7 - The Self versus Society

Summary

Nietzsche's sustained advocacy of an egoism involves both a rejection of what is usually taken to be its opposite, namely, selflessness or altruism, and a direct defense of both the positive value and inevitability of egoistic behavior. This chapter focuses on Nietzsche's rejection of moral behavior, in the sense of selfless or altruistic action. It might be tempting to make Nietzsche's vigorous advocacy of egoism, both as a motivational theory and as a human ideal, more palatable by reading it as the advocacy of a 'benevolent egoism'. Nietzsche's repeated remarks about the beneficial consequences of egoistically motivated actions are simply meant to disarm some of the major objections, and thus remove some of the impediments, to an egoism pursued consciously and with good conscience. Given his elitist criterion of human development, the broad social consequences of actions are irrelevant to their value to a society or to all humankind.