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An Enchanting Abundance of Types: Nietzsche’s Modest Unity of Virtue Thesis

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Notes

  1. Thomas Hurka, “Nietzsche: Perfectionist,” in B. Leiter & N. Sinhababu (eds.), Nietzsche and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 9-31.

  2. Mark Alfano, “How one becomes what one is: The case for a Nietzschean conception of character development,” in I. Fileva (ed.), Character: Multiple Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming a). Mark Alfano, “How one becomes what one is called: On the relation between traits and trait-terms in Nietzsche,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies (forthcoming b). Mark Alfano, Nietzsche’s Socio-Moral Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming c). Mark Alfano, “The most agreeable of all vices: Nietzsche as virtue epistemologist,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 21:4 (2013a): 767-90. Edward Harcourt, “Nietzsche and the ‘aesthetics of character,’” in S. May (ed.), Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 265-84. Peter Railton, “Nietzsche’s normative theory? The art and skill of living well,” in C. Janaway & S. Robertson (eds.), Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 20-51. Bernard Reginster, “Honesty and curiosity in Nietzsche’s free spirit,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, LI/3 (2013): 441-63. Simon Robertson, “The scope problem – Nietzsche, the moral, ethical, and quasi-aesthetic,” in C. Janaway & S. Robertson (eds.), Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 81-110. Christine Swanton, “Nietzsche and the virtues of mature egoism,” in S. May (ed.), Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 285-305.

  3. Joshua Knobe and Brian Leiter, “The case for Nietzschean moral psychology,” in B. Leiter & N. Sinhababu (eds.), Nietzsche and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 83-109. Brian Leiter, “The paradox of fatalism and self-creation in Nietzsche,” in C. Janaway (ed.), Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche’s Educator (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality (New York: Routledge, 2002). Brian Leiter, “Nietzsche’s theory of the will,” Philosophers’ Imprint, 7(7) (2007): 1-15. Brian Leiter, “Moralities are a sign-language of the affects,” Social Philosophy and Policy, 30(1-2) (2013): 237-58.

  4. I cite Nietzsche’s texts using the standard English-language acronyms. Translations are by Maudemarie Clark and Alan Swenson, R. J. Hollingdale, and/or Walter Kaufmann.

  5. I leave out passages from the Nachlass on methodological grounds. In general, I think that the unpublished texts should be used only to illustrate, nuance, or illuminate an interpretation that is established by looking at the published texts. On this point, Leiter and I are, as far as I can tell, pretty much in agreement.

  6. Knobe & Leiter, op. cit.

  7. Alfano forthcoming a & 2013a, op. cit. Mark Alfano, “Nietzsche, naturalism, and the tenacity of the intentional,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 44(3) (2013b): 457-64. Mark Alfano, “The tenacity of the intentional prior to the Genealogy,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 40(2010): 123-40. See also Paul Katsafanas, “Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology,” in J. Richardson & K. Gemes (eds.), The Oxford Handbook on Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013a), 727-55.

  8. Alfano 2013a, op. cit. Mark Alfano, Character as Moral Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013c). Lanier Anderson, “What is a Nietzschean self?,” in C. Janaway & S. Robertson (eds.), Nietzsche, Naturalism, and Normativity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 202-35.

  9. This idea gains empirical support from William Fleeson, “Towards a structure- and process-integrated view of personality: Traits as density distributions of states,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(6) (2001): 1011-27. William Fleeson, “Moving personality beyond the person-situation debate: The challenge and the opportunity of within-person variability,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(2) (2004): 83-87.

  10. Alfano 2012, op. cit.

  11. In an unpublished criticism of this paper, Leiter questions my understanding of the German, claiming that there are no grounds for thinking that the necessity involved is normative rather than causal. I confess myself befuddled by this criticism. Nietzsche talks about what’s “geziemt” (fitting, proper) for a philosopher, saying that philosophers have no “Recht” (right, title) to isolated thoughts. Leiter seems to ignore this normative vocabulary and focus entirely on the tree metaphor, which is after all a metaphor.

  12. Leiter, 2002, op. cit., p. 8.

  13. http://brianleiternietzsche.blogspot.com/2013/12/alfano-on-nietzsches-doctrine-of-types.html.

  14. McCrae, R., Costa, P., Ostendorf, F., Angleitner, A., Hrebickova, M., Avia, M., Sanz, J., & Sanchez-Bernardos, M., “Nature over nurture: Temperament, personality and life span development,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(1) (2000): 173–86.

  15. Though I don’t have space to go into it here, I also contend that this account of character development is empirically adequate – a view I explore at length in Character as Moral Fiction (Alfano 2013c, op. cit.).

  16. If this is right, it has devastating consequences for Katsafanas’s attempt to turn Nietzsche into a liberal egalitarian in Paul Katsafanas, Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism (Oxford University Press, 2013b).

  17. Alfano 2012 & forthcoming c, op. cit.

  18. Jessica Berry, “On the very idea of a ‘Nietzschean’ virtue ethics,” this volume.

  19. For more on this, see Alfano forthcoming c & 2013a, op. cit.

  20. I am grateful to Brian Leiter, Bernard Reginster, Mark Migotti, and Christine Daigle for comments and criticisms of this paper. Special thanks are due to John Hacker-Wright and Daniel I. Harris for organizing a conference on Nietzsche and Virtue at Guelph University where I had the good fortune to present a draft of this paper.

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    Mark Alfano

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Alfano, M. An Enchanting Abundance of Types: Nietzsche’s Modest Unity of Virtue Thesis. J Value Inquiry 49, 417–435 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-015-9499-4

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