Nietzsche and the virtues of mature egoism

Abstract

A major obstacle to reading Nietzsche as a philosopher who has something to offer substantive moral theory is his self-ascriptions as both an immoralist and an egoist. This chapter focuses the discussion on the virtues of mature egoism as portrayed in GM, but Nietzsche's conception of the mature egoist underlies all his central works in ethics. The argument of the chapter has the following general structure. What is needed is a proper understanding of the kind of egoism endorsed by Nietzsche. In particular, the chapter claims, his kind of egoism is what he calls a "mature" egoism, to be contrasted with a number of forms of immaturity: the immature egoism of instant gratification, an unsocialized egoism, and the kind of altruism in which the self "wilts away". Several virtues of the mature egoist and their correlative vices are considered in the chapter. In GM, Nietzsche contrasts two forms of happiness.

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