Abstract

To affirm one's life in a Nietzschean sense one must “self‐overcome,” one must overcome weaknesses in dealing with resistances and challenges of various kinds in a process of self‐development. A focus on “self‐overcoming” could set virtue ethics in a new direction for two basic reasons. First, insofar as virtue is intrinsically associated with “self‐overcoming,” the virtue ethics would be a “virtue ethics of becoming” in a sense to be explicated. Second, a prime vehicle for self‐overcoming for Nietzsche is creativity, so such a virtue ethics would be a virtue ethics of creativity, or one in which creativity plays a very important role. Creativity for Nietzsche should not be seen as an arbitrary act of the will, something which for Nietzsche is both ethically and metaphysically suspect. Key features of a Nietzschean virtue ethics of creativity are also outlined and discussed.