Nietzsche on the aesthetics of character and virtue

Abstract

This essay addresses the question of the relation of aesthetic to ethical value in Nietzsche's early and later writings. My central contention is that Nietzsche wanted to effect a rapprochement between aesthetics and ethics, to extend the structure of aesthetic judgment into the ethical domain, and, indeed, to effect the substitution of aesthetic for moral concepts when dealing with such typically ethical domains as action, motivation and character, and their adoption as the predominant terms in practical reasoning. The paper explores the development and transformations of this theme from its introduction in The Birth of Tragedy to Nietzsche’s imperative to give ‘style’ to one’s character and thereby ‘turn oneself into a work of art’ (GS, 290) in his latest works. In particular I am interested in what is distinctive about Nietzsche’s aestheticist approach to ethical questions, and in what respects, and to what degree, he extends the norms of aesthetic judgment and practice into the realm of ethical appraisal and practical reason