticsm, while for the latter, Theory (in the
technical sense) is the heart of the problem, not part of the solution.
These points are well illustrated in Stocker's well-known paper "The
Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories."'8 Stocker argues that "if
we ... embody in our motives, those various things which recent
ethical theories hold to be ultimately good or right, we will, of necessity,
be unable to have those motives" (p. 461) and thus be unable to realize
the associated goods (e.g., friendship, love, pleasure). Stocker claims,
however, that a suitable ethical theory must be one in which reasons
and motives can be brought into harmony, such that one can be moved
to act by what the theory identifies as "good" or "right." Stocker's point
isn't, then, that theorizing in ethics is a misguided enterprise; it's just
that we need better theories, ones in which theoretical reasons can
also serve as motives for action. Like a Morality Critic, Stocker holds
that adherence to morality as it is (read: moral theory as it is) is incom-
patible with having the motives requisite for certain personal goods
("love, friendship, affection, fellow feeling, and community," p. 461);
unlike a Theory Critic, he allows, or at least implies, that a better (i.e.,
nonschizophrenic) theory could solve the problem.'9
We need, however, a more precise characterization of the Morality
Critics, since the preceding account would also capture types of criti-
cism that appear to have no affinity whatsoever with Nietzsche's. What
I have in mind, of course, is the tradition of deontological criticism
of consequentialism and of consequentialist criticism of deontological
theories.20 Such criticisms are not about theory per se but about the
moral commitments of the theories. Yet worries about the rationality

18. Michael Stocker, "The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories," Journal of

Philosophy 73 (1976): 453-66, cited in this section by page number.
19. See esp. the concluding pages of Stocker's piece. Susan Wolf presents a slightly
different case than other Morality Critics in this regard; see "Moral Saints," pp. 435-37;
and my discussion in n. 26.
20. For example, of the former type, John Rawls, A Theoryof Justice (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), esp. pp. 26-27; of the latter type, Samuel
Scheffler, "Agent-Centered Restrictions, Rationality, and the Virtues," Mind 94 (1985):
409-19, esp. p. 409.

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258 Ethics January 1997
of constraints on good maximization, or about consequentialist viola-
tions of the autonomy and dignity of individuals, would not seem to
be the sorts of worries that call to mind the writings of Nietzsche. We
need, then, a sharper characterization of the "Morality Critics," one
which excludes intramoral debates between Kantians and conse-
quentialists.
Yet this very way of stating the problem also suggests its solution.
What characterizes the Morality Critics is precisely that they criticize
morality extramorally, from the standpoint of nonmoral goods and
considerations. Such a tentative characterization, of course, generates
its own problems-first, because we need a clearer grasp of the distinc-
tion between the moral and the extramoral; and second, because of
the potentially question-begging designation of certain sorts of goods
and considerations as extramural (defenders of morality, as we shall
see, often argue that these goods and reasons are included within the
moral point of view, suitably construed).2' Yet if we agree to treat the
"moral" as exhausted by deontology and consequentialism, then we
can say that the Morality Critics are those philosophers who criticize
the moral commitments of theory from the standpoint of (apparently)
nonmoral goods and considerations.
But let us now try to state this view even more precisely. A Morality
Critic takes as her target-to borrow Susan Wolf's phrase-"a perfect
master of a moral theory" (p. 435), deontological or consequentialist.
The Morality Critic then argues that such a perfect master is precluded
from realizing certain nonmoral goods and excellences-let us call
them "personal goods."22 This follows from the truth of two theses:

21. A third difficulty is that some writers construe demands of, e.g., partiality and
integrity to be essentially moral demands, apart from their role in deontological and
consequentialist theories. See David Brink, "Utilitarian Morality and the Personal Point
of View," Journal of Philosophy83 (1986): 417-38, pp. 418- 19; Larmore, pp. 132-33.
This construal is not, I think, suggested by the writings of most Morality Critics them-
selves and, in any event, can be dealt with in the way suggested in the text.
22. Nagel speaks of morality posing "a serious threat to the kind of personal life
that many of us take to be desirable" (Viewfrom Nowhere, p. 190). Wolf claims that the
"moral saint" cannot realize "a great variety of forms of personal excellence" (p. 426).
Bernard Williams argues that both Kantian and utilitarian theories will sometimes
require us to abandon our "ground projects," those projects "which propel [a person]
in the future, and give him (in a sense) a reason for living" ("Persons, Character, and
Morality," in The Identities of Persons, ed. A. Rorty [Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1976], pp. 209- 10). See Bernard Williams, "A Critique of Utilitarianism," in J.
J. C. Smart and Bernard Williams, Utilitarianism:For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1973), pp. 77-150, esp. pp. 115-17, and Ethics and the Limits of
Philosophy, esp. pp. 181-82 (worrying that a Kantian notion of obligation can "come
to dominate life altogether"). Slote argues that a commitment to morality would require
us to "deplore and disavow" (p. 85) certain otherwise admirable traits like "single-minded
devotion to aesthetic goals or ideals" (p. 80)-because of their essential tendency also

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 259
Incompatibility Thesis (IT): Acting in accordance with mo-
rality is (at least sometimes) incompatible with realizing or en-
joying these personal goods;23
and
Overridingness Thesis (OT): Moral considerations are al-
ways the practically determinative considerations, and thus over-
ride all competing considerations.
It is the conjunction of IT and OT that generates the problem: for
(by IT) moral considerations will conflict with "personal" considera-
tions, and (by OT) personal considerations must lose. Since it would
be intolerable actually to abandon these personal considerations, how-
ever, Morality Critics take this conflict to show that we must reject
OT: moral considerations are not always the practically determinative
considerations.24 Defenders of morality, by contrast, typically reject IT:

to produce immoral behavior. Michael Stocker is probably an exception to the character-

ization offered in the text. While most Morality Critics view the nonmoral goods and
considerations as largely prudential in character, Stocker is concerned with phenomena
like "love" and "friendship" whose value is probably not prudential. See "The Schizo-
phrenia of Modern Ethical Theories."
23. For example, Wolf: "The admiration of and striving toward achieving any of
a great variety of forms of personal excellence are character traits it is valuable and
desirable for people to have.... In thinking that it is good for a person to strive for
[this] ideal . . ., we implicitly acknowledge the goodness of ideals incompatible with
that of the moral saint" (p. 426). The truth of IT is defended in slightly different ways
by the Critics, depending on whether they are taking consequentialism or Kantianism as
the target. (For consequentialism, and specifically Utilitarianism, see Wolf, pp. 427-30;
Williams, "A Critique of Utilitarianism," pp. 93-118, "Persons, Character, and Moral-
ity," pp. 199-200, 210; for Kantianism, see Wolf, pp. 430-33; Williams, "Persons,
Character, and Morality," and Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy,chap. 10.) However, as
a number of writers have noted, there is a common element in both deontological and
consequentialist theories that is supposed to generate IT, i.e., their commitment to an
impersonalpoint of view and impartialvalue. Because of this commitment, these theories
cannot (according to the Critics) do real justice to the importance of our various personal
and partial attachments and projects: such projects and attachments can always be
sacrificed when impersonal and impartial considerations demand it. Our most important
personal project is, after all, just one among many from the moral point of view, which
is precisely why (according to the Critics) morality cannot do justice to its significance
and value. See Nagel, Viewfrom Nowhere, pp. 189-91.
24. Wolf challenges "the assumption that it is always better to be morally better"
and concludes that "our values cannot be fully comprehended on the model of a hierar-
chical system with morality at the top" (p. 438). Slote claims that the possibility of
admirable immorality should "[loosen] ... our attachment to the 'overridingness' thesis"
(p. 107). Williams concludes, "Life has to have substance if anything is to have sense,
including adherence to the impartial [moral] system; but if it has substance, then it
cannot grant supreme importance to the impartial system" ("Persons, Character, and
Morality," p. 215). Owen Flanagan identifies "this assumption of the sovereignty of the
moral good" as the target of critics like Wolf, Williams, and Slote (Owen Flanagan,
"Admirable Immorality and Admirable Imperfection," Journal of Philosophy83 [1986]:

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260 Ethics January 1997
they argue that personal goods and moral goods are not incompatible
because, for example, morality includes personal goods within its (suit-
ably objective) purview or because morality includes supererogatory
duties or virtues, such that morality can recognize morally praisewor-
thy conduct without always demanding its performance in a way that
would inevitably override personal considerations.25
We will find it convenient, I think, to borrow Nagel's language
(Viewfrom Nowhere, pp. 193 ff.) and speak of the general issue here
in terms of a conflict between the "Good Life" (one in which personal
considerations are dominant) and the "Moral Life" (one in which moral
considerations govern)-or between "living well" and "doing right."
According to IT, the Good Life and the Moral Life are incompatible;
according to OT, the Moral Life must prevail, at the expense of the
Good Life (given IT). Note, too, where Nagel locates Nietzsche in the
debate thus framed:
Thegood life overridesthe moral life. This is Nietzsche's position....
The view is that if, taking everything into consideration, a moral

41-60, p. 41). Note that for at least Williams, morality already does its damage-in
the form of "alienation"-once it asks us to view our personal projects as up for grabs
in moral deliberation (whether or not morality ultimately requires us to abandon them).
25. On the "objective purview" response: see, e.g., Peter Railton, "Alienation,
Consequentialism and the Demands of Morality," reprinted in Consequentialismand Its
Critics, ed. S. Scheffler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 93-133, esp. pp.
113-17; see also Sarah Conly, "Utilitarianism and Integrity," Monist 66 (1983):
298-311, esp. p. 303. This general point is often put by saying that Utilitarianism
provides a criterion or standard of rightness, not a decision procedure. See Henry
Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), bk. 4, chap. 1,
sec. 1, and chap. 3, sec. 3; R. E. Bales, "Act-Utilitarianism: Account of Right-Making
Characteristics or Decision-Making Procedure?" American Philosophical Quarterly 8
(1971): 257-65; Brink. On the "supererogation" response: see, e.g., Nagel, Viewfrom
Nowhere, pp. 203-4; Stephen Darwall, "Abolishing Morality," Synthese72 (1987): 71-89,
esp. pp. 78-83. Note that for the "Kantians," the ability of morality to accommodate
personal goods also derives from morality's objective or impersonal point of view. As
Nagel explains it, "The appearance of supererogation in a morality is a recognition
from an impersonal standpoint of the difficulties with which that standpoint has to
contend in becoming motivationally effective in the real life of beings of whom it is
only one aspect" (p. 204). In contrast, Barbara Herman argues that Kantianism indeed
does not permit "unconditional attachment"to personal projects irrespective of their
morality and that "it does not seem rational to want it otherwise." She claims further
that such unconditionalattachments are not even essential to one's character or integrity
(Barbara Herman, "Integrity and Impartiality," Monist 66 [1983]: 233-50, p. 243). See
also Conly's related response to Williams on behalf of Utilitarianism at pp. 305-11, p.
308 ("as much emotional attachment [to personal projects] as Williams wants, admittedly
more than utilitarianism allows, gives not so much integrity as something like solip-
sism"); and Marcia Baron's response to Slote in "On Admirable Immorality," Ethics 96
(1986): 557-66, esp. pp. 563-64 (single-minded devotion [to a project] that knows no
bounds is not admirable and is rightly prohibited by morality). I return to these issues
in n. 51, below.

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 261
life will not be a good life for the individual it would be a mistake
to lead it. (Viewfrom Nowhere, p. 196)
This passage aptly describes the core of the supposed relation between
Nietzsche and the Morality Critics: like them, Nietzsche is supposed
to side with the importance of the Good Life against the encroaching
demands of the Moral Life. Even granting that Nietzsche is perhaps
more extreme in his rejection of the demands of the Moral Life, he
still counts as the first in a line of Morality Critics that includes Will-
iams, Wolf, Slote, and others who (a) recognize the truth of IT and
(b) part company with the tradition in their rejection of morality's OT.
We shall have occasion to consider shortly how well this picture really
captures Nietzsche's critical project.26 It remains to say, first, a few
brief words about Nietzsche and the Theory Critics.
Nietzsche's notorious hostility to systematic theorizing-evide-
nced in his quip that "the will to a system is a lack of integrity" (TI,
I, sec. 26)-would seem to make him a natural ally of the Theory
Critics. It is true, moreover, that Nietzsche'does not offer a normative
ethical theory in the way that Kant or Sidgwick or any other represent-
ative of the tradition does.27 Yet Nietzsche's reason for this has nothing

26. Some cautionary notes about the distinction developed in this section between
Theory and Morality Critics are in order. There is, of course, a real distinction here,
but it may not be as easy to mark as I have so far suggested. Take, e.g., Susan Wolf's
remark that "the basic problem with any of the models of moral sainthood ... is that
they are dominated by a single, all-important value under which all other possible values
must be subsumed" (p. 431). As a freestanding complaint, this could be made by a
Theory Critic as well as a Morality Critic: for the former, it would come in the context
of an attack on the reductionist aims of Theory based on the real "diversity of goods";
for the latter, it would serve to show that the reason the ("perfect master's") Moral Life
is incompatible with the Good Life is that it privileges some type of moral value at the
expense of other, nonmoral values. Quite generally, it is easy to see how, e.g., objections
to the reductionist aims of Theory based on the plurality of values can quickly start to
sound like objections to Morality for wrongly overriding other distinct sources of value.
The difference here may only be a matter of emphasis, though it is a difference that
is real enough: the Theory Critic invokes the plurality of values to emphasize the
inadequacy of a theoretical framework which excludes so much, while the Morality
Critic invokes the plurality of values in order to emphasize the costs of morality's OT
and to argue against it. The ease with which we might move from one sort of criticism
to the other should not obscure the fact, however, that many writers lodge themselves
firmly in one camp rather than the other-in fact, only Williams and Foot seem to
take both sorts of critical positions. Wolf, e.g., is explicit in distancing herself from any
critique of theory per se: "The flaws of a perfect master of a moral theory need not
reflect flaws in the intramoral content of the theory itself" (p. 435). Rather, for Wolf,
such flaws show only the need for moretheory, a theory of "reasons that are independent
of moral reasons for wanting ourselves and others to develop our characters and live
our lives in certain ways" (p. 437).
27. A different question is whether he offers an ethical theory more akin to ancient
ones-say, a type of virtue ethics, as some recent writers have suggested. See, e.g.,
John Casey, Pagan Virtue:An Essay in Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), esp. pp. 79-83;

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262 Ethics January 1997
to do with the sort of reasons that animate recent Theory Criticism.
Nietzsche's hostility to normative theorizing grows, instead, out of his
naturalism and fatalism,28 which lead him to be deeply skeptical about
the utility of propounding normative theories about what we ought
to do. Thus, for example, he declares that "the single human being
is a piece of fatum from the front and from the rear, one law more,
one necessity more for all that is yet to come and to be" (TI, V, sec.
6). Given that this is Nietzsche's view, it is unsurprising that he should
also say: "A man as he ought to be: that sounds to us as insipid as 'a
tree as it ought to be"' (WP, 332). Of course, Nietzsche does think
that values can play a causal role in a person's actions (cf. GS, 335),
or he would not be concerned to undertake a revaluation of values.
He thinks, simply, that the causal efficacy of values is always circum-
scribed by the natural facts that make a person who he or she is.29 It
is the failure of traditional ethical theories to grasp this point that
leads him to think they are useless. The philosophical motivation,
then, for Nietzsche's opposition to normative theory simply bears no
relation to that found in the Theory Critics.
I want to turn, then, to what seems a more immediate, and deep,
affinity between Nietzsche and those philosophers I called the Moral-
ity Critics.

Lester Hunt, Nietzscheand the Origin of Virtue(London: Routledge, 1991). The difficulties
with Hunt's account will serve to highlight the problems confronting this interpretation
of Nietzsche. According to Hunt, Nietzsche's theory of virtue is "procedural": "it speci-
fies which traits are virtues by indicating a certain process and declaring that any trait
that arises from this process is virtuous" (p. 145). The relevant process is given by
Nietzsche's "experimentalism," which requires us to experiment with different goals
until we find those which bring about "a complete integration of the psyche" (p. 141),
such that "one part of the self imposes order on other, potentially chaotic parts by
successfully orienting the subordinate parts towards its own purposes" (p. 128). The
traits that are conducive to the integrating goals are, says Hunt, virtues for Nietzsche.
There is certainly something broadly right about this picture, though its vagueness is
only one of its several problems. First, the theory seems not so much procedural as
substantive, since it employs a substantive criterion (integration of the self) for identi-
fying which goal-oriented activities involve virtues. Second, it seems to stretch
Nietzsche's ambitions considerably to attribute to him something called a "procedural
theory of virtue." Third, Hunt gives almost none of the detail about particular virtues
that interest most contemporary writers (including, e.g., Casey), even relegating
Nietzsche's own specific virtue lists to an endnote (p. 187, n. 4). While Hunt has a
multitude of interesting things to say about Nietzsche, it is not clear that his account
makes Nietzsche a virtue theorist of much practical or philosophical help.
28. For a more substantial discussion of these oft-neglected themes in Nietzsche's
work, see Brian Leiter, "The Paradox of Fatalism and Self-Creation in Nietzsche," in
Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhaueras Nietzsches Educator, ed. C. Janaway (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, in press).
29. For further discussion, see ibid.

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 263
III. NIETZSCHE'S CRITIQUE OF MORALITY
Why does Nietzsche attack morality? I want to begin by setting out in
summary form an account that I have developed in greater detail
elsewhere.30 Since Nietzsche uses the word "morality" (Moral) in both
positive and negative senses,31 I will introduce a "technical" term to
mark "morality" as the object of his critique: what I will call henceforth
"morality in the pejorative sense" (MPS).
All moralities are, for Nietzsche, characterized by a descriptiveand
a normative component; that is, they (a) presuppose a particular de-
scriptive account of human agency in the sense that, for the normative
claims to have intelligible application to human agents, particular
metaphysical and empirical claims about agency must be true and
(b) embody a normative agenda which creates or sustains the special
conditions under which only certain types of human agents enjoy
success. Any particular morality will, in turn, be an MPS for Nietzsche
if it
i) presupposes certain particulardescriptive claims about the nature
of human agents: for example, that agents act freely and thus are
responsible for what they do ("the Descriptive Component");
and/or
ii) embodies a normative agenda which benefits the "lowest" hu-
man beings while harming the "highest" ("the Normative Com-
ponent").
Note, first, that these two components are not of equal importance
for Nietzsche, for what ultimately defines an MPS as against morality
in a nonpejorative sense is the distinctive normative agenda. Thus,
while Nietzsche criticizes at length the view of agency that he takes to
be implicit in at least certain paradigmatic examples of MPS, he also
holds that "it is not error as error that" he objects to fundamentally in
an MPS (EH, IV, sec. 7). That is, it is not the falsity of the descriptive
account of agency presupposed by MPS, per se, that is the heart of
the problem. Thus, strictly speaking, it is true that a morality could
be an MPS even if it did not involve a commitment to an untenable

30. See esp. Brian Leiter, "Morality in the Pejorative Sense: On the Logic of
Nietzsche's Critique of Morality," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1995):
113-45, and also Leiter, "Beyond Good and Evil," History of Philosophy Quarterly 10
(1993): 261-70. The former sets out the affinities and differences my account has with
those common in the secondary literature.
31. For some nonpejorative uses of the word 'morality', see, e.g., TI, IV, sec. 4
(where he speaks of the possibility of a "healthy morality" [gesundeMoral]), and BGE,
202 ("higher moralities" [Morale]). On the nature and content of such a morality, see
my "Beyond Good and Evil."

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264 Ethics January 1997
descriptive account of agency.32 Because Nietzsche's most common
specific target is, however, Christian morality, the critique of the De-
scriptive Component of MPS figures prominently in Nietzsche's writ-
ing. For purposes here, however, I will concentrate on the Normative
Component, which constitutes the philosophical heart of Nietzsche's
critique.
According to Nietzsche, the normative agenda of an MPS favors
the interests of the lowest human beings at the expense of the highest.
Before illustrating what such an agenda might look like, we need, first,
to establish that this is, in fact, central to Nietzsche's conception of
MPS and, second, to explore what Nietzsche means by higher and
lower persons.
In the secondary literature, Nietzsche has been saddled with a
variety of different accounts and critiques of MPS.33 A popular
thought, for example, is that Nietzsche objects to morality because of
its claim of universal applicability.34 Yet Nietzsche never objects to the
universality of moral demands, per se, as an intrinsically bad feature
of MPS; rather, he finds universality objectionable because he holds
that "the demand of one morality for all is detrimental to the higher
men" (BGE, 228). Similarly, he holds that "when a decadent type of
man ascended to the rank of the highest type [via MPS], this could
only happen at the expense of its countertype,the type of man that is
strong and sure of life" (EH, III, sec. 5, emphasis added). Finally,
consider the illuminating preface to the Genealogy,in which Nietzsche
sums up his basic concern particularly well:
What if a symptom of regression were inherent in the "good,"
likewise a danger, a seduction, a poison, a narcotic, through
which the present was possibly living at the expenseof thefuture?
Perhaps more comfortably, less dangerously, but at the same
time in a meaner style, more basely?-So that precisely morality
[MPS] would be to blame if the highestpower and splendor [hdchste
und Pracht] possible to the type man was never in fact
Mdchtigakeit
attained? So that precisely morality was the danger of dangers?
(GM, preface, sec. 6; cf. BT, "Attempt," sec. 5)

32. Smart's Utilitarianism is a good example of an MPS that embodies a normative

agenda that is objectionable on Nietzschean grounds, while involving no commitment
to an untenable metaphysics of agency. See esp. J. J. C. Smart, "'Ought,' 'Can,' Free
Will and Responsibility," in Ethics, Persuasion and Truth (London: Routledge, 1984).
Bernard Williams has gone so far as to suggest that because blaming can be justified
on utilitarian grounds alone (and regardless of whether agents have free will), Utilitar-
ianism is, at best, a "marginal member of the morality system"-where Williams takes
Kantian morality to be the paradigmatic member (Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy,
p. 178).
33. See the overview in Leiter, "Morality in the Pejorative Sense," pp. 113-17.
34. See, e.g., Nehamas, pp. 209, 214, 223.

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 265
In these and many other passages,35 Nietzsche makes plain his real
objection to MPS: simply put, MPS thwarts the development of human
excellence, that is, "the highest power and splendor. . . possible to the
type man." This is the very heart of Nietzsche's challenge to morality.
But who are Nietzsche's "higher types," these individuals who
possess "the highest power and splendor"? Nietzsche alternately calls
them "strong," "healthy," and "noble"; conversely, the lowest men are
"weak," "sick," and "base." Higher types are also described by
Nietzsche as nonreactive, creative, self-disciplined, and resilient; and
they evince a Dionysian attitude toward life. Since a detailed exposition
of these very general characteristics would take me far afield of my
central topics in this paper, I propose to pursue a simpler two-step
course.
A. First, Nietzsche provides in his writings two unequivocal and
concrete examples of "higher" human beings: Goethe and Nietzsche
himself.36 Nietzsche, of course, often expresses admiration for other
people-Napoleon, sometimes Caesar, the "free spirits" discussed
throughout The Gay Science-but Goethe and Nietzsche himself stand
out for the esteem they enjoy in Nietzsche's work. Taking these two,
and in particular Nietzsche himself, as paradigm cases of human excel-
lence will make it possible to say something reasonably concrete about
the alleged harmful effects of MPS shortly. It will also help emphasize
that, whatever Nietzsche's illiberal sentiments, he ultimately admired
creative individuals the most: in art, literature, music, and philosophy,
"the men of great creativity, the really great men according to my

35. See D, 163; BGE, 62, 212; GM, III, sec. 14; A, 5, 24; EH, IV, sec. 4; WP, 274,
345,400, 870, 879, 957. For example, in a work of 1880 he writes, "Our weak, unmanly,
social concepts of good and evil and their tremendous ascendancy over body and soul
have finally weakened all bodies and souls and snapped the self-reliant, independent,
unprejudiced men, the pillars of a strong civilization" (D, 163). While in a posthumously
published note of 1885 he remarks that "men of great creativity, the really great men
according to my understanding, will be sought in vain today" because "nothing stands
more malignantly in the way of their rise and evolution ... than what in Europe today
is called simply 'morality"' (WP, 957). Similarly, in a late note of 1888, he observes (in
a passage plainly echoing the preface of GM), "Whoever reflects upon the way in which
the type man can be raised to his greatest splendor and power will grasp first of all that
he must place himself outside morality; for morality has been essentially directed to the
opposite end: to obstruct, or destroy that splendid evolution wherever it has been going
on" (WP, 897).
36. I should not be construed here as endorsing the idiosyncratic view defended
in the last chapter of Nehamas. According to Nehamas, Nietzsche does not describehis
ideal person-his "higher man"-but rather "exemplifies" such a person in the form
of the "character" that is constituted by and exemplified in his literary corpus. Nietzsche,
however, describesat great length and in many places (see D, 201; GS, 55; BGE, 287;
WP, 943) the types of persons he admires, and he also describes himself as such a
person (see EH, I, sec. 2). For further criticism of Nehamas on this and other points,
see my "Nietzsche and Aestheticism."

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266 Ethics January 1997
understanding" (WP, 957). His critique of morality is, in an important
sense, driven by the realization that the moral life is essentially inhospi-
table to the truly creative life, a point to which I shall return below.37
B. Second, I want to offer some greater-albeit brief-detail con-
cerning at least one of the above-mentioned characteristics of higher
men, namely, their "Dionysian" attitude toward life. An agent, for
Nietzsche, has a Dionysian attitude toward life insofar as that agent
affirms his life unconditionally, in particular, insofar as he affirms it
notwithstanding the "suffering" or other hardships it has involved.38
An agent affirmshis life in Nietzsche's sense only insofar as that agent
would gladly will its eternal return, that is, will the repetition of his
life through eternity.39 Thus, higher human beings are marked by a
distinctive Dionysian attitude toward their lives: they would gladly will
the repetition of their lives eternally. Note, too, that Nietzsche claims
that this attitude characterized both himself and Goethe (on Nietzsche,
see EH, III, CW-4; on Goethe, TI, IX, sec. 49). We shall see shortly
how this trademark attitude of higher types-their Dionysian attitude
toward life-is implicated in Nietzsche's critique of the normative
agenda of MPS.40

37. This type of simplifying move, however, does not obviously help us get a fix
on who "lower men" are supposed to be. Yet not saying more about "lower men" is not
necessarily problematic for my project here of characterizing Nietzsche's conception of
MPS. For the heart of Nietzsche's complaint is simply that MPS has a deleteriouseffect
on higher types(i.e., those who manifest human excellence). It is true that Nietzsche also
seems to think that MPS is in the interests of other persons- "lower men"-but this
by itself is not objectionable; recall that Nietzsche says, "The ideas of the herd should
rule in the herd-but not reach out beyond it" (WP, 287). It is this "reaching out
beyond," then, that is at issue because it is this that harms "higher men." If there were
a social order in which MPS existed-and in which it served the interests of "lower"
types-without having any effects on potentially "higher men," then one would imagine
that Nietzsche should have no objections. In that case, one could leave the issue of who
"lower men" are pleasantly vague without any cost to the analytical task of getting clear
about Nietzsche's critique of morality.
38. So an agent who says, colloquially speaking, "I would gladly lead my life again,
except for the time in my thirties when I was ill and depressed," would not affirm life
in the requisite sense.
39. For example, EH, III, Z-1: "The idea of the eternal recurrence, this highest
formulation of affirmation that is at all attainable" (cf. BGE, 56).
40. Some writers (e.g., Richard Schacht, Nietzsche[London: Routledge, 1983]) have
argued that Nietzsche objects to MPS centrally because it is harmful to "life." The main
difficulty with this approach, even as it is typically developed, is its vagueness: as Mark
Platts remarks, "Moralityversus life is not the best defined of battle lines" (Moral Realities
[London: Routledge, 1991], p. 220). I argue elsewhere that when Nietzsche speaks of
morality being harmful to "life," he really means harmful to "higher men"; see my
"Morality in the Pejorative Sense," pp. 132-34. Other writers (including Schacht again)
have suggested that Nietzsche criticizes morality by reference to his preferred standard
of "value" as "will to power." I ignore this possibility here, because it seems to make
the notion of "will to power" more central to Nietzsche's mature thought than recent

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 267
What norms, then, comprise an MPS? Nietzsche identifies a vari-
ety of normative positions4"-what we may characterize simply as
"pro" and "con" attitudes-as constituting the distinctive normative
component of MPS. So, for example, a morality will be an MPS if it
embraces any one or more of the following sorts of normative views:
1. Pro: Happiness
Con: Suffering
(GS, p. 338; Z, III, 1; BGE, pp. 202, 225)
2. Pro: Altruism or selflessness
Con: Self-love or self-interest42
(GS, pp. 328, 345; Z, III, sec. 10; GM, P, 5; TI, IX, sec. 35;
EH, III, D-2 and IV, sec. 7)
3. Pro: Equality
Con: Inequality
(GS, 377; Z, IV, sec. 13; BGE, 257; TI, IX, sec. 48; A, 43;
WP, 752)
4. Pro: Pity
Con: Indifference to the suffering
(GS, 338; Z, III, sec. 9; GM, P, 5; A, 7)
Three observations about how to understand this picture of Nietzsche's
critique are in order:
1. The various possible normative components of an MPS should
be construed as ideal-typical:they single out for emphasis and criticism
certain important features of larger and more complex normative
views. Nietzsche himself remarks that while there is "a vast realm of
subtle feelings of value and difference of value which are alive, grow,
beget, and perish," we still need "attempts to present vividly some of
the more frequent and recurring forms of such living crystalliza-
tions-all to prepare a typologyof morals" (BGE, 186). In criticizing
MPS, we should see Nietzsche as criticizing some of the "frequent and
recurring forms" that mark various ideal types of MPS.
2. In characterizing MPS in terms of its "pro" and "con" attitudes,
I do not mean to suggest that MPS consists only of such "attitudes":
to the contrary, associated with each of these attitudes could be various
prescriptive and proscriptive commands, suitable to the plethora of par-

scholarship would suggest is warranted. See Mazzino Montinari, "Nietzsches Nachlass

von 1885 bis 1888 oder Textkritik und Wille zur Macht," in his NietzscheLesen (Berlin:
de Gruyter, 1982); Clark, pp. 212-27. Textual worries aside, I doubt whether a good
argument can even be made out that "will to power" provides Nietzsche with his standard
of value. I make this case in an unpublished manuscript, "Nietzsche's Metaethics."
41. For a more complete discussion, see again my "Morality in the Pejorative
Sense," pp. 134-42.
42. Nietzsche only advocates "severe" self-love, i.e., highly critical concern with
the self, as the only self-love conducive to the full flourishing of the strong and healthy
individual. See EH, IV, sec. 7, and the further discussion below.

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268 Ethics January 1997
ticular circumstances to which such attitudes might be relevant. Yet
Nietzsche is typically concerned with the underlying (ideal-typical) atti-
tude-or "spirit -of MPS, rather than the particular rules of conduct.
3. Let us say that that which MPS has a "pro" attitude toward is
the "Pro-Object," while that which MPS has a "con" attitude toward
is the "Con-Object." Keeping in mind that what seems to have intrinsic
value for Nietzsche is "human excellence"-the sort of excellence qua
creative genius exemplified by Goethe and Nietzsche, for exam-
ple-we can say that Nietzsche's criticisms consist of two parts:
a) With respect to the Pro-Object, Nietzsche argues either (i) that
the Pro-Object has no intrinsic value (in the cases where MPS
claims it does) or (ii) that it does not have any or not nearly as
much extrinsic value as MPS treats it as having; and
b) With respect to the Con-Object, Nietzsche argues only that the
Con-Objects are extrinsicallyvaluable for the cultivation of human
excellence and that this is obscured by the "con" attitude endorsed
by MPS.
In other words, what unifies Nietzsche's seemingly disparate critical
remarks-about altruism, happiness, pity, equality, Kantian respect
for persons, utilitarianism, and so on-is that he thinks a culture in
which such norms prevail as morality will be a culture which eliminates
the conditions for the realization of human excellence, the latter requi-
ring, on Nietzsche's view, concern with the self, suffering, a certain
stoic indifference, a sense of hierarchy and difference, and the like.
Indeed, when we turn to the details of Nietzsche's criticisms of these
various norms we find that, in fact, he focuses precisely on how they
are inhospitable to human excellence. I want to illustrate this point
here with just one example.
According to Nietzsche, the "spirit" of MPS is that happiness is
good and suffering bad.43What, one wonders, could be harmful about
this sort of seemingly innocuous valuation? An early remark of
Nietzsche's suggests an answer:
Are we not, with this tremendous objective of obliterating all the
sharp edges of life, well on the way to turning mankind into
sand? Sand! Small, soft, round, unending sand! Is that your ideal,
you heralds of the sympathetic affections? (D, 174)
In a later work, Nietzsche says, referring to hedonists and utilitarians,
"Well-being as you understand it-that is no goal, that seems to us an

43. One problem with this view is that its endpoint-the abolition of suffering
and the reign of happiness-is an impossibility because Nietzsche holds that "happiness
and unhappiness are sisters" (GS, 338), that we must have both in order to have either.
Although the unity of apparent opposites is a recurring theme in Nietzsche, it is not
central to his objection to this aspect of MPS. A useful discussion of this theme can be
found in Nehamas, pp. 209-11.

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 269
end, a state that soon makes man ridiculous and contemptible" (BGE,
225). By the hedonistic doctrine of well-being, Nietzsche takes the
utilitarians to have in mind "Englishhappiness," namely, "comfort and
fashion" (BGE, 228),44 a construal which, if unfair to some utilitarians,
may do justice to our ordinary aspirations to happiness. In a similar
vein, Nietzsche has Zarathustra dismiss "wretched contentment" as an
ideal (Z, pref. 3), while also revealing that it was precisely "the last
men"-the "most despicable men"-who "invented happiness" in the
first place (pref. 5).
Thus, the first part of Nietzsche's objection is this: happiness is
not an intrinsically valuable end; men who aim for it-directly or
through cultivating the dispositions that lead to it-would be "ridicu-
lous and contemptible." Note, of course, that Nietzsche allows that he
himself and the "free spirits" will be "cheerful"-they are, after all,
the proponents of the "gay science" (cf. GS). But the point is that such
"happiness" is not criterial of being a higher person, and thus it is not
something that the higher person-in contrast to the adherent of
MPS-aims for.
But why is it that aiming for happiness would make a person so
unworthy of admiration? Nietzsche's answer appears to be this: be-
cause suffering is positively necessary for the cultivation of human
excellence, which is the only thing, on Nietzsche's view, that warrants
admiration. Nietzsche writes, for example, that
The discipline of suffering [Die Zucht des Leidens], of great suffer-
ing-do you not know that only this discipline has created all
enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhap-
piness which cultivates its strength.... [W]hatever has been
granted to [the human soul] of profundity, secret, mask, spirit,
cunning, greatness-was it not granted to it through suffering,
through the discipline of great suffering? (BGE, 225; cf. BGE,
270)
Now Nietzsche is not arguing here that-in contrast to the view of
MPS-suffering is really intrinsically valuable; the value of suffering
is only extrinsic: suffering-"great"9 suffering-is a prerequisite of
any great human achievement.45 Nietzsche's attack, then, conforms to

44. Nietzsche no doubt construes the doctrine thus uncharitably because he thinks
that the "British utilitarians ... walk clumsily and honorably in Bentham's footsteps"
and that they have "not a new idea, no trace of a subtler version or twist of an old idea"
(BGE, 228). Mill, of course, was at pains to develop a subtler hedonistic doctrine than
Bentham's, though it is an open question whether in the process he does not pour all
the content out of the notion of "pleasure." In any event, Nietzsche drew no distinction
between Bentham and Mill-referring to the latter (in an especially intemperate spirit)
as "the flathead John Stuart Mill" (WP, 30).
45. Compare GS, pref. 3: "Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit....
I doubt that such pain makes us 'better'; but I know that it makes us more profound."

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270 Ethics January 1997
the model sketched above: (1) he rejects the view that happiness is
intrinsically valuable; and (2) he thinks that the negative attitude of
MPS toward suffering obscures its important extrinsic value.
In regard to (2), it is worth recalling a biographical fact about
Nietzsche, namely, that perhaps no philosopher in history knew suffer-
ing more intimately than he did.46 For many years, he endured excruci-
ating headaches and nausea, lasting for days at a time, during which
he was bedridden and often alone. Yet notwithstanding his appallingly
bad health throughout the 1880s, he produced in less than a decade
the bulk of his remarkable philosophical corpus. In fact, he believed
that his suffering contributed essentially to his work; here is a typi-
cal-admittedly hyperbolic-remark from Ecce Homo:47
In the midst of the torments that go with an uninterrupted three-
day migraine, accompanied by laborious vomiting of phlegm, I
possessed a dialectician's clarity par excellence and thought
through with very cold blood matters for which under healthier
circumstances I am not mountain-climber, not subtle, not cold
enough. (EH, I, sec. 1)
Thus, on Nietzsche's picture of his own life, it was absolutely essential
and invaluable that he suffered as he did, hence his willingness to will
his life's eternal return, including all its suffering. We might add, too,
that if Nietzsche had taken seriously the MPS evaluation of happiness
and suffering, then he should not have been able to maintain his
Dionysian attitude toward life; to the contrary, rather than will its
repetition, he should have judged his life a failure because it involved
so much hardship.48
Now it may perhaps be quite true, even uncontroversial, that
great achievements (certainly great artistic achievements) seem to grow
out of intense suffering: there is no shortage in the history of art and
literature of such cases. But granting that, we come up against a serious
objection to Nietzsche's position, namely, why should anyone think
an MPS is an obstacle to this phenomenon? This is what I shall call
the "Harm Puzzle," and the puzzle is this: why should one think that
the general moral prescription to alleviate suffering must stop the
suffering of great artists, hence stopping them from producing great

46. For a general account, see Ronald Hayman, Nietzsche:A CriticalLife (New York:
Penguin, 1980).
47. Compare this letter of January 1880, quoted ibid., p. 219: "My existence is a
fearful burden. I would have thrown it off long ago if I had not been making the
most instructive tests and experiments on mental and moral questions in precisely this
condition of suffering and almost complete renunciation."
48. Nietzsche, in fact, reverses the MPS valuation, commenting, "Never have I felt
happier with myself than in the sickest and most painful periods of my life" (EH, III,
HAH-4).

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 271
art? One might think, in fact, that an MPS could perfectly well allow
an exception for those individuals whose own suffering is essential to
the realization of central life projects. How, then, does MPS "harm"
potentially "higher types"?
IV. NIETZSCHE AND THE MORALITY CRITICS
This question serves as a natural point at which to revisit the apparent
affinity between Nietzsche and the Morality Critics. As we saw earlier,
these Critics argued that morality, because of its commitment to an
impersonal point of view and a corresponding impartial standard of
value, will prove incompatible with important personal projects and
attachments that we all have: such projects, after all, are just one
among many from the moral point of view, and thus may have to be
sacrificed when morality demands it. These philosophers then argue
that since it would be unacceptable actually to forgo these projects
and attachments, we must reject the idea that moral considerations
are necessarily the practically determinative considerations, overriding
all others: sometimes the Good Life must override the Moral Life.
There are, of course, certain obvious differences between the
views of these "Morality Critics" and the Nietzsche we have just ex-
plored. As Richard Miller has recently observed,49
Nietzsche often seems to recommend that the constraints of mo-
rality be ignored, but it would be a misreading of his intentions
to infer that morality ought to be ignored by someone of middling
abilities, or a primary interest in family life, or by someone whose
characteristic striving is a successful leveraged buy-out. In con-
trast, the troubling recommendations at the center of current
disputes are very broadly addressed. In particular, Bernard Will-
iams' influential warnings about morality are addressed, primar-
ily, to people with normal attachments and their own projects,
projects which may be of ordinary sorts.
This difference in audience is clearly reflected in the differences in
worries about what it is morality conflicts with. Thus, the Morality
Critics speak of the Moral Life conflicting with, for example, "love,
friendship, affection, fellow feeling, and community" (Stocker, p. 461);
with "the kind of personal life that many of us take to be desirable"
(Nagel, View from Nowhere, p. 189); with "a healthy, well-rounded,
richly developed" life which might include "reading Victorian novels,
playing the oboe, or improving [one's] backhand" (Wolf, p. 421); with
"the importance of individual character and personal relations" (Will-
iams, "Persons, Character, and Morality," p. 201). These worries

49. Richard Miller, Moral Differences(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

1992), p. 309.

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272 Ethics January 1997
plainly strike a somewhat different note from Nietzsche, who speaks
of morality posing a threat, for example, to "the highest power and
splendor actually possible to the type man" (GM, pref., sec. 6); to "the
self-reliant, independent, unprejudiced men, the pillars of a strong
civilization" (D, 163); to "all that is rare, strange, privileged . . . the
higher soul, the higher duty, the higher responsibility, and the abun-
dance of creative power and masterfulness" (BGE, 212); to the "men
of great creativity, the really great men according to my understand-
ing" (WP, 957). Here the worry is not merely that the Moral Life will
interfere with various mundane personal goods important to us all,
but rather that it is incompatible with the highest forms of human
excellence: it seems that the Moral Life, for Nietzsche, is not a threat
to the Good Life but to the Extraordinary Life.
Yet even this difference, we might insist, is really one of degree:
for, even if Nietzsche is concerned not with the incompatibility of the
Moral Life and the Good Life but rather with the tension between the
Moral Life and the ExtraordinaryLife, he still sqems to join with these
Morality Critics in urging that when morality would conflict with cer-
tain important nonmoral goods and considerations, morality must
sometimes (perhaps for Nietzsche, every time) lose.50
It is this apparent similarity that bears most directly on the Harm
Puzzle now before us. For a number of recent writers have ar-
gued-contra the Morality Critics-that morality is not incompatible
with our various personal projects and attachments, because such proj-
ects and attachments can be accommodated within the moral point of
view.51 The utilitarian, for example, is interested in producing the

50. Indeed, even among Morality Critics we sometimes hear echoes of the specifi-
cally Nietzschean worry, e.g., in the famous Gauguin case, where it is supposed that
the Moral Life would undermine "great creativity," or in Wolf's worry that the moral
saint cannot achieve "any of a great variety of forms of personal excellence" (p. 426).
Moreover, we have already noted that there is clearly an element of extremism running
through Nietzsche's critical position; e.g., we can be sure that Nietzsche would not
agree with Wolf that a critique of morality does not show "that moral value should not
be an important, even the most important, kind of value we attend to in evaluating and
improving ourselves and our world" (p. 438). Yet we can live (probably happily) with
these differences of degree and still think that Nietzsche joins cause with the Morality
Critics, quite broadly, in accepting the truth of IT and rejecting OT.
51. See the literature cited above in n. 25. As we saw earlier, there are really two
strands in the responses to the Morality Critics: what we might call "Bullet Biters" and
"Accommodationists." Bullet Biters like Conly, Herman, and Baron simply "bite the
bullet" on the challenge of the Morality Critics: yes, these writers concede, morality is
incompatible with a certain sort of commitment to personal projects-but so much the
better, the Bullet Biters claim. For the sort of ability of personal projects to override
morality that the Critics envision is not appealing, admirable, or central to a person's
character or integrity. By contrast, Accommodationists like Railton, Nagel, and Darwall
accept the force of the Critics' challenge but claim that morality can, contrary to IT,

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 273
greatest amount of happiness possible; if sundering people from their
most basic projects and attachments would subvert aggregate happi-
ness, then there can be no utilitarian reason for thinking that the
right course of action.52 Our personal projects and attachments are
sanctioned from an objective moral point of view, one that takes into
account the net effect of having us abandon them every time a more
immediate moral demand arises.
Why not think, then, that a similar response will suffice for
Nietzsche's challenge? This, of course, is just a variation on the earlier
Harm Puzzle. For if suffering will actually facilitate some individual's
flourishing, then surely morality can recommend that that person
suffer. After all, a prescription to alleviate suffering does not arise in
a vacuum: presumably it reflects a concern with promoting well-being,
under some construal. But if some individuals-nascent Goethes,
Nietzsches, and other artistic geniuses-would be betteroff with a good
dose of suffering, then why would morality recommend otherwise?
Nietzsche, like the Morality Critics, falls victim, it seems, to the "objec-
tive" point of view embraced by the defenders of morality.
Or does he? In fact, if this response does work against the Morality
Critics, it decidedly does not work against Nietzsche's critique: for
Nietzsche's, point, we might say, is not about theorybut about culture.
That is, Nietzsche's idea seems to be that when MPS values predomi-
nate in a culture, they invariably affect the attitudes of all members
of that culture. If MPS values emphasize the badness of suffering and
the goodness of happiness, that will surely have an effect on how
individuals with the potential for great achievements will understand,
evaluate, and conduct their own lives. If suffering is a precondition
for these individuals to in fact do anything great, and if they have
internalized the norm that suffering must be alleviated and that happi-
ness is the ultimate goal, then we run the risk that rather than-to
put it crudely-suffer and create, they will instead waste their energies
pursuing pleasure, lamenting their suffering, and seeking to alleviate
it. MPS values may not explicitly prohibit artists or other potentially
"excellent" persons from ever suffering, but the risk is that a cul-

accommodate the sorts of personal projects that the Morality Critics care about. It is
the response of the Accommodationists that is analogous to the challenge posed by the
Harm Puzzle. (Needless to say, the line between the two types of theory defenders is
not hard and fast. See Railton's account of why "alienation is not always a bad thing,"
pp. 106-8, and compare with the position of the Bullet Biters.)
52. For doubts that this is, in fact, an adequate response, see Wolf, p. 428. For
related discussion of the important political dimension of these issues, see Railton, pp.
122-23; and Nagel, ViewfromNowhere, pp. 206-7. For a very different perspective on
this debate, however, see the scathing critique of the Morality Critics (including Wolf)
in Catherine Wilson, "On Some Alleged Limitations to Moral Endeavor," Journal of
Philosophy90 (1993): 275-89.

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274 Ethics January 1997
ture-like ours-which has internalized the norms against suffering
andfor pleasure will be a culture in which potential artists-and other
doers of great things-will, intact, squander themselves in self-pity
and the seeking of pleasure.
In sum, for Nietzsche, the normative component of an MPS is
harmful not because its specific prescriptions and proscriptions explic-
itly require potentially excellent persons to forgo that which allows
them to flourish-that is, Nietzsche's claim is not that a conscientious
application of the "theory" of MPS would be incompatible with the
flourishing of higher men. Rather, Nietzsche's claim is that an MPS
in practice simply does not make such fine distinctions: under a regime
of MPS values-and importantly because of MPS's embrace of the
idea that one morality is appropriate for all-potentially higher men
will come to adopt such values as applicable to themselves as well.
Thus, the normative component of an MPS is harmful because, in
reality, it will have the effect of leading potentially excellent persons
to value what is in fact not conducive to their flourishing and devalue
what is in fact essential to it.
By contrast, recent Anglo-American Morality Critics take as their
target what Wolf calls "a perfect master of a moral theory" (p. 435),
whether that theory be consequentialist or deontological. Thus, their
critique is directed against the ability of moral theoryto accommodate
the Good Life, while Nietzsche's is directed against the effects of a
moral culture-one in which MPS norms prevail-on the Extraordi-
nary Life. To Nietzsche's claim that a moral culture will, in practice,
present obstacles to the flourishing of creative geniuses, it is simply
irrelevant that a suitably "objective" moral theory would not.53 The
Morality Critics, after all, are critics of moral theory, and theoretical
complaints invariably beget theoretical modifications to accommodate
them.54 But cultural criticism, of the sort Nietzsche mounts, requires
a very different sort of response. I will consider in the final section of
this paper what some of those might be.

53. Of course, the theorist might object that, even if Nietzsche were right, all this
would show is that our cultural practices need correction by a suitable moral theory,
one that will permit nascent Nietzsches to suffer and the like. I shall postpone this
worry for now and consider it, and several other objections to Nietzsche's position, in
the final section of this paper.
54. Compare Lawrence Becker's observation that defenders of morality's commit-
ment to impartiality try to show that the "purported inadequacies [of impartiality] ...
are not really attributable to a propertheoreticalcommitmentto impartiality" ("Impartiality
and Ethical Theory," Ethics 101 [1991]: 698-700, p. 700, emphasis added). See also
Stocker: "[The phenomenon of] admirable immorality ... show[s] how immorality and
defect can and must be allowed for in ethical theory" (Michael Stocker, Plural and
Conflicting Values [Oxford: Clarendon, 1990], p. 50).

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 275
Understand, however, that the claim here is not that Nietzsche
could not be forced into the existing paradigms of critiques of moral
theory-for example, as Nagel's philosopher who thinks that living
well always overrides doing right.55 My claim has been only that this
was not really the heart of Nietzsche'scritique. Nietzsche was not inter-
ested in whether our moral theories could accommodate the Good
Life or the Extraordinary Life; Nietzsche was worried whether our
culture was making it impossible for anyone to live an Extraordinary
Life anymore. It is one of the few themes that animated all Nietzsche's
writings from start to finish. In an early essay of the mid-1870s, "Scho-
penhauer as Educator" (U, III), Nietzsche speaks of "the goal of cul-
ture" as "the production of genius" (sec. 6), though there he worries
not primarily about the deleterious effect of morality on culture but
about "the crudest and most evil forces, the egoism of the money-
makers and the military despots" (p. 4), as well as "the greed of the
state" (p. 6). His major work of the early 1880s, Thus SpokeZarathustra,
begins with Zarathustra's image of a world in which all human excel-
lence and creativity is gone, in which all that will remain is the "last
man":
Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is
no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.
"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is
a star?" thus asks the last man, and he blinks.
The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man,
who makes everything small....
"We have invented happiness," say the last men, and they
blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for
one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against
him, for one needs warmth....
No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same,
everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily
into a madhouse.
"Formerly, all the world was mad," say the most refined, and
they blink.
One is clever and knows everything that has ever happened:
so there is no end of derision. One still quarrels, but one is soon
reconciled-else it might spoil the digestion....
"We have invented happiness," say the last men, and they
blink. (Z, prologue, sec. 5)

55. Indeed, one might pick out various points where the Morality Critics seem to
echo Nietzsche. Compare Wolf: "A moral saint will have to be very, very nice. It is
important that he not be offensive. The worry is that, as a result, he will have to be
dull-witted or humorless or bland" (p. 422); cf. BGE, 260: "the good human being
[according to slave morality] has to be undangerous ... : he is good-natured, easy to
deceive, a little stupid perhaps, un bonhomme.Wherever slave morality becomes prepon-
derant, language tends to bring the words 'good' and 'stupid' closer together."

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276 Ethics January 1997
In the last man, we encounter all the distinctive norms of MPS: the
last man embraces happiness, comfort, peacefulness, neighbor love,
equality. As a result, the last man can only ask, "What is creation?"
thus signaling the distance between him and any type of human excel-
lence, for, as Zarathustra says later, "the great-that is, the creating"
(Z, I, sec. 12).
Finally, in his last productive year, 1888, Nietzsche speaks of
Christian morality as having "waged war unto death . .. against the
presuppositionof every elevation, of every growth of culture" (A, 43),
and he claims that acting in accord with what "has been called morality''
"would deprive existence of its great character" (EH, IV, sec. 4). The
distinctively Nietzschean worry, then, is that our moral culture-not
our best moral theory-is ushering in the reign of the last man, of
complete mediocrity and banality.
Even granting that Nietzsche's attack is ultimately a culturecritique,
rather than a theoretical critique, one might still insist that it has an
important theoretical component. After all, Nietzsche does call for
"new philosophers ... spirits strong and original enough to provide
the stimuli for opposite valuations and to revalue and invert 'eternal
values"' (BGE, 203). Could we not find here the real commonality of
interests between Nietzsche and the Morality Critics? For aren't both
"philosophers" who challenge the overridingness of moral considera-
tions, who reconsider the value of letting moral considerations domi-
nate all others?
One difference, which we have encountered several times before,
is one of degree: as Nagel's appropriation of Nietzsche aptly suggests,
Nietzsche's position within the debate framed by the Morality Critics
is far more radical, seeming, as it does, to assign complete priority to
the Good (or Extraordinary) Life over the Moral Life. Nietzsche, on
this picture, really is "inverting" prior values, while the Morality Critics
are, at best, calling for a slight turn away from the hegemony of the
Moral Life.
Yet again, the difference cuts more deeply than this, for the
grounds on which moral values are to be revalued are different. For
Nietzsche, they are essentially empirical, growing out of his claim that
in a fully moral culture no one will be able to lead an Extraordinary
Life.56 For the Morality Critics, by contrast, the claim is theoretical,

56. The reader may wonder in what sense Nietzsche's claims are empirical, since
they are hardly the upshot of systematic investigation into, say, the psychology and
etiology of genius. They are empirical, however, in the sense that Nietzsche seems to
have reached these conclusions from certain sorts of observation: first, and most im-
portant, of himself and his own development (note that the theme only appears in his
work in the very late 1870s, when he is about thirty-five and has already been ill for
several years); second, of various historical figures and cultures with which he was

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 277
namely, that even an optimal moral theory would still require its per-
fect adherent to forgo aspects of the Good Life. Thus, the "revalua-
tion" envisioned by the Morality Critics-even ignoring its more mod-
est aims-starts (and ends) within theory,while Nietzsche's starts from
a cultural diagnosis (namely, the cause of our cultural mediocrity-of
the absence of genius-is our morality) and ends with a cultural prog-
nosis (namely, our moral culture will gradually yield a society of
"last men").
V. NIETZSCHE'S CRITIQUE: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT
If the Morality Critics are right, then we have failed in our attempts
to produce an ethical theory that could tell us how to live both well
and rightly. It is decidedly not an upshot of their critique, however,
that, as a matter of fact, we cannot or do not live well: if Utilitarianism,
in theory, alienates us from our projects, in reality it goes without
saying that it has no such effect. In the culture at large, hardly anyone
knows what Utilitarianism is, let alone observes its strictures to the
extremes that would lead one to worry that it "demands too much."57
(The same might, of course, be said about deontology, as noted earlier
in the discussion of Williams.) The Morality Critics have shown that
the enterprise of moral theory is in a bind, unable to resolve the
competing demands of the Good Life and the Moral Life; they surely
haven't shown that people don't lead Good Lives.
With Nietzsche things stand differently. If the Nietzschean cri-
tique is right, then we are supposed to be confronted with something
very real: our untutored morality, the morality of ordinary men and
women, the morality that infuses our culture is, in fact, an obstacle to
human excellence; the price of our moral culture is a culture of banal-
ity and mediocrity, one in which Zarathustra's "last men" predominate,
in which "things will continue to go down, to become thinner, more
good-natured, more prudent, more comfortable, more mediocre, more
indifferent" (GM, I, sec. 12).
It would be neither surprising nor unreasonable for Anglo-
American philosophers to express doubts about their competence to
undertake or assess such a critical project: such a "philosophical" un-
dertaking-if that is what it deserves to be called-brings to mind a
very different conception of philosophy, in which reflection is mani-
festly not a priori and analysis is not merely "conceptual" or, in this
post-Quinean world, simply the a posteriori handmaiden of the natural

acquainted through his studies and reading. As I note at the end, though, the case for
his critique really requires a more sustained empirical examination.
57. Compare Annette Baier's complaints about the irrelevance of moral theory,
of its "construction of private fantasy moral worlds" ("Doing without Moral Theory?"
p. 235; cf. p. 234).

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278 Ethics January 1997
and social sciences. In its Nietzschean incarnation, philosophy quickly
crosses the line into psychology, cultural anthropology, and social cri-
tique-territory now occupied (regrettably) almost exclusively by liter-
ary theorists.
This conception of philosophical practice, of course, has always
been more common on the European continent. Indeed, it is this
conception of philosophical practice that binds Nietzsche most closely
to the philosophical tradition on the Continent, since he shares none
of the metaphysical ambitions of the German Idealists before him and
none of the phenomenological scholasticism of many of those who
followed.58 It also has much to do with why the writings of Nietzsche
resonate so widely in the intellectual community, while they are often
thought rather suspect in the Anglo-American philosophical world.
Yet surely some doubts about the sweep of the Nietzschean criti-
cism are warranted. I should like to conclude with four observations
on this score.
1. A natural reaction the philosophical theorist might have to
Nietzsche's critique was mentioned earlier: for surely, the theorist
might say, what the Nietzschean critique really shows is that our cul-
tural practices need to be correctedby moral theory. For if the best
moral theory could, as some of the respondents to the Morality Critics
have argued, accommodate the Good Life (perhaps even the Extraor-
dinary Life), then we simply need to bring our moral culture more in
line with our best moral theory. The proper response to the
Nietzschean critique is not despair about morality but a healthy dose
of moral philosophy.
One might wonder, of course, how realistic it is to think that our
cultural practices will be reformed by the labor of philosophers. As
Thomas Nagel remarked rather frankly a number of years ago, "Moral
judgment and moral theory certainly apply to public questions, but
they are notably ineffective."59 If there is little reason to think that
moral theory will have any effect outside the academy-certainly there
is little evidence to suggest otherwise-then holding out the prospect
of moral theory can hardly assuage the worries of a cultural critic.60

58. Gilles Deleuze aptly calls phenomenology "our modern scholasticism" in

Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. H. Tomlinson (New York: Columbia University Press,
1983), p. 195.
59. Nagel, Mortal Questions, p. xii.
60. One might worry, though, that such a complaint will backfire against Nietzsche,
for isn't he a "theorist" of sorts, hoping to affect cultural practice? The answer, I think,
is that Nietzsche is an esoteric moralist, hoping to reach only a few select readers, those
"predisposed and predestined for" his insights (BGE, 30); thus he aims not to reform
culture but to enlighten a select few to the dangers of the dominant moral culture.
This is why, contrary to a large amount of recent literature, Nietzsche does not have
any political theoryor any real politics. I hope to address these issues, however, elsewhere.

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 279
This response is not, however, Nietzsche's. Nietzsche's actual re-
sponse to this challenge has a rather more sinister air, for it arises
from what I will call his "Callicleanism." By this I do not mean to
attribute to Nietzsche anything like Calliclean hedonism-a doctrine
that many writers have rightly noted was not Nietzsche's6 -but rather
the Calliclean view of morality as a tool of the mediocre, as the means
by which the inferior make "slaves of those who are naturally better"
(Gorgias, 491e-492a), by which they try to "frighten [the strong] by
saying that to overreach others is shameful and evil" (Gorgias, 483b-d).
We hear this same Calliclean theme in Nietzsche's claim that "moral
judgments and condemnations constitute the favorite revenge of the
spiritually limited against those less limited" (BGE, 219) and in his
assertion that the "chief means" by which the "weak and mediocre ...
weaken and pull down the stronger" is "the moral judgment" (WP,
345).62 This Calliclean conception of morality would explain why mo-
rality would not want to except potentially higher men from its scope:
it is precisely part of the aim of the proponents of morality to harm
higher men. Reforming cultural practices with moral theory in order
to permit higher types to flourish would run counter to a central
purpose of morality on the Calliclean/Nietzschean picture.
This response no doubt strikes the contemporary reader as rather
odd, perhaps a bit too conspiratorial to be credible. After all,
Nietzsche's claim seems to be that, as a matterof culturalfact, the propo-
nents of morality aim to cut down the high-that there is, in other
words, a conspiracy of the base and mediocre whose weapon is moral-
ity. Even if this image seems far-fetched as well as foreign to the central
purposes of morality properly construed, Nietzsche may be right that
there is a real phenomenon here, though perhaps not of conspiratorial
proportions (cf. GS, 359). Think, for example, of the public conflicts
between the defenders of moral decency and artists. Such familiar cases
might help support the Nietzschean skepticism about whether the
cultural protectors of morality would really be interested in reforming
morality to make room for Nietzschean creative geniuses.
I do not, however, want to push this defense of Nietzsche's Cal-
licleanism too far. Perhaps we are better off here with the earlier

61. See Nehamas, pp. 202-3; Philippa Foot, "Nietzsche's Immoralism," New York
Review of Books 38 (June 13, 1991), p. 19, reprinted in Nietzsche, Genealogy,Morality.
62. Nietzsche's polemic against Christianity in TheAntichristis framed in the starkest
Calliclean terms, with Nietzsche describing "the cross as the mark of recognition for
the most subterranean conspiracy that ever existed-against health, beauty, whatever
has turned out well, courage, spirit, graciousness of the soul, against life itself" (A, 62);
see also WP, 400: "In the history of morality a will to power finds expression, through
which now the slaves and oppressed, now the ill-constituted and those who suffer from
themselves, now the mediocre attempt to make those value judgments prevail that are
favorable to them."

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280 Ethics January 1997
response made on Nietzsche's behalf: even if moral theory might ac-
commodate the Extraordinary Life, this does not seem responsive to
the worry that our actual moral culture does not.
2. A second reaction one might have, however, is that the
Nietzschean critique is simply hyperbolic, for surely if there is a culture
of mediocrity and banality in ascendance, it is not primarily the work
of morality, but perhaps of economics-for example, the free market,
the leveling effects of which have been described by sociologists, histo-
rians, and philosophers. Indeed, the right model for culture critique,
one might want to say, is not the "idealistic"-sounding Nietzsche de-
scribed here but rather the materialist Adorno of Minima Moralia, who
traces cultural mediocrity to its capitalist roots.
Now, while the early Nietzsche of "Schopenhauer as Educator"
did, as we saw, worry about the effects of capitalism, militaristic nation-
alism, and protofascism on the cultural conditions for the production
of genius, the later Nietzsche seems all too ready to lay the blame for
all cultural decline at the doorstep of what I have been calling MPS.63
Nietzsche's challenge may be a novel and important one, but no one
who reads his repeated denunciations of morality can escape the feel-
ing that he suffered from a certain explanatory tunnel vision, with
the result that, in some measure, his case against morality seems
overstated.
3. On further reflection, however, one might want to say some-
thing much stronger: Nietzsche's point is not just hyperbolic, but
perversely backward. For surely it is the lack of morality in social policy
and public institutions-a lack which permits widespread poverty and
despair to persist generation upon generation, that allows daily eco-
nomic struggle and uncertainty to define the basic character of most
people's lives-that is most responsible for a lack of human flour-
ishing. Surely in a more moral society, with a genuine commitment
to social justice and human equality, there would be far more Goethes,
far more creativity and admirable human achievement. As Philippa
Foot has sharply put it, "How could one see the present dangers that
the world is in as showing that there is too much pity and too little
egoism around?"64
Here again, though, we must be careful in how we construe the
Nietzschean point. Consider the Nietzsche who asks, "Where has the
last feeling of decency and self-respect gone when even our states-
men, an otherwise quite unembarrassed type of man, anti-Christians
through and through in their deeds, still call themselves Christians

63. Nietzsche also often blames "Christianity," but we must remember that for
Nietzsche Christianity was simply "the most prodigal elaboration of the moral theme
to which humanity has ever been subjected" (BT, pref. 5).
64. Foot, "Nietzsche: The Revaluation of Values," p. 168.

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 281
today and attend communion?" (A, 38). Clearly this Nietzsche is under
no illusions about the extent to which public actors do not act morally.
Indeed, Nietzsche continues in even more explicit terms: "Every prac-
tice of every moment, every instinct, every valuation that is translated
into action is today anti-Christian: what a miscarriageoffalseness must
modern man be, that he is not ashamedto be called a Christian in spite
of all this!" (A, 38). What, then, is going on here? If Nietzsche is not,
contrary to Foot's suggestion, embracing the absurd view that there
is too much pity and altruism in the world, what exactly is his criti-
cal point?
Nietzsche's paradigmatic worry seems to be the following: that a
nascent creative genius will come to take the norms of MPS so seriously
that he will fail to realize his genius. Rather than tolerate (even wel-
come) suffering, he will seek relief from hardship and devote himself
to the pursuit of pleasure; rather than practice what Nietzsche calls
"severe self-love" and attend to himself in the ways requisite for pro-
ductive creative work, he will embrace the, ideology of altruism and
reject "self-love" as improper; rather than learn how to look down on
himself, to desire to overcome his present self and become something
better, he will embrace the prevailing rhetoric of equality-captured
nicely in the pop psychology slogan "I'm OK, you're OK"-and thus
never learn to feel the contempt for self that might lead one to strive
for something more. It is not, then, that Nietzsche thinks people prac-
tice too much altruism-after all, it is Nietzsche who notes that egoistic
actions "have hitherto been by far the most frequent actions" (D,
148)-but rather that they believe too much in the value of altruism,
equality, happiness, and the other norms of MPS. It is the prevalence
of the MPS ideologythat worries Nietzsche, for, even if there is neither
much altruism nor equality in the world, there is almost universal
endorsement of the value of altruism and equality-even, notoriously
(and as Nietzsche seemed well aware), by those who are its worst
enemies in practice. Nietzsche's claim is that a culture which embraces
the ideology of MPS, even if it does not act in accordance with this
ideology, presents the real threat to the realization of human excel-
lence, because it teaches potential higher types to disvalue what would
be most conducive to their creativity and value what is irrelevant or
perhaps even hostile to it.
Nietzsche's point here is, I think, a subtle one, for surely it makes
sense that individuals of great creativity, and sensitivity are far more
likely to take seriously the ideology of MPS than the politicians whose
hypocrisy Nietzsche derides in the remark quoted earlier.65 As

65. To say that they take the demands of MPS "seriously" is not to say that they
understand them in the way a philosophical theory would; it is only to say that they

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282 Ethics January 1997
Nietzsche observes at one point, "What distinguishes the higher hu-
man beings from the lower is that the former see and hear immeasur-
ably more, and see and hear more thoughtfully" (GS, 301). But it is
precisely this trait of the "higher human beings" that makes them all
the more susceptible to the deleterious effects of MPS: a thoughtless
brute is hardly likely to worry about the morality of his acts, but neither
is he likely to become a creative genius. But the higher types that
Nietzsche worries about are both likely candidates for critical self-
reflection in light of the norms of MPS and, at the same time, those
for whom such norms are most harmful. Indeed, we might say that it
is precisely Nietzsche's aim to help these higher human beings "see
and hear" something more, namely, that MPS values are really disad-
vantageous for them.
That Nietzsche's concern is with the prevalence of the MPS ideol-
ogy, not the prevalence of actions in accord with MPS, and in particular
with the effect of this ideology on the self-conceptionof potentially
higher types is suggested in many places. In Dawn, Nietzsche speaks
of wanting to deprive egoistic actions of "their bad conscience" (D,
148). In Beyond Good and Evil, he observes that in order to "stand all
valuations on their head," Christianity had to
cast suspicion on the joy in beauty, bend everything haughty ...
conquering, domineering, all the instincts characteristic of the
highest and best-turned-out type of "man," into unsureness, di-
lemma of conscience [Gewissens-Noth],self-destruction. (BGE, 62)
In Twilight of the Idols, he describes the "man" "improved" by MPS as
a caricature of man, like a miscarriage: he had become a "sinner,"
he was stuck in a cage, imprisonedamong all sorts of terribleconcepts
Begrffie].And there he lay, sick, miserable, malevolent
[schreckliche
against himself: full of hatred against the springs of life, full of
suspicion against all that was still strong and happy. (TI, VII,
sec. 2, emphasis added)
In each case, we see that the thrust of the worry is that higher types
will come to evaluate and think of themselves in terms of the concepts
peculiar to MPS (and Christianity)-that they will become "impris-
oned among all sorts of terrible concepts"-with the result that they
will be cast into self-doubt and a destructive self-loathing, and thus
never realize the excellences of which they are capable.
His general point is perhaps most strikingly put in a very Cal-
liclean passage from Beyond Good and Evil:
The highest and strongest drives, when they break out passion-
ately and drive the individual far above the average and the

are more likely to take these unsystematic and inchoate demands constitutive of morality
as weighing seriously upon them.

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 283
flats of the herd conscience, wreck the self-confidence of the
community.... Hence just these drives are branded and slan-
dered most. High and independent spirituality, the will to stand
alone, even a powerful reason are experienced as dangers; every-
thing that elevates an individual above the herd and intimidates
the neighbor is henceforth called evil; and the fair, modest, con-
forming mentality, the mediocrityof desires attains moral designa-
tions and honors. (BGE, 201)
"High and independent spirituality," "the will to stand alone": do these
traits not call to mind many an artist, poet, and even a great philoso-
pher or two? Yet it is these traits that MPS "brands"and "slanders,"and
who would be surprised if someone should abandon their independent
ways with the force of morality against them? It is not, then, that there
is too much pity and altruism in the world, but rather that there is
too much belief in the value of pity, altruism, and the other norms
of MPS.
4. One might want to respond on Foot's behalf, however, and insist
that there is still something perverse about the Nietzschean complaint.
Granted Nietzsche does not believe that most people are actually too
altruistic and society in practice is too egalitarian; granted that
Nietzsche's real worry is about the fact that we, as a moral culture,
pay so much lip service to the value of altruism, egalitarianism, and
the rest, with the resultant deleterious effects on the self-conception
and development of nascent Goethes. Yet surely it is still the case
that if our society really were more altruistic and egalitarian, more
individuals would have the chance to flourish and do creative work.
This is the core of the charge of perversity, and nothing said so far
has exonerated Nietzsche from it.
Now, in fact, it seems that it is precisely this moral optimism
common, for example, to utilitarians and Marxists-this belief that a
more moral society would produce more opportunity for more people
to do creative work-that Nietzsche does, indeed, want to question.
Nietzsche's illiberal attitudes in this regard are apparent. He says, to
take but one example, "We simply do not consider it desirable that a
realm of justice and harmony [Eintracht] should be established on
earth" (GS, 377). It is bad enough for Nietzsche that MPS values have
so far succeeded in saying, "stubbornly and inexorably, 'I am morality
itself, and nothing besides is morality"' (BGE, 202); it could only be
worse on his view if more and more of our actions were really brought
into accord with these values. For Nietzsche wants to urge-contrary
to the moral optimists-that, in a way largely unappreciated and (per-
haps) unintended, a thoroughly moral culture undermines the condi-
tions under which the most splendid human creativity is possible and
generates instead a society of Zarathustra's "last men."66 If we are

66. See the earlier quotations from Zarathustra's description of the last man.

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284 Ethics January 1997
trained always to think of happiness and comfort and safety and the
needs of others, we shall cut ourselves off from the preconditions for
creative excellence on the Nietzschean picture: suffering, hardship,
danger, self-concern, and the rest.
Consider a final, and I think powerful, statement of this view.
Speaking of those "eloquent and profoundly scribbling slaves of the
democratic taste and its 'modern ideas"' who seek to promote "the
universal green-pasture happiness of the herd" and who take "suffer-
ing itself ... for something that must be abolished" (BGE, 44),
Nietzsche retorts that when we look at
how the plant "man" has so far grown most vigorously to a
height-we think that this has happened every time under the
opposite conditions, that to this end the dangerousness of his
situation must first grow to the point of enormity, his power
of invention and simulation (his "spirit") had to develop under
prolonged pressure and constraint into refinement and audac-
ity.... We think that ... everything evil, terrible, tyrannical in
man, everything in him that is kin to beasts of prey and serpents,
serves the enhancement of the species "man" as much as its
opposite does. Indeed, we do not even say enough when we say
only that much. (BGE, 44)
Note that at the end of this passage Nietzsche hints at a role for
morality as well- it is just that what morality opposes is equally im-
portant. He, of course, qualifies this by suggesting that even to concede
their equal importance may "not even say enough": that is, perhaps
there will not be much role for morality at all in the conditions under
which "the plant 'man"' will grow to its greatest heights.
I want to conclude with one final observation about the nature
and significance of Nietzsche's critique of morality, for Nietzsche's
critique raises a difficulty that, it seems, moral theories ought to ad-
dress. The difficulty is this: in practice, morality may have a tendency
to undermine other sorts of goods or excellences, even when the theory
does not actually require that morality do so. Note that this problem
remains even if the respondents to the Morality Critics are right that
moral theories, properly construed, can accommodate the Good Life
and even the Extraordinary Life. For Nietzsche's challenge, recall, is
pitched at the level of culture, not theory: the worry is precisely that
even if the theory would condone or support the Extraordinary Life,
the actual practice does not.67
We can say, then, that Nietzsche's critique raises the following
general concern for any moral theory: what would the culture that

67. In his Calliclean moods, of course, Nietzsche believes that morality really aims
to undermine the Extraordinary Life, but one might reject the Callicleanism and still
think there is something to the underlvinz causal claim.

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 Leiter Nietzscheand the Morality Critics 285
embraces the moral theory actually look like and, in particular, would
it be acceptable according to the standards of the theory itself? This
would not constitute a direct criticism of the theory, but it surely
constitutes a worry that any theory we might want to choose to live
by should address. It might also help loosen our attachment to what
Nozick aptly calls "normative sociology": "the study of what the causes
of problems ought to be." Thus, says Nozick, "We want one bad thing
to be caused by another [bad thing]."68 But if Nietzsche is right, then
we may have to confront the possibility that seemingly good things
like many of the norms of MPS-cause apparently "bad" things, like
the gradual disappearance of human excellence.
Needless to say, many of Nietzsche's claims about the effects of
morality are highly speculative, and they cry out for careful, empirical
consideration. The Morality Critics have the advantage, at least, of
conducting their critique on safer, more familiar philosophical terri-
tory. Yet it does remain striking that, more than one hundred years
after Nietzsche cast down his challenge to'morality, the topic still
remains largely unexplored.

68. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic, 1974), p. 247.

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