Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:14:32.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Nietzsche's Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2019

Thomas Stern
Affiliation:
University College London

Summary

This Element explains Nietzsche's ethics in his late works, from 1886 onwards. The first three sections explain the basics of his ethical theory – its context and presuppositions, its scope and its central tension. The next three sections explore Nietzsche's goals in writing a history of Christian morality (On the Genealogy of Morality), the content of that history, and whether he achieves his goals. The last two sections take a broader look, respectively, at Nietzsche's wider philosophy in light of his ethics and at the prospects for a Nietzschean ethics after Nietzsche.
Get access
Type
Element
Information
Online ISBN: 9781108634113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 02 January 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Anderson, R. Lanier. 2005. ‘Nietzsche on Truth, Illusion, and Redemption’. European Journal of Philosophy 13 (2): 185225.Google Scholar
Aschheim, Steven E. 1992. The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany: 1890–1990. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Beiser, Frederick C. 2016. Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860–1900. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Robert. 2010. ‘The Philosophy of Race in the Nineteenth Century’. In The Routledge Companion to Nineteenth Century Philosophy, edited by Moyar, Dean, 498521. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Robert 2017. ‘Nietzsche as a Philosopher of Racialized Breeding’. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, edited by Zack, Naomi, 5462. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bittner, Rüdiger. 2000. ‘Masters without Substance’. In Nietzsche’s Postmoralism: Essays on Nietzsche’s Prelude to Philosophy’s Future, edited by Schacht, Richard, 3446. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brobjer, Thomas H. 2008. Nietzsche’s Philosophical Context: An Intellectual Biography. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Brobjer, Thomas H. 2016. ‘Nietzsche’s Reading and Knowledge of Natural Science: An Overview’. In Nietzsche and Science, edited by Brobjer, Thomas H. and Moore, Gregory, 2150. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1871. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Vol. 1. 2 vols. New York: Appleton.Google Scholar
Dellinger, Jakob. 2015. ‘“Du Solltest das perspektivische in jeder Werthschätzung begreifen lernen.” Zum Problem des Perspektivischen in der Vorrede zu Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I’. Nietzsche-Studien 44 (1): 340–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emden, Christian J. 2014. Nietzsche’s Naturalism: Philosophy and the Life Sciences in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Forster, Michael N. 2019. ‘Nietzsche on Free Will’. In The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, edited by Stern, Tom, 374–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1977. ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’. In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, 139–64. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gemes, Ken. 2001. ‘Postmodernism’s Use and Abuse of Nietzsche’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (2): 337–60.Google Scholar
Gemes, Ken 2013. ‘Life’s Perspectives’. In The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, edited by Gemes, Ken and Richardson, John, 553–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Geuss, Raymond. 1997. ‘Nietzsche and Morality’. European Journal of Philosophy 5 (1): 120.Google Scholar
Geuss, Raymond 1999. ‘Nietzsche and Genealogy’. In Morality, Culture, and History: Essays on German Philosophy, 128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Geuss, Raymond 2002. ‘Genealogy as Critique’. European Journal of Philosophy 10 (2): 209–15.Google Scholar
Geuss, Raymond 2019. ‘Nietzsche’s Germans’. In The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, edited by Stern, Tom, 397419. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Golomb, Jacob, and Wistrich, Robert, eds. 2002. Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Michael Steven. 2002. Nietzsche and the Transcendental Tradition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Hartmann, Eduard von. 1869. Philosophie des Unbewussten: Versuch einer Weltanschauung. Berlin: Duncker.Google Scholar
Hatab, Lawrence. 2011. ‘Why Would Master Morality Surrender Its Power?’ In Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality: A Critical Guide, edited by May, Simon, 193–213. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hatab, Lawrence 2019. ‘The Will to Power’. In The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, edited by Stern, Tom, 329–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Higgins, Kathleen, and Magnus, Bernd. 1996. The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holub, Robert C. 2002. ‘The Elisabeth Legend: The Cleansing of Nietzsche and the Sullying of His Sister’. In Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism?, 215–34. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Holub, Robert C. 2016. Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem: Between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Holub, Robert C. 2018. Nietzsche in the Nineteenth Century: Social Questions and Philosophical Interventions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Huenemann, Charlie. 2013. ‘Nietzsche’s Illness’. In The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, edited by Gemes, Ken and Richardson, John, 6382. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hussain, Nadeem J. Z. 2004. ‘Nietzsche’s Positivism’. European Journal of Philosophy 12 (3): 326–68.Google Scholar
Hussain, Nadeem J. Z. 2011. ‘The Role of Life in the Genealogy’. In Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality: A Critical Guide, edited by May, Simon, 142–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hussain, Nadeem J. Z. 2013. ‘Nietzsche’s Metaethical Stance’. In The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, edited by Gemes, Ken and Richardson, John, 389412. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Janaway, Christopher. 2007. Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche’s Genealogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Katsafanas, Paul. 2018. ‘The Antichrist as a Guide to Nietzsche’s Mature Ethical Theory’. In The Nietzschean Mind, edited by Katsafanas, Paul, 83101. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koelb, Clayton, ed. 1990. Nietzsche as Postmodernist: Essays Pro and Contra. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Kohler, Josef. 1885. Das Recht als Kulturerscheinung. Einleitung in die vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft. Würzburg: Stahl.Google Scholar
Lecky, William E. H. 1921. History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. Vol. 1. 2 vols. New York and London: D. Appleton.Google Scholar
Luchte, James, ed. 2008. Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Before Sunrise. London and New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Mainländer, Philipp. 1879. Die Philosophie der Erlösung. Berlin: Theodor Hofmann.Google Scholar
Melamed, Yitzhak Y. 2013. ‘Charitable Interpretations and the Political Domestication of Spinoza, or, Benedict in the Land of the Secular Imagination’. In Philosophy and Its History: Aims and Methods in the Study of Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Mogens Laerke, Justin E. Smith, H, and Schliesser, Eric, 258–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Gregory. 2002. Nietzsche, Biology and Metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nehamas, Alexander. 1985. Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
O’Connell, Jeffrey. 2017. ‘Nietzsche’s Rejection of Nineteenth-Century Evolutionary Ethics’. In The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics, edited by Richards, Robert J. and Ruse, Michael, 2842. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pippin, Robert B. 1988. ‘Irony and Affirmation in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra’. In Nietzsche’s New Seas, edited by Strong, Tracey and Gillespie, Michael, 4574. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pippin, Robert B. 2006. ‘Lightning and Flash, Agent and Deed’. In Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals: Critical Essays, edited by Acampora, Christa Davis, 131–45. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Porter, James I. 2013. ‘Nietzsche and the Impossibility of Nihilism’. In Nietzsche, Nihilism and the Philosophy of the Future, edited by Metzger, Jeffrey, 143–57. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Reckermann, Alfons. 2003. Lesarten der Philosophie Nietzsches. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Rée, Paul. 2003. ‘The Origin of the Moral Sensations’. In Basic Writings, edited and translated by Small, Robin, 85168. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Richards, Robert J. 2009. ‘Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection and Its Moral Purpose’. In The Cambridge Companion to the ‘Origin of Species’, edited by Ruse, Michael and Richards, Robert J., 4766. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, Robert J 2013. ‘The German Reception of Darwin’s Theory, 1860-1945’. In The Darwin Encyclopedia, edited by Ruse, Michael, 235–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Richards, Robert J 2017. ‘Evolutionary Ethics: A Theory of Moral Realism’. In The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics, edited by Richards, Robert J. and Ruse, Michael, 143–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Richardson, John. 2013. ‘Life’s Ends’. In The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche, edited by Gemes, Ken and Richardson, John, 127–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rolph, William Henry. 1884. Biologische Probleme zugleich als Versuch zur Entwicklung einer rationellen Ethik. Zweite, stark erweiterte Auflage.Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.Google Scholar
Roux, Wilhelm. 1881. Der Kampf der Theile im Organismus. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.Google Scholar
Ruse, Michael. 2017. ‘Darwinian Evolutionary Ethics’. In The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics, edited by Ruse, Michael and Richards, Robert J., 89100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schank, Gerd. 2000. ‘Rasse’ und ‘Züchtung’ bei Nietzsche. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Scheibenberger, Sarah. 2016. Nietzsche-Kommentar: Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Schopenhauer, Arthur. 2014. The World as Will and Representation, Volume 1. Translated by Janaway, Christopher, Norman, Judith, and Welchman, Alistair. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schopenhauer, Arthur 2018. The World as Will and Representation, Volume 2. Translated by Janaway, Christopher, Norman, Judith, and Welchman, Alistair. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Small, Robin. 2001. Nietzsche in Context. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Small, Robin 2005. Nietzsche and Rée: A Star Friendship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sommer, Andreas Urs. 2010. ‘Nietzsche mit und gegen Darwin in den Schriften von 1888’. Nietzscheforschung: Jahrbuch der Nietzsche-Gesellschaft 17: 3144.Google Scholar
Sommer, Andreas Urs. 2012. Nietzsche-Kommentar: Der Fall Wagner; Götzen-Dammerung. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Sommer, Andreas Urs. 2013. Nietzsche-Kommentar: Der Antichrist; Ecce Homo; Dionysos-Dithyramben; Nietzsche Contra Wagner. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Sommer, Andreas Urs. 2016. Nietzsche-Kommentar: Jenseits von Gut und Bse. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Sommer, Andreas Urs. 2019. Nietzsche-Kommentar: Zur Genealogie der Moral. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Spencer, Herbert. 1879. The Data of Ethics. London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate.Google Scholar
Stern, Tom. forthcoming. ‘Against Nietzsche’s Theory of Affirmation’. In Nietzsche on Morality and the Affirmation of Life, edited by Came, Daniel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stern, Tom 2015. ‘Against Nietzsche’s “Theory” of the Drives’. Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1): 121–40.Google Scholar
Stern, Tom 2016. ‘“Some Third Thing”: Nietzsche’s Words and the Principle of Charity’. Journal of Nietzsche Studies 47 (2): 287302.Google Scholar
Stern, Tom 2017. ‘Nietzsche, the Mask, and the Problem of the Actor’. In The Philosophy of Theatre, Drama and Acting, edited by Stern, Tom, 6787. London: Rowman and Littlefield International.Google Scholar
Stern, Tom 2018. ‘Must We Choose between Real Nietzsche and Good Philosophy? A Streitschrift’. Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49 (2): 227–83.Google Scholar
Stern, Tom 2019a. ‘History, Nature, and the “Genetic Fallacy” in The Antichrist’s Revaluation of Values’. In Nietzsche and The Antichrist: Religion, Politics, and Culture in Late Modernity, edited by Conway, Daniel W., 2142. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Stern, Tom 2019b. ‘Nietzsche’s Ethics of Affirmation’. In The New Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, edited by Stern, Tom, 351–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sully, James. 1877. Pessimism: A History and a Criticism. London: Henry S. King & Co.Google Scholar
Volz, Pia Daniela. 1990. Nietzsche im Labyrinth seiner Krankheit: Eine medizinisch-biographische Untersuchung. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 2002. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Woodward, Ashley, ed. 2011. Interpreting Nietzsche: Reception and Influence. London and New York: Continuum.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Nietzsche's Ethics
  • Thomas Stern, University College London
  • Online ISBN: 9781108634113
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Nietzsche's Ethics
  • Thomas Stern, University College London
  • Online ISBN: 9781108634113
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Nietzsche's Ethics
  • Thomas Stern, University College London
  • Online ISBN: 9781108634113
Available formats
×