Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T17:48:49.421Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fugitive Pleasure and the Meaningful Life: Nietzsche on Nihilism and Higher Values

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2015

PAUL KATSAFANAS
PAUL KATSAFANAS*
Affiliation:
BOSTON UNIVERSITY [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Nietzsche's discussions of nihilism are meant to bring into view an intriguing pathology of modern culture: that it is unable to sustain ‘higher values’. This paper attempts to make sense of the nature and import of higher values. Higher values are a subset of final values and are distinct from foundational values. Higher values are characterized by six features: demandingness, susceptibility toward creating tragic conflicts, recruitment of a characteristic set of powerful emotions, perceived import, exclusionary nature, and their tendency to instantiate a community. The paper considers Nietzsche's arguments for the claim that we are committed to instituting some set of higher values. The cost of not doing so is vitiating our deepest aim and precluding a central form of happiness.

Keywords

history of philosophynineteenth-century philosophyethicsmoral psychologyGerman philosophymetaethics
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , Fall 2015 , pp. 396 - 416
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2015 

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.)

References

Anderson, R. Lanier. (2013) ‘Love and the Moral Psychology of the Hegelian Nietzsche: Comments on Robert Pippin's “Nietzsche, Psychology, and First Philosophy”’. Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 44, 158–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gemes, Ken, and Sykes, Christopher. (2014) ‘Nietzsche's Illusion’. In Came, Daniel (ed.), Nietzsche on Art and Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 80–106.Google Scholar
Havas, Randall. (1995) Nietzsche's Genealogy: Nihilism and the Will to Knowledge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Andrew. (2014) ‘Consecration to Culture: Nietzsche on Slavery and Human Dignity’. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 52, 135–60.Google Scholar
Katsafanas, Paul. (2013) Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Langsam, Harold. (1997) ‘How to Combat Nihilism: Reflections on Nietzsche's Critique of Morality’. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 14, 235–53.Google Scholar
Leiter, Brian. (2002) Nietzsche on Morality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1967–77) Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Bänden. Edited by Colli, G. and Montinari, M.. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Pippin, Robert. (2013) ‘Doer and Deed: Responses to Acampora and Anderson’. Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 44, 181–95.Google Scholar
Reginster, Bernard. (2006) The Affirmation of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schopenhauer, Arthur. ([1844] 1969) The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols. Translated by Payne, E. F. J.. New York: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Schopenhauer, Arthur. ([1851] 2001) Parerga and Paralipomena. Translated by Payne, E. F. J.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. (1976) ‘Responsibility for Self’. In Rorty, A. O. (ed.), The Identities of Persons (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 281–99.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. (1989) Sources of the Self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tetlock, Philip. (2003) ‘Thinking the Unthinkable: Sacred Values and Taboo Cognitions’. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 320–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed