Maudemarie Clark
Although Nietzsche quite explicitly claims to be an immoralist (for example, EH IV:2-4; BT P:5),[1] many serious and sympathetic interpreters have denied that he is. This is understandable because immoralism is a difficult position to take seriously. An immoralist does not simply ignore morality, or deny its fight to our compliance, but claims that morality is a bad thing that should be rejected. Immoralism therefore seems to be defensible only from the viewpoint of a morality, which makes it appear to be as self-refuting as another notorious Nietzschean claim, that truths are illusions. I have argued in my recent book that Nietzsche actually overcame this paradoxical claim about truth in his later works, starting with his Genealogy of Morals .[2] But this approach will not work for his immoralism, which is clearly expressed in the Genealogy and in later works, and in fact is more clearly expressed in later works than in earlier ones. Nietzsche moved toward, not away from, immoralism over the course of his work. Sympathetic interpreters have therefore usually tried another tack, suggesting that Nietzsche is an immoralist only in a very qualified sense: namely, that he rejects a particular kind of morality (say, Christian morality) or a particular theory or conception of morality, but not morality itself.[3]
There is now evidence of a change of direction on this issue within Anglo-American Nietzsche scholarship. At least three important Nietzsche scholars, Philippa Foot, Alexander Nehamas, and Frithjof Bergmann, have argued that the qualified interpretation trivializes Nietzsche's position on morality. Consider, for instance, his prediction in the preface to the Genealogy that one who begins as he did by raising questions about the morality of compassion, but also stays with the issue and learns to ask questions, will experience what he experienced: "A tremendous new prospect opens up . . . belief in morality, in all morality, falters—finally a new demand becomes
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