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.” Nietzsche mayhave sought public recognition (even desperately) but he was very clearabout the importance of not taking the public (“the herd”) too seriously.Unlike Aristotle, he certainly did make the “private-public” distinction andtook it very seriously.It is one’s private (“inner”) life, one’s noble passions and sentiments, that are essential, not one’s reputation or worldly success.The second and by far more important sense of honor as nobility serves,for both Aristotle and Nietzsche, as a summary virtue.It is not so much avirtue as that with which all of the virtues are ultimately concerned.In ourmore egalitarian thinking it thus serves the same function as integrity,which is not so much a virtue as it is the integration of all of the virtues.(It is important not to confuse having integrity with any single virtue.Forinstance, being honest.One can be ruthlessly or manipulatively honest ina way that betrays one’s integrity.) Nietzsche singles out integrity, for ex-ample, in his elaborate praise of Goethe (in Twilight of the Idols).But here Nietzsche betrays an inconsistency that pervades much of his virtue ethics.On the one hand, he praises forging oneself into a unity.(“Our ideas, ourvalues, our yeas and nays, our ifs and buts, grow out of us with the neces- LIVING WITH NIETZSCHEsity with which a tree bears fruit—.evidence of one will, one health, one soil, one sun.)” But on the other hand, Nietzsche makes a point of rejecting the ancient doctrine, forged by Aristotle but shared with almost all of hissuccessors, called “the unity of the virtues.” This is a doctrine variouslyinterpreted. But the basic idea is that the virtues “all hang together,” that is, that the virtues are all compatible and a person who has one virtue tendsto have them all.In Zarathustra, in particular, Nietzsche argued directly against the thesis, noting that the virtues tend to be at war with one another, each one striving for domination. (They, too, have their will to power.) Thus the Nietzschean self is a dynamic tension between competinginstincts and virtues, and integrity (nobility) is what holds them—howevertenuously—together.I had considered listing autonomy as one of Nietzsche’s traditional virtues, but that word has been so co-opted by Kant and his followers that Ithought it highly misleading, at best.To be sure, the metaphysical sense inwhich Kant presents the term, as a freedom in which we are “members ofthe intelligible [or supersensible] world,” is about as far as one can get fromNietzsche’s naturalistic sense of virtue.So, too, the more general idea of“thinking for oneself,” including ascertaining for oneself what is the rightthing to do and deciding to do it, is much too reflective for Nietzsche, notto mention that fact that Kant’s autonomy, even if it involves “thinking foroneself,” depends on a conception of universal rationality and, accordingly,universal morality.Nevertheless, autonomy in the sense of independenceis surely central to Nietzsche’s powerful sense of individuality (versus“the herd”).This is clearly implied in his employment of the master-slavemetaphor, which in Hegel was explicitly characterized as the dialecticaldifference between independence and dependency.But I think that it isbetter to characterize this independence as integrity or, harking back toAristotelian master mentality, as nobility, rather than the too-Kantiansounding “autonomy.” Thus integrity, in our way of thinking, typically in-cludes independence of thought, of conscience, of action.And nobility, forNietzsche, quite explicitly (in Beyond Good and Evil) requires a ferocious independence.JusticeToday, few philosophers would consider justice to be a personal virtue, asPlato and Aristotle did.Justice today is a rational scheme, a virtue of socie-ties, not individuals.But justice for Nietzsche is very much a personal vir-tue, not a virtue of proportion (as in Aristotle) nor even “giving each hisdue” (as in Plato), although Nietzsche often makes comments that couldbe so construed.For one thing, Nietzsche seems far less concerned with“distributive” justice than are either the ancient or contemporary philoso-phers.In fact, his philosophy is virtually devoid of any suggestions—muchless a theory—concerning the equitable distribution of material goods andN I E T Z S C H E ’ S V I R T U E Shonors in distributive justice.He does not even insist on—and sometimes pointedly rejects—the idea that virtues (including aesthetic and artistic virtues) should be rewarded.(He even denies that they should be thought of as “their own reward.”) But he is greatly concerned with what is sometimescalled “retributive” justice, that is, essentially, the problems of punishment.In short, Nietzsche is against punishment.For all of the seeming vehemence and vindictiveness of his writing, he finds punishment demeaning, based onresentment, and therefore a sign of weakness.Punishment is essentiallyrationalization for cruelty.This may surprise those who are particularlystruck by Nietzsche’s frequent discussion—sometimes bordering on an ex-cuse if not a justification—of cruelty.But justice for Nietzsche—which istightly tied to the equally problematic concept of mercy—is first of all theovercoming of the desire to punish, or, even better, having such a large sense of self that no punishment is even desired.Thus mercy is another instanceof overflowing, and justice, properly construed, is just this sense of mercy.PridePride is usually listed as one of the “seven deadly sins” of Christianity.Butfor Nietzsche, as for the Greeks, it means something more like “deservedself-respect,” which Aristotle celebrates in his megalopsychos, the “great-souled man.” Indeed, for Aristotle, pride (magnanimity) emerges as a kindof culmination of the virtues
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