Abstract

Some educators affirm the Nietzschean belief that there are no universally valid moral principles. This belief is inconsistent with the fundamental principles of liberalism, which include, prominently, the belief that domination is bad. The educators who affirm moral relativism, however, generally do not acknowledge the antagonism between relativism and liberalism, and some even wrongly suggest that the absence of universal moral standards is the source of the belief in the illegitimacy of domination. In order to make clear the fundamental antagonism between moral relativism and liberalism, and thus show what is necessary for an adequate defense of moral education true to liberal principles, I contrast Nietzsche's conception of a proper education with the educational proposals of the early liberal writers, Locke and Rousseau. The fundamental point of disagreement between Locke and Rousseau on the one hand, and Nietzsche on the other, concerns the nature of the self. Locke and Rousseau both believe that at the core of human existence is an integral self, and that the happiness of the self depends on the exercise of freedom. The central task of their respective educational proposals is to control the love of domination, which they take to be the most potent threat to an individual's freedom. Nietzsche repudiates the liberal conception of the self as an integral entity; rather, he argues, it is an amalgam of drives. "Happiness," therefore, is not an effect of the pleasure and pain of the self, but of the capacity of our drives to discharge themselves. And it is only by means of enhancing domination that the strength of drives can be cultivated