September 1, 2009.
Nietzsche means something different from ethics when using the term morality
He presents himself as a “critic of morality”
Although also talks about “higher moralities” as things he approves of, using the same German word.
Leitner distinguishes these senses by introducing the term “morality in the pejorative sense”
What characterizes the types of morality Nietzsche’s opposed to?
Has particular assumptions about human nature that Nietzsche takes to be false.
E.g. assuming there is “free/autonomous agency” of the sort Nietzsche thinks doesn’t exist.
Has certain normative content he doesn’t like (big disjunctive list)
Egalitarianism
High value on pity / altruism
Especially high value on happiness / low value on suffering
E.g. Nietzsche is a critic of utilitarianism, which might have some but not all of these features
Leitner calls Nietzsche a naturalist thinker about morality
Thinking of him in line with Hume and Freud, rather than the popular view of thinking of him as a precursor to postmodernism
“Naturalist” is a fraught term. Need to distinguish:
“substantive”
a certain ontological view (no ‘supernatural’ things exist)
“methodological”
an idea of how one does philosophy
There aren’t any distinctive philosophical practices, no difference in kind with other sciences (primarily psychology)
No reliance purely on a priori
Nietzsche is at least the latter. Calls himself the ‘first psychologist’
He is a ‘speculative methodological naturalist’ like Hume.
Same kind of structure of argument that is characteristic of Hume:
Take some class of beliefs (e.g. beliefs of morality)
Be skeptical that the beliefs can be rationally arrived at
Construct a psychological narrative for how we could have arrived at those beliefs / why they are attractive to human beings as they are.
E.g. in geneology of morals: how did the acetic ideal come to dominate the human mind / major religions.
How would Nietzsche. try to convince someone who believes in morality (in the pejorative sense)?
Leitner believes Nietzsche’s goal is not to get everyone to give up on morality.
“Herd morality for the herd”
There are different types of people
But there are (potential) creative geniuses like Goethe, Napoleon, Nietzsche himself, etc., whose flourishing is hindered by morality.
Lots of techniques to convince those people.
Nietzsche acknowledges that belief isn’t an entirely (or even mostly) rational deliberative process, so his methods of convincing are unusual compared to other philosophers.
Writes to ‘get you in the gut’ - is crude/rude/joking/hyperbolic.
“We don’t even notice the slave morality because it’s been victorious” He knows his readership isn’t even skeptical of morality, so he needs to be provokative to loosen them up / open them up to critical reflection.
Makes arguments
E.g. Naturalistic picture debunks common picture of human agency (his readership is becoming more committed to science, which allows him to draw up a tension)
But you can’t argue someone out of their morality, so rhetoric is important.
Nietzsche wants different moralities for different types of people, but maybe he’s implicitly arguing for a universal principle “what is good for people is good for their individual fluorishing as the type of person they are”
Distinguish two kinds of goodness
prudential goodness, what is good for an individual (e.g. their well-being)
moral goodness (all other types of goodness) (e.g. “morality in the pejorative sense ought be rejected because it prevents higher beings from flourishing”)
Nietzsche doesn’t believe these claims are ‘moral facts’ (he’s not a moral realist)
If a herd animal read Nietzsche’s book and understood it perfectly but reacted poorly (“but this criticism of herd morality isn’t good for the rest of of us”) … N would not think this person has made any error.
Nietzsche thinks it’s a matter of taste whether flourishing of higher beings is more important than well-being of the herd.
So he is not aiming for a universal principle that is in the best interest of everyone.
Leitner: I don’t think “analytic philosophy” exists, beyond some general stylistic concerns like attempting to be clear.
There is a current strand of moral philosophy intersecting with psychology that he would fit in with.
Nietzsche was a speculative naturalist, it’s possible that his beliefs that had empircal content are not psychological facts, but Leitner thinks after a century of psychological research that Nietzsche was right often.
E.g. he centred the role of the subconscious
Among the three dominant paradigms of moral psychology, Aristotle/Kant/Nietzsche, Nietzsche has the most plausible underlying assumptions given what we now know about psychology.
Personally sympathetic to anti-egalitarianism and reducing importance of agency by assigning strong roles to non-conscious factors.
Framing a philosophy in a non-universalizing way is
intellectually honest
easy to defend / hard to attack
suffers memetically (lacks a priori reason to convince anyone to adopt it) … so in some sense it cannot survive ‘at steady state’