Abstract

This study explores Nietzsche's views on selfishness and its role within his envisaged “revaluation of values”. Nietzsche advocates selfishness only for the “higher men” those characters who embody human excellence and whom he hopes will replace the person of guilt and ressentiment. Important parts of Nietzsche's mature work can be read as offering approaches to traditional philosophical problems in the spirit of the emerging biological sciences of his day, in particular physiology and evolutionary biology. Particularly striking in this context is his effort to offer explanations in the spirit of these sciences for the emergence of norms of conduct commonly seen as moral.