8 - Nietzsche and the “Collective Individual”

Summary

Julian Young claims that Nietzsche's work embodies "communitarian thinking in the sense that the highest object of its concern is the flourishing of the community as a whole". This chapter precisely states the problem addressed in the integration of the communitarian and individualist strands in Nietzsche's thought. The communitarian thesis may appear to be a questionable reading of Nietzsche. The practical focus of the mature individual should be the cultivation of "the personal in". The mature individual can "work for his fellow men" in becoming "attuned to utility and purpose" while respecting himself and others. Nietzsche suggests that the virtues of the creative productive life, the life where one is cultivating "the personal in one" in a mature, planned, but "artistic" way, are ethical virtues. The communitarian thesis is compatible with the individualist thesis interpreted in terms of "the morality of the mature individual".