Abstract
In the first part of these conclusions, I summarize and clarify the method of doing ethics that I think Kierkegaard and Nietzsche share. In the next section, I explain how this approach fits with the methods of doing ethics already pursued in contemporary ethics, specifically that of deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. In the final section, I discuss what further research possibilities emerge once we include the approach to doing ethics shared by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in our curriculum of contemporary ethical concerns. Throughout this chapter, I consider objections to my readings of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and to my central thesis about what they have to offer contemporary ethics.
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Notes
Vernon Bourke, ed., The Essential Augustine (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1974), 43–46.
Martha Nussbaum, “Virtue Ethics: A Misleading Category?” Journal of Ethics 3 (1999): 174, 178, 186.
Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in Smart & Williams, Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).
Harry Frankfurt, “Taking Ourselves Seriously,” in Taking Ourselves Seriously & Getting It Right (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), and “The Importance of What We Care About,” in The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays (New York: Cambridge, 1988), 80–94.
On the Nietzsche side, consider Simon May, Nietzsche’s Ethics and His War on Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), and Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality (London: Routledge, 2002). On the Kierkegaard side, consider Klaus-M. Kodalle, “The Utilitarian Self and the ‘Useless’ Passion of Faith,” in Hannay and Marino, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and Bruce Kirmmse, “Kierkegaard and MacIntyre: Possibilities for Dialogue,” in Davenport and Rudd, eds. Kierkegaard after MacIntyre (Chicago: Open Court Press, 2001), 191–210.
E.g., with respect to Nietzsche and virtue ethics, see Christine Swanton, Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Robert Solomon, Living with Nietzsche (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Robert Solomon & Kathleen Higgins, What Nietzsche Really Said (New York: Schocken, 2000). With respect to Kierkegaard and virtue ethics, see Davenport and Rudd, eds., Kierkegaard after MacIntyre (Chicago: Open Court Press, 2001), and Robert C. Roberts, “Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, and a Method of ‘Virtue Ethics,’” in Matustik and Westphal, eds., Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
Robert Louden, “On Some Vices of Virtue Ethics,” originally published in American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984): 227–36; reprinted in Crisp and Slote, eds., Virtue Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 201–16.
Traces of their ethical project can be found in Wittgenstein’s comments on the world “waxing and waning as a whole” and the world of the “happy man” being a different world from the world of the “unhappy man” ( Tractatus, 643). We know that Wittgenstein purchased an eight-volume set of Nietzsche’s collected works in the fall of 1914 and that he was much impressed with Nietzsche’s understanding of Christianity as a fundamental attitude rather than a set of beliefs (Ray Monk, Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius [New York: Penguin, 1990], 121–2). Of Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein declared, “Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century,” and he is said to have learned Danish in order to read Kierkegaard in the original. For a fuller discussion of this topic, see my article “Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein: Kierkegaard’s Influence on the Origin of Analytic Philosophy,” in Kierkegaard’s Influence on Philosophy, tome 1, German and Scandinavian Philosophy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). Also see James Conant, “Putting Two and Two Together: Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and the Point of View for Their Work as Authors,” in Tessin and von der Ruhr, eds. Philosophy and the Grammar of Religious Belief (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 248–331.
J. B. Schneewind gives an overview of this topic in his The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Karl Ameriks, Kant and the Fate of Autonomy: Problems in the Appropriation of the Critical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Keith Lehrer, Self-Trust: A Study of Reason, Knowledge, and Autonomy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Marilyn Friedman, Autonomy, Gender, Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality (London: Routledge, 2002), 227–9.
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© 2013 Thomas P. Miles
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Miles, T.P. (2013). Conclusions. In: Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on the Best Way of Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137302106_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137302106_8
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