According to Nietzsche, the most important virtue is, first and foremost, "affirmation of life".
This is not only a practice, but also an attitude.
Affirmation of life
The most famous passage in Nietzsche's work is:
"I want to learn more and more to see what is necessary in things as beautiful; That way, I will be one of those people who make things beautiful.
The depth of love, the responsibility is keen: let this be my love in the future! I don't want to go to war on ugly things.
I don't want to point fingers; I don't even want to blame the accusers. Watching from the sidelines is my only denial.
All in all, one day, I just want to be the one who says yes.
The extreme radicalism of Nietzsche's positivity needs to be emphasized here. Nietzsche argues that even the false belief that "everything that happens to us is the best" represents an extremely positive attitude towards life, and therefore, to some extent, this positive attitude can be restored.
It's an antisocial ethic because it ignores others and focuses only on what it's capable of controlling.
It may be noted in passing that Nietzsche's moral structure has nothing to do with holding true beliefs, which he may well hold false, but which reflect appropriate impulses.
Altarpiece by Hilma-af-Clint, 1915
At the end of The Science of Gays, Nietzsche's radical affirmation finally overflows, creating a new, unique ethical concept, "Eternal Return."
In fact, the "eternal return" is a method through which anyone can evaluate whether they are living a good life.
It requires us to be able to relive every moment of our lives and, in the process, affirm the choices and experiences we made the first time.
Nietzsche as a young man, circa 1869
The eternal return
The return of eternity represents a convenient point at which we can move from the virtue of affirmation, to the virtue of truth.
This is, in a sense, a correction of the affirmative virtue. If one's conception of life is actually delusional, then the affirmation of life has no meaning.
Incidentally, we might as well observe another similarity between virtue ethics and Nietzsche's morality, namely the requirement for a balance between virtues.
Virtue is never unconditional, but always mutually restrictive. This principle of "moderation" can be traced back to Aristotle.
For Nietzsche, honesty was a virtue par excellence.
Many of Nietzsche's discourses on reality are aimed at distinguishing between his own ethics and public morality.
Nietzsche: "I don't want to believe this, although it is obvious that the vast majority of people lack the conscience of intellectuals.
I mean: the vast majority of people don't think it's contemptible to believe this or that and live accordingly".
There are still many questions to be asked about Nietzsche. What does it mean to advocate for a lifestyle that the vast majority of people, perhaps all, can't?
In the process of moving in the right direction, are the shortcomings that arise a victory or a failure, a success or a failure?
How much can be recovered?
Carl Bloch, Rome Bistro, 1866
Nietzsche's ethical requirements
Just as the true virtue contradicts the affirmative virtue, so does the creative and artistic virtue.
Art, fiction, aestheticization, in Nietzsche's view, these things have a variety of seemingly contradictory qualities.
First of all, our ability to invent and create is a way of bearing authenticity, and therefore, to some extent, it is also a support for authenticity.
If we had not welcomed art, had not invented this cult of unreality, then the realization of the universal unreality and annihilation, the awareness that delusion and error are the conditions of human knowledge and feeling, which are now brought to us by science, would be utterly intolerable.
At the same time, however, art is an illusion, the opposite of truth, and even if Nietzsche calls for aestheticization, the intrinsic value of our existence, he does not try to justify this value from the point of view of reality.
It would be a misreading to say that art represents a kind of truth in Nietzsche's view, and even there is a certain degree of truth in art.
In a sense, art is a consolation for the thoroughly real, incompatible with the thoroughly real, but necessarily so.
The distinction between truth and art represents the deification of ethical requirements in Nietzsche's thought.