Nietzsche’s Ways of Life

Abstract

Standing in sharp contrast to Kierkegaard’s ideal life of faith is Nietzsche’s ideal life of individual sovereignty. So sharp is this contrast that some scholarly comparisons of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche have argued that the similarities between them should be regarded as superficial.¹ They argue that Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are so fundamentally different that there can be no useful comparison or dialogue between them. But as I show in this chapter, this sharp contrast in their ideal ways of life points to a deeper, more fundamental parallel between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, namely, that they are each centrally concerned with the question of what life is best. It is only because they are asking the same question that their answers can stand in such sharp contrast. They each offer a typology of different ways of life, and each takes the agent’s whole way of life to be the most basic unit of ethical concern. They each put forward a vision of the best way of life and show how other ways of life fail. Having outlined how Kierkegaard pursues this method of doing ethics, I think we are better attuned to the different but parallel way that Nietzsche also pursues this method of doing ethics.