RESEARCH ARTICLE

To Preserve or Enhance Life? Nietzsche’s Perspectivist Understanding of Life and Morality

  • MENG Liang
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  • School of Foreign Languages, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China

Published date: 15 Sep 2019

Copyright

2019 Higher Education Press and Brill

Abstract

Instead of denouncing sincere Christianity, as it is often assumed, Nietzsche inveighs vehemently against insincere Christianity that interpreters take as evidence for his nihilism. This essay argues that Nietzsche’s perspectivism affirms the positive value of Christian morality as an instrument for life preservation, which is a relative standard for judging various perspectives on life. It also analyzes the negative value of Christian morality as the impediment to life enhancement, which is the absolute standard for evaluating those perspectives. As this study finally argues, it remains to the Overman to once and for all overcome the impediments to life brought on by Christian morality in the creation of a new morality, if in fact what the Overman creates is indeed a new morality.

Cite this article

MENG Liang . To Preserve or Enhance Life? Nietzsche’s Perspectivist Understanding of Life and Morality[J]. Frontiers of Philosophy in China, 2019 , 14(3) : 435 -456 . DOI: 10.3868/s030-008-019-0026-5

Outlines

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