Towards the Sovereignty of Good

Abstract

Practical wisdom calls for informed judgement, discerning emphases to be given to different features within morality seen as an essentially contestable concept, where no one feature can be assumed to have undisputed priority. We have seen that those who claim to be ‘beyond good and evil’ are likely to define morality in terms of one such factor, and then see it as a moralism to be superseded for the sake of something more important. The aesthetic way of life came nearest to producing an amoral alternative, without commitment to purpose or principle, accepting the world as spectacle, and judging actions as giving or failing to give aesthetic satisfaction.