The Journal of Nietzsche Studies

Robert Solomon’s book is an unashamedly personal interpretation of Nietzsche’s relevance to contemporary thought, especially in relation to affirmative virtue ethics. In response to the book’s central question—“What would Nietzsche make of us?”—the answer is, “Not much,” unless we are prepared to stand up to him with a philosophy based on a deeply personal worldview (30). Solomon is tough on Nietzsche and in the first chapter finds the will to power exaggerated and eternal recurrence embarrassing (20) and later finds the revaluation of all values to be pretentious and absurd (141). We learn that this ad hominem attack would have been sanctioned by Nietzsche, but despite the assault, Solomon maintains that he loves Nietzsche even with the elitism and proximity to the hysterical, the over enthusiasm about ecstasy and excess, and the all-too-eager face questioning, “Is it god or demon?”

In the first chapter concerning the relative value of perspectives, Solomon shows that the interweaving of philosophy and psychology is central to Nietzsche’s appeal and the basis of a major issue (41). If the presentation of a perspective is always distorted by the expression of the psychology of the presenter, what is the basis for any evaluation? Solomon does not accept that all perspectives are of equal value, despite all of them being human. He cites context and purpose as distinguishing features (38) as well as education, sensitivity, and insight (41). On this basis he also rejects the notion of infinite perspectives—despite its importance for Nietzsche’s notion of eternity as a reconfiguration of the experience of the sublime—as being the basis for a form of relativism and the notion of “undecidability” (41)!

The second chapter introduces Nietzsche’s moral perspectivism. Solomon places Nietzsche within the history of secular ethicists, as one who criticizes earlier ethical systems as forms of slave morality, defined in terms of resentment and a lack of cultivation. Importantly, Solomon warns of an association with the politically or socially deprived or the association of nobility with an actual aristocratic power elite or with our own sense of narcissism (45). Slave morality relies on moral laws used in a reactive attempt to gain power through a notion of human essence, even if this comes from the lawmakers of a culture. The basis of noble morality in individual character rather than essence, and the importance of motive and emotion rather than obedience, is found to highlight plurality in moral decision making as the basis for a virtue ethics (53). Despite the emphasis on the uniqueness of each individual’s experiences without an underlying sameness, Solomon argues that his interpretation avoids relativism through being coupled with Nietzsche’s notion that good character requires a strong sense of the importance of social relations (60). I agree with Solomon and suggest that, despite the critics who accuse him of ignoring others, Nietzsche requires that the development of a workable morality involves an open engagement with others beyond dominatory will to power, based on the realization that cooperation achieves the greatest levels of power. On this basis, this moral development requires seeking the highest articulate resistance to one’s own will to power.

Chapter 3 deals with Nietzsche’s notion of the passions and their importance for human existence. The passions occur with a broad conception of rationality, and it is emphasized that to divorce thinking from the passions is not possible for Nietzsche, who is found to advocate a passionate life especially concerned with intoxication (Rausch), the particularly Dionysian passion (89). Its high value is found to be associated with a Nietzschean naturalism that is fundamental to human being. At a basic level, passions are found to be universal to animal life, while in humanity they can be cultivated into virtues, providing a basis for ethics in naturalism considered in terms of physiology (73). Such an ethics, based on will to power considered...