Nietzsche and the Morality Critics - The University of Texas at Austin

Leiter Nietzsche and the Morality Critics 263III. NIETZSCHE'S CRITIQUE OF MORALITYWhy does Nietzsche attack morality? I want to begin by setting out insummary form an account that I have developed in greater detailelsewhere.30 Since Nietzsche uses the word "morality" (Moral) in bothpositive and negative senses,31 I will introduce a "technical" term tomark "morality" as the object of his critique: what I will call henceforth"morality in the pejorative sense" (MPS).All moralities are, for Nietzsche, characterized by a descriptive anda normative component; that is, they (a) presuppose a particular descriptiveaccount of human agency in the sense that, for the normativeclaims to have intelligible application to human agents, particularmetaphysical and empirical claims about agency must be true and(b) embody a normative agenda which creates or sustains the specialconditions under which only certain types of human agents enjoysuccess. Any particular morality will, in turn, be an MPS for Nietzscheif itand/ori) presupposes certain particular descriptive claims about the natureof human agents: for example, that agents act freely and thus areresponsible for what they do ("the Descriptive Component");ii) embodies a normative agenda which benefits the "lowest" humanbeings while harming the "highest" ("the Normative Component").Note, first, that these two components are not of equal importancefor Nietzsche, for what ultimately defines an MPS as against moralityin a nonpejorative sense is the distinctive normative agenda. Thus,while Nietzsche criticizes at length the view of agency that he takes tobe implicit in at least certain paradigmatic examples of MPS, he alsoholds that "it is not error as error that" he objects to fundamentally inan MPS (EH, IV, sec. 7). That is, it is not the falsity of the descriptiveaccount of agency presupposed by MPS, per se, that is the heart ofthe problem. Thus, strictly speaking, it is true that a morality couldbe an MPS even if it did not involve a commitment to an untenable30. See esp. Brian Leiter, "Morality in the Pejorative Sense: On the Logic ofNietzsche's Critique of Morality," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1995):113-45, and also Leiter, "Beyond Good and Evil," History of Philosophy Quarterly 10(1993): 261-70. The former sets out the affinities and differences my account has withthose common in the secondary literature.31. For some nonpejorative uses of the word 'morality', see, e.g., TI, IV, sec. 4(where he speaks of the possibility of a "healthy morality" [gesunde Moral]), and BGE,202 ("higher moralities" [Morale]). On the nature and content of such a morality, seemy "Beyond Good and Evil."This content downloaded on Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:02:16 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions