Nietzsche explores this question through his values, outlook on life, and view of eternal return.
In what sense did Nietzsche focus on virtue? What are the similarities between Nietzsche's ethical conception and morality, which takes virtue as the basic ethical concept?
First, we discuss Nietzsche and his admiration for the moral norms and practices of the ancient Greek world.
Then, we focus on some of Nietzsche's virtues, starting with the affirmation of life and the return of eternity.
Finally, we will analyze the true virtues and the relationship between these virtues and artistry or creativity.
Homer bust of Aristotle and Rembrandt, 1653
Nietzsche and the Ethics of Virtue
To explain how Nietzsche focused on virtue, first of all, Nietzsche was not a virtue ethicist in the modern sense.
Virtue ethics is a moral philosophical approach developed in the second half of the 20th century, a modern re-evaluation of the ethical model of ancient Greek philosophy.
Nietzsche himself was equally interested in the morality of the ancient Mediterranean, but modern virtue ethics (especially derived from Aristotle's ethics of virtue) is undoubtedly more concerned with justifying many of our traditional moral precepts in a new way, rather than challenging our most basic beliefs about morality.
Clint altarpiece
So what does Nietzsche's ethics, and especially the positive commitment of his moral philosophy, have to do with the concept of virtue?
Nietzsche believed that the morality of his time was inferior to that of the ancient world.
He points to a key shift between the two ethical models, namely from focusing on the kinds of people to focusing on the kinds of behaviors (from the ethical framework of virtue to the framework of prescriptive behavior).
Much of what Nietzsche advocates in terms of constructive ethics is expressed as virtue.
However, the positives in Nietzsche's moral philosophy are difficult to grasp. There are various interpretations as to the extent to which Nietzsche's virtues should be regarded as distinctively ethical virtues.
Whether these virtues should be seen as having philosophical connotations and not representing Nietzsche's own preference for human character is an open question.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Create value
Like contemporary moral philosophies, many moral philosophies of Nietzsche's time, from an ethical point of view, distinguished, and sometimes completely opposed, what is valuable from what we desire.
The objective element of value depends on the possibility of articulating value in a way that goes beyond the value stipulation and is exactly what we want it to be.
Rome's Bistro, 1866
However, for Nietzsche, the idea that some part of value may not be something we have created is a curse.
Nietzsche said, "The contemplative is the one who really keeps creating, what never existed before, the whole world of ever-increasing values, colors, accents, perspectives, scales, affirmations and negations."
In our present world, anything worthwhile, by its very nature, has no value in itself, and the essence is always worthless. But at some point, as a gift, it is given value, and it is we who give and give it value.
Only we have created the world in relation to people! "
1662 Still Life of Vanitas
Nietzsche's concept of ethical value creation can be understood in a variety of ways. On the one hand, it can be understood as an anti-realism of ethics, a skepticism of the power of ethics.
If we invent popular ethical guidelines, why not invent some other ones?
On the other hand, it can also be understood as the view of ethics as a creative activity with a completely new and different power.