Abstract

This dissertation argues that a pervasive ethical vision underlies the work of Friedrich Nietzsche : a concern for the possibility of human flourishing, in the modern world. Notwithstanding Nietzsche's celebrated claim to be "beyond good and evil", and against the standard interpretation of his "perspectivism", it is argued that Nietzsche makes qualitative, normative distinctions between higher, admirable modes of human existence and lower, contemptible ones, and that he wishes through his writings to foster the former and discourage the latter. Furthermore, it is argued that Nietzsche believes human excellence to be the property of a small minority of "higher" human beings, and that he identifies the project of encouraging human excellence with a political imperative of cultivating this gifted elite. The dissertation also argues that Nietzsche's picture of the fully flourishing human life suffers from a number of inconsistencies that may be traced back to his vacillation between two incompatible moral discourses: an Aristotelian discourse emphasising the importance of certain "external goods" in a fully flourishing life, and a rival, Stoic-influenced discourse stressing the virtuous individual's total self-sufficiency. An examination is made of Nietzsche's stance towards the following key concepts and questions: truth, morality, virtue, instinct and "bodily" knowledge, nature, creativity, rationality, discipline and self-mastery, freedom, solitude and sociability, friendship, community, pity, breeding and heredity, women and gender relations, and domination