PALMQUIST - Tree.22. Freedom and The Boundary of Morals

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22. Freedom and the Boundary of Morals

by Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)
Near the end of the previous lecture I left you in a rather uncomfortable
position. Do you remember? You were stuck in Lion Rock Tunnel, inside a
bus being driven by a man who claimed that things just "happen", without
being caused by anything. What should you do in such a situation? Instead
of answering this question directly, I want to change the story a little bit.
Let's imagine that when you ask the bus driver why he stopped the bus,
instead of saying "I didn't ...", he pulls out a gun and asks you to give him all
your money and leave the bus, or he will shoot. You would probably obey his
demands. But after the bus drove away, as you walk through the tunnel, you
would probably become quite upset at what that man had done to you. In
fact, most of us would probably report his action to the police as soon as
possible, accusing him of doing something wrong.
What would be the rational basis of our claim in such a case? Why
would we judge that man's action to be morally wrong? In philosophy these
kinds of questions are called "ethical". Ethical questions are about how we
should and should not act. There are many, many ethical questions-so many
that we cannot even begin in this class to explore the different kinds of
ethical questions, to say nothing of specific questions about the rightness or
wrongness of particular acts. Ethical questions are like the many small
twigs on the end of a tree branch: they are very important, for on them grow
the leaves and the fruit of the tree; yet there are so many that any one of
them could be removed without significantly changing the appearance or
the health of the tree.
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D1 staweb.hkbu.edu.hk
There is, however, a similar kind of philosophical question that is more

weighty than an ethical question. All ethical questions are based on certain
fundamental moral principles, just as all leafy twigs are held up by one of
the larger branches of the tree. An awareness of the questions related to
these principles is fundamental if we wish to understand the tree of
philosophy. At one time the term "moral philosophy" was used to refer to
this entire branch (including the twigs). But this term is not used very often
nowadays. The entire branch of philosophy concerned with establishing the
rational foundations for moral actions is now more often referred to simply
as "ethics", with "applied ethics" referring to the twigs and "meta-ethics"
referring to the main part of the branch. In order to avoid confusion,
though, I think it is better to use "ethics" to refer to the whole "science" (in
the loose sense of this word) of making moral decisions, and reserve the
term "moral philosophy" for the basic underlying principles.
As such, "moral philosophy" is the branch of the tree of philosophy that
begins by asking the most basic questions about morality, such as: Are
human beings free? How can we distinguish between good and evil? and
How is ethics itself possible? Of course, the term "moral philosophy" does
not refer to a "good way of doing philosophy", as opposed to a bad, "immoral"
philosophy. So-called "moral philosophers" can be just as immoral in their
daily lives as anyone else! Nevertheless, the ultimate goal of moral
philosophy is not just to understand what goodness is, but to use it to help
us become better persons. And, just as Jonathan Seagull learned to fly much
faster once he understood flying, so also understanding the moral
foundations of ethical decisions should help us make wiser choices in our
daily lives.
One of the most influential moral philosophies was proposed by
Immanuel Kant. Kant's first Critique helped us in Part One to reach some
fundamental insights about the nature of metaphysics, so we shall devote
most of today's session to an examination of his second Critique, where he
suggests a very interesting way of coping with our ignorance of ultimate
reality. Whereas the Critique of Pure Reason adopts a "theoretical"
standpoint to demonstrate how space, time, and the categories form an
absolutely necessary (i.e., synthetic a priori) boundary line for human
experience (and therefore make possible our empirical knowledge of
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phenomenal objects), the Critique of Practical Reason, as we shall see (cf.

Figures III.4, III.6, and IV.4), adopts a "practical" standpoint to demonstrate
how freedom and the moral law form an absolutely necessary boundary line
for moral action (and therefore make possible our moral judgment of
noumenal objects). In simpler terms, we can describe this distinction by
saying Kant developed in these books two distinct ways of looking at the
world (i.e., two "standpoints"): he adopts the standpoint of the head in the
first Critique and that of the belly in the second Critique (cf. Figures II.8
and III.4).
Viewing two sets of opposing ideas as representatives of two
standpoints can often help us see how both can be true, even though they
appear at first to be contradictory. A simple example will help to clarify this
point. Most of you have probably seen at some point one of the many
pictures used by psychologists to test the way our mind perceives objects. A
picture is drawn that can represent two completely different objects,
depending on how it is perceived. For example, the picture given
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in Figure VIII.1, looks like a goblet if we focus

FigureVIII.1: TwoPerceptualPerspectiveson the dark area in the center. Yet if we look at AGobletorTwoFaces?
the edges, we suddenly see two faces facing
each other. Which answer is correct? Of
course, both are correct, each in its own way.
The same is often true in philosophy, whenever
there are two apparently contradictory
answers to the same question, if it turns out
that each answer approaches the question in a
different way, or with a different end in view.
In Lecture 9 we saw how Kant argued that,
in the process of gaining theoretical
knowledge, various
"ideas" naturally arise in the mind of anyone who thinks rationally about
their own experience: among these the most important are the ideas of God,
freedom, and immortality (see CPR 29). But he posed a problem in regard to
these ideas; for, if Kant is right, we are necessarily ignorant of the reality
each of these ideas points to. This "noumenal" reality, he claimed, is beyond
the boundary of our possible knowledge. Nevertheless, we must be careful
not to assume, as do some interpreters, that Kant had a skeptical view of
these ideas. On the contrary, one of his reasons for denying the possibility of
our having knowledge of the ideas was to insure that it would be impossible
for anyone to disprove their reality. No one can prove that our ideas of God,
freedom, and immortality are mere illusions, because in order to do so, a
person would need to have knowledge of ultimate reality; and this,
according to Kant, is impossible. Hence, by denying "knowledge" in this
way, Kant left open a space for "faith" in these ideas (29)-though we still
need to find good reasons for adopting such faith, in the face of our
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theoretical ignorance. By examining in the second Critique the necessary

conditions for bringing about a moral world, as we struggle with our desires
(the "belly"), Kant attempted to provide such reasons, on the grounds that
the ideas themselves actually point us beyond the realm of theory, to the
realm of practice.
The first necessary condition for the possibility of moral action is
freedom. Freedom, Kant argued, is the one and only "given fact" of practical
reason. By adopting the practical standpoint, we can actually break through
the boundaries of space and time (the limitations of our "sensibility") and
replace them with freedom. But this freedom does not leave us lost in a
boundless world of unlimited confusion; rather, freedom itself functions as
a new kind of limitation. Whereas space and time are necessary limits that
anything we can know must appear within, freedom is the necessary limit
that any moral action must conform to. The former is the world-limitation
imposed on our heads so we can know the truth; the latter is the
self-limitation imposed on our bellies so we can do the good. Though these
two standpoints lead us in opposite directions, we need not view them as
irreconcilably contradictory, provided we recognize that they refer to
fundamentally different aspects of human life.
Kant never claimed he could prove human beings are free; on the
contrary, the first Critique demonstrates why such a proof is impossible.
Instead, his argument is that we must presuppose freedom in order to enter
the realm of morality, just as we must presuppose space and time in order to
enter the realm of knowledge. In both cases we are faced with a brute fact
that cannot even be questioned without radically changing (or perhaps even
undermining) our human experience. Although Kant would not have put it
in this way, we could therefore say these "facts" function like
complementary myths for anyone in the modern world who wants to
interpret their experience in terms of knowledge or moral action.
If freedom in the second Critique corresponds to space and time in the
first, what corresponds to the categories? The logical aspect of the
boundary of morals Kant called the "moral law", or "categorical imperative".
All maxims (i.e., subjective rules of action) must conform to this law to
qualify as moral. By "categorical" Kant meant that this imperative makes an
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unconditional demand. "Hypothetical" imperatives, by contrast, are ones

with an "if" attached. If I say to you "Please be quiet when I am in the room",
then my command is hypothetical, because you are not required to be quiet
if I am not in the room. A command such as "Do not tell lies", by contrast, is
normally regarded as unconditional. I doubt if your mother ever said to you
"Do not tell lies, unless it makes you feel good"! That is because commands
such as telling the truth are usually regarded as duties. A "duty", according
to Kant, is an action performed out of respect for the moral law-i.e., in
obedience to one's conscience, rather than just following the desires or
"inclinations" of one's belly.
Kant believed he could determine a formula that would apply to all
moral action. In the end he actually proposed three distinct criteria for (or
formulations of ) the categorical imperative. The first states that an action
is moral only if its maxim is universalizable: "Act only according to that
maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a
universal law" (FMM 421). This does not mean everyone will actually agree
with your maxim, but only that everyone ought to agree. The second
requires us to respect human persons: "Act so that you treat humanity,
whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and
never as a means only" (429). The third requires that our maxim must be
autonomous (i.e., self-legislated): since "every rational creature [makes]
universal law", a moral maxim must be "consistent with the universal
lawgiving of will" (431). Let's test these necessary criteria, especially the
first, by applying them to an example.
If I cheat on an exam and someone asks me "Did you cheat on that
exam?", then I am faced with a moral choice. I can either lie, and hope
nobody discovers the truth, or I can tell the truth and suffer the consequences. Although lying in such a case might make me happier, Kant
thought this choice would be morally wrong, because it would be based on a
maxim on that could never become a universal law. In the former case my
maxim might be "It is acceptable to tell a lie, if it will get me out of a difficult
situation", whereas in the latter case my maxim would be "Never tell a lie".
Kant freely admitted it is possible to will (i.e., want to tell)a particular lie,
but he argued it would be irrational to will "a universal law to lie": in such a
case "my maxim would necessarily destroy itself as soon as it was made a
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universal law" (FMM 403). In other words, if we imagine a world where it

would be acceptable for everyone to lie whenever it would make them
happy, the primary function of language (i.e., its ability to convey truth)
would be undermined. Moreover, a lie also breaks the second and third
criteria: it uses another human being, neglecting their rational capacity,
solely in order to make oneself happy. Because lying requires us to break a
universalizable law (and therefore also to disrespect human rationality),
telling a lie is always morally wrong, no matter how happy a lie might make
us feel.
Kant gave other examples, relating to suicide, laziness, and apathy (see
FMM 421-424); but for our purposes it will suffice to point out the function
Kant's criteria for judging moral actions are supposed to fulfill. According
to Kant, we do not have to think consciously about the categorical
imperative's three formulations each time we face a moral dilemma; rather,
their function is to enable philosophers to locate truly moral issues and
then define an objectively valid boundary line between morally good and
evil actions. The boundary line is objective because it is true for everyone
(i.e., universal) and because it uses an objectively existing reality (i.e.,
humanity) as a basis for judgment.
When the moral law tells us to do something, performing that action
makes us worthy of praise only if our choice is not also meant to satisfy one
of our inclinations-i.e., only if our reason for doing it is unrelated to
satisfying our desires. Thus, Kant's moral philosophy can be restated as
follows: an action can be morally good or bad only if it is done freely and out
respect for the moral law rather than out of our inclination to fulfill our own
desire for happiness. Kant devoted much attention to the contrast between
following inclinations and duty. Of course, sometimes a single action can
both satisfy the moral law and fulfill our inclination to be happy. But
whenever this is not possible, we must choose to say "No!" to our own
happiness. Accordingly, we can express the basic command of the
categorical imperative as: "Respect the moral law!" or "Follow your
conscience as an objective principle!" or simply, "Do your duty!"
This kind of moral theory is sometimes called "deontology" and is
traditionally contrasted with "utilitarianism". The latter view was defended
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by J.S. Mill (1806-1873), an English philosopher who argued that an action

is good only if it maximizes human happiness. Kant regarded the outcome of
an action as less important than the inner motivation of the person who
performs the action. This is why he said at one point that nothing can "be
called good without qualification except a good will" (FMM 392); this means
there is no such thing as an absolutely good action, yet there is such a thing
as an absolutely good will-namely, a will that bases its maxims on the moral
law. For Kant, the proper order for viewing morality is from the inside to
the outside. For Mill, by contrast, the outer result of an action is far more
important than the motivation behind it: the best action is the one that
makes the most people happy. This means, of course, that Mill would
condone lying whenever it had sufficient "utility" (i.e., usefulness) to help
more people than it harmed. Likewise, the bus driver's theft might turn out
to be morally acceptable, if, for example, he needed your money to feed his
hungry children, whereas you were just going to use it to buy some
philosophy books for your own selfish pleasure. However, if we are to
believe Kant, such a world would be an irrational world-a world without any
boundaries-and would ultimately destroy itself. Instead of examining more
closely this long-standing debate between deontology and utilitarianism,
let us continue our discussion of Kant's version of deontology by looking at
some of its further implications.
In order for morality to be truly rational, Kant thought moral action
must be capable of fulfilling its purpose: to bring into being the highest
possible good. Just how this "summum bonum" ought to be defined is,
however, a question that has been debated among philosophers since
ancient times. The Stoics believed the highest good is virtue, and that a
virtuous life ought to be pursued without any regard for happiness. The
Epicureans, by contrast, thought the highest good is to fulfill one's pleasures, and therefore pursue happiness. This difference can be traced back to
the difference between Plato, with his focus on the ideal of goodness, and
Aristotle, with his concern for the experience of real happiness. It may also
appear at first to correspond to the distinction between Kant's deontology
and Mill's utilitarianism. However, Kant rejected this interpretation of the
implications of his own moral philosophy.
Kant argued that the best conception of the highest good must include
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both virtue and happiness. Happiness without virtue would be unjust;

virtue without happiness would not be worth the effort. Therefore Kant
explained the highest good as the picture of an ideal world where each
person is rewarded for their virtue with a proportional level of happiness.
In other words, if your level of virtue reaches eight on a scale of one to ten
and mine only reaches seven, then you should be rewarded with 80%
happiness, whereas I should be rewarded with 70% happiness. Any other
conception of the ultimate purpose of moral action would make morality
irrational, inasmuch as morality would then aim at something less than
perfect goodness and justice.
Kant has often been criticized for introducing happiness into his
theory at this late stage: how could he include happiness in the highest good
when he had already defined virtue in terms of obeying duty rather than
happiness? But this criticism is based on a misunderstanding. By including
happiness in the highest good Kant was not suddenly changing his mind and
saying that happiness can be the motivation for our action after all. Rather,
we must distinguish between happiness as an original motive and
happiness as a rational hope. The reality of human life, according to Kant, is
that right action often requires us to do something we know will make us
less happy (such as resisting the temptation to steal someone else's money,
to lie in order protect our reputation, etc.); yet at the same time our reason
tells us that in the end the person who chooses to obey the moral law is
more worthy to be happy than the person who chooses to pursue happiness
as an end in itself.
This presents a problem that must be solved if morality is to be
rational: in the world as we know it, virtuous people often are not rewarded
with happiness. How then can we conceive of the highest good as possible?
Kant argued that practical reason requires us to "postulate" (i.e., put
forward as a necessary assumption) the reality of life after death and the
existence of God. Unlike freedom, these postulates play no role in making
an action moral; instead, they help us understand the rational purpose of
morality itself. Without believing in another life and in a holy God
governing that life, we may well be able to act morally, but we will not be
able to explain how the highest good could ever be realized. This is Kant's
famous "moral argument" for the existence of God. He never claimed it
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could give us real knowledge of God's existence; but he did argue that it
provides the best practical reason for believing in God. Essentially, his
argument is that anyone who acts morally and believes such action is
rational is acting as if God exists, whether or not they actually believe in
God. In other words, Kant claimed we must either believe in God or else
reject one of the following propositions: (1) moral action is good; (2)
morality is rational; (3) the highest good combines virtue with proportional
happiness.
Aside from providing this "practical proof" of God's existence, Kant's
moral philosophy made several other important contributions. For
instance, as we have seen, it established a clearly defined boundary
between moral and non-moral actions. An action is moral only if it is done
freely (i.e., without depending on our own happiness) and in accordance
with the moral law (i.e., based on a universalizable maxim). These are
necessary conditions that must be true for anyone who wishes to act
morally, so they define an absolute set of guidelines for our inner motivation, just as space, time, and the categories define an absolute set of
guidelines for understanding the outer world. We can picture the opposition between Kant's two fundamental standpoints as follows:
(a) The bounds of knowledge
(b) The bounds of action
FigureVIII.2:TheTheoreticalandPracticalStandpoints
A potential problem arises out of Kant's moral philosophy when it is
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viewed together with his theoretical philosophy (as in Figure VIII.2), for it
sets up an apparently irresolvable tension between freedom and nature.
How can we be free on the one hand (when considering the foundations of
moral action), yet determined by laws such as the law of causality on the
other hand (when considering the foundations of empirical knowledge)?
Kant tried to answer such questions by showing how, in some aspects of
human experience, the opposition between freedom and nature, between
practical and theoretical reason, is actually overcome. In Part Four we shall
examine the two main ways he did this: Lecture 29 will deal with the theory
of beauty he defended in the third Critique; Lectures 32 and 33 will then
discuss his most effective way of transcending this opposition-and at the
same time his best answer to the question "What may I hope?" (see Figure
III.6)-his theory of religion. For religion provides us with the only way of
explaining how the highest good can be realized; hence it is the area of
human experience that Kant believed best exemplifies the way nature and
freedom can work together for the good of the human race.
Although Kant did write several books in the attempt to demonstrate
that there is a realm of human experience that synthesizes freedom and
nature, the strict opposition between these two realms did not bother him
as much as it has bothered many of his critics. For his own tendency was
not to regard these two realms as posing an absolute contradiction that
needs to be explained away, but to affirm the opposition as an essential
characteristic of being human. He regarded it as an opposition between two
human perspectives, two ways of looking at the same thing (see Figure
VIII.1), that necessarily arise together and to a large extent -like the
opposition between "hot" and "cold", or "large" and "small"-depend on each
other for their very existence. Only by keeping this in mind can we fully
appreciate the respectful way he talks about this opposition in his
well-known Conclusion to the second Critique:
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe,
the oftener and more steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens
above me [i.e., nature] and the moral law within me [i.e., freedom]. I do not
merely conjecture them and seek them as though obscured in darkness or in
the transcendent region beyond my horizon: I see them before me, and I
associate them directly with the consciousness of my own existence. (CPrR
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161-162)
23. Transvaluation: A Moral Breakthrough?
We saw last time how Kant tried to intensify the rational significance
of acting morally by arguing that morality is based on an internal
FigureVIII.3:
The Contrast betweenSubjective andObjectiveEnds
sense of freedom and moral duty. His belief in a universally valid "voice"
inside us, telling each person the difference between right and wrong, may
seem odd to anyone who has been thoroughly immersed in the relativism
that tends to dominate modern western culture, where no clear distinction
is drawn between right and wrong. As a quick review of Kant's moral
philosophy, and in order to point up some of the differences between his
view that moral ends (or aims) are "objective" and the common view that
they are all "subjective", I have summarized some of the main differences in
Figure VIII.3. Ever since Kant proposed his radical distinction between the
standpoints of moral action and empirical knowledge, philosophers have
been attempting various ways of overcoming the limitations he proposed.
(More often than not, the ways Kant himself tried to reconcile these two
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realms have, unfortunately, been completely ignored.) In this lecture we

shall examine the main ideas of one such philosopher, a man who foresaw
many of the changes in ways of thinking and acting that have occurred in
the twentieth century and who, in some respects at least, was responsible
for them; for he started, as it were, a new cycle in the history of western
philosophy (cf. Figure III.3).
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher who
believed the traditional values of the society of his day had cut religion and
philosophy-and indeed, humanity itself-from their proper roots. As a
response to the impending disaster he saw looming on the horizon, he
called for a thoroughgoing "transvaluation of values"-that is, a complete
rethinking of the whole philosophical and religious tradition that produced
those traditional values. The theories he developed in carrying out this task
set up something like a new myth, replacing the myth of dispassionate
rationality, established by Socrates and popularized by Plato, with a myth of
passionate irrationality, whose implications are only now beginning to be
understood. (Nietzsche claimed, incidentally, that his philosophy would not
be fully understood until two hundred years after it was written.) The
problem with understanding his ideas is that he intentionally wrote in an
unsystematic way; constructing systems he saw as part of the old set of
values. Not only do some of his ideas contradict his other ideas, but many of
his books do not even pretend to develop a single, well-argued set of ideas.
Rather, they contain collections of diverse ideas, often expressed in the
fragmented form of "aphorisms". It is as if Nietzsche simply wrote a bunch
of insight papers, then published them whenever he had enough to make a
book! He viewed himself more as a poet, a psychologist, or even a prophet
than as a philosopher in any conventional sense. Nevertheless, many of his
insights are directly addressed to philosophical issues; so a summary of his
main ideas should enable us to appreciate his significance for the
philosophical tradition.
Nietzsche himself (whose name, by the way, is pronounced as if it were
spelled "Neecha") was the son of a Lutheran pastor. He was so intelligent
that he finished his formal education early and became a professor of
classics at the University of Basel when he was only 24. Many of his ideas
during this period developed through a brief but intense friendship with the
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musician, Richard Wagner. After teaching for ten years, however, he

became disillusioned with the game of academia and retired to a hut in the
mountains, where he spent the next ten years of his life as a recluse, writing
some of the most passionate and challenging books in the history of
western philosophy.
Nietzsche's transvaluation of values, a focal point uniting all his other
ideas, was primarily an attempt to break through the traditional
understanding of the boundaries that limit our moral and intellectual life,
establishing in its place a new set of higher values. The old values, as
represented especially by Christianity and the philosophical tradition
culminating in Kant, are "life-denying", he argued; they must therefore be
replaced by "life-affirming" values, the best examples being found in the
pagan religions and philosophies of ancient Greece. Science, with its
narrow field of vision, interpreting the world as basically dead, is not solely
responsible for this faulty world view. For the traditional Christian morals
accepted by the vast majority of the western world, and defended in Kant's
philosophy, also support notions such as love, humility, and self-sacrifice;
and such values, according to Nietzsche, have killed the human spirit itself,
and caused us to forget how to dance.
Looking back to ancient Greek mythology, Nietzsche chose names for
these two types of outlook on life: the traditional, life-denying outlook he
called "Apollonian" (after the God of the sun, named "Apollo"), while the
life-affirming outlook Nietzsche hoped to put in its place he called
"Dionysian" (after the God of wine, named "Dionysius"). Whereas the
Apollonian outlook is conscious, rational, and calm, the Dionysian is
unconscious, irrational, and passionate. The former gives rise to a "slave
morality" that causes people to adopt a "herd mentality" and view themselves as determined by a fixed boundary line defining good and evil; in
politics this attitude gives rise to democracy (rule by the masses), thus
encouraging everyone to be alike in mediocrity. By contrast, the latter gives
rise to a "master morality" that causes people to adopt a "hero mentality"
and view themselves as free to break out of the conventional ways of
interpreting right and wrong; in politics this attitude gives rise to
aristocracy (rule by a few people), thus encouraging the greatness of the
human spirit to be expressed.
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In these and other ways the Dionysian outlook enables us to go "beyond

good and evil" and live on a higher plane, characterized by what Nietzsche
called "the will to power". The will to power is a form of radical freedom
that solves the problem posed by Kant's distinction between nature and
freedom by demolishing both sets of boundary lines:
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"we must...posit hypothetically the causality of

Figure VIII.4: Nietzsche's Transthe will as the only causality." We can truly master valuation of Values
ourselves, according to Nietzsche, only by courageously taking hold of a freedom that refuses to be
enclosed within any boundary, for only in so
doing can we affirm life as it actually is. Following
these guidelines, we can picture Nietzsche's
transvaluation of values with the map shown in
Figure VIII.4.
The problem Nietzsche faced was that the
society of his day was thoroughly entrenched in
the Apollonian way of thinking. Hence, his own
attempt to balance this with a Dionysian mes-
sage inevitably came across as madness. This is at least one of the points of
Nietzsche's famous story of the madman in the market place:
Have you not heard as yet of that mad-man who on one bright forenoon
lit a lantern, ran out into the market-place and cried out again and again, "I
seek God! I seek God! -Because there were standing about just at that time
many who did not believe in God, the mad-man was the occasion of great
merriment. Has God been lost? said one of them. Or is He hiding himself ? Is
He afraid of us? Has He boarded a ship? Has He emigrated? Thus they cried
and laughed.
But the mad-man pierced them with his glance: "Whither has God gone?"
he cried; "I am going to tell you. We have killed Him-you and I! We all are His
murderers. But how have we accomplished this? How have we been able to
empty the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe off the entire horizon? What
were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither does
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the earth now move? Whither do we ourselves move?

"Are we not groping our way in an infinite nothingness? Do we not feel
the breath of the empty spaces. Has it not become colder? Is there not night
and ever more night? How do we manage to console ourselves, we masterassassins? Who is going to wipe the blood off our hands? Must not we
ourselves become gods to make ourselves worthy of such a deed? (JW 125)
This famous passage not only states the problem, that our lifeless, Apollonian personalities have killed God, it also gives a clue as to Nietzsche's
solution. The only beings capable of killing God are those who can themselves become gods. Out of this arose Nietzsche's theory of Superman.
When Nietzsche talked about people transcending their themselves
and becoming bermensch (the German word usually translated as
"Superman", but also sometimes as "overman"), he was not thinking of the
strange man in the red suit who flies around "faster than a speeding bullet"
fighting the powers of crime and defending the American Way! On the
contrary, the imaginary hero from Krypton first appeared shortly after
Nietzsche died and bears little similarity to Nietzsche's ideal. The
Superman whose coming Nietzsche proclaimed was far more important, for
he is the very purpose of the earth. Thus, the "future hope for man" lies
entirely in the emergence of this powerful person from the otherwise
hopelessly lost conditions of modern society: whereas ordinary people are
all like "polluted streams", "we need to become oceans". In order to bring on
the Dionysian outlook of the Superman, we must, for example, love our fate
(called "amor fati" by Nietzsche) so thoroughly that we could will each and
every moment of our life to be endlessly repeated in a continuous cycle of
"eternal recurrence".
Nietzsche's best description of this ideal Superman, and of how his
character is to emerge, comes in his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra
(1883-1884). The Prologue to this book tells a story about a man named
Zarathustra (actually the name of the founder of the ancient Persian
religion called Zoroastrianism), who lived alone in the mountains for ten
years. One day he meets an "old saint in the forest" and is surprised to find
that this man "hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!" Zarathustra then
goes to the market-place of the nearest town, where many people are
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assembled to watch a tight-rope walker whose performance is about to

begin, and he begins to preach to them, saying:
I teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What
have ye done to surpass man? ...
What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the
same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.
Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is
still worm....
Lo, I teach you the Superman!
The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The
Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!
I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the earth, and believe not
those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they,
whether they know it or not.
Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves,
of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died,
and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the
dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the
meaning of the earth! ...
Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted
stream without becoming impure.
Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your greatest
contempt be submerged. (TSZ Prologue ?)
Someone in the crowd, getting impatient with Zarathustra's strange words,
then asks to be shown this "rope-dancer" (meaning the Superman).
Zarathustra responds by saying: "Man is a rope stretched between the
animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss." After suggesting with this
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metaphor the picture of humanity shown in Figure VIII.5, Nietzsche told

how, after another speech by Zarathustra, the tight-rope walker then
Figure VIII.5: Nietzsche's Tight-Rope

started his act, but was disturbed by someone else on the rope, who, "like a
buffoon", caused the tight-rope walker to fall to the ground. The story ends
by telling how Zarathustra helps the injured and dying man.
Although we
do not have time to discuss the interpretation of this story in detail, I should
at least add that in the first section of the book itself, Nietzsche told a story
about "three metamorphoses": a spirit is transformed into a camel, the
camel into a lion, and the lion into a child. If we treat this as symbolizing
three stages in the development of humanity, it could be used to argue that
for Nietzsche the Dionysian ("lion") outlook was not to be part of the ideal
man, but was merely a necessary compensation for the over-rational bias of
the contemporary Apollonian ("camel") outlook. The ultimate ideal of
Nietzsche may well have been the person who transcends the distinction
between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, by adopting neither the
servant-based outlook of a camel nor the power-based outlook of a lion, but
the instinct-based outlook of a child.
In any case, the final aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy I shall present to
you today is his theory of perspectivism. Nietzsche was the first
philosopher to use the word "perspective" as a technical term in his
philosophizing. And this, as you may have noticed, is a practice I believe can
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be of utmost value to the philosopher. However, for Nietzsche, the

implication of saying that everything we "know" is limited to some perspective is that there are actually no facts, only interpretations. Indeed, he
went so far as to suggest that everything is false; in other words, language
falsifies reality. This view is similar in some respects to both Kant and
Wittgenstein, as well as to the ideas of many other philosophers who
wished to distinguish between what is and what we can say about what is.
Unlike Kant, but like Wittgenstein, he was highly critical of all
metaphysical theories (especially dualism). For the very idea of a "true
world" beyond this one is, he believed, the root of all life-denying outlooks.
This radical rejection of all truth, metaphysical and otherwise, is an aspect
of what is often called "nihilism". For the true nihilist there are no real
moral limitations whatsoever: all values can be rejected as meaningless.
Understood in this way, there is some debate as to whether or not
Nietzsche, whose ultimate goal was to reach a Higher Value (namely,
Superman), ought to be called a "nihilist" in the strict sense.
What are we to conclude, then, about Nietzsche's philosophy? How are
we to respond to such a passionate plea for a moral breakthrough? How can
we cope with his scathing criticisms of religion and the modern scientific
world view? Has man ironically "killedGod" with the very rationality that
virtually all philosophers from Socrates to Kant believed can point us
beyond ourselves to that God? Can we truly become God through the force of
our own will? Surely these and the many other questions raised by
Nietzsche's philosophy cannot be answered in any satisfactory way in this
introductory course. However, I would like to point out that, above all else,
Nietzsche's writing is calculated to evoke some response. Nietzsche would
regard his task as a success if his ideas have shocked us into rethinking our
entire system of values and beliefs. The last thing he ever wanted was to
found a new "school" of thinking, called "Nietzschean philosophy"!
With this in mind, I have several comments to make about Nietzsche's
ideas. First, the mythical character of his philosophy should be clear by the
very fact that he refused to see or accept any boundaries. Nietzsche's world
was a world with no limits-or at least, the limits it had were arbitrary, and
could not be used to determine the truth. (This is partly due to the fact that
he had no clear recognition of the difference between analytic and
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synthetic logic.) This is why I have suggested we regard his philosophy as

having started a new revolution in the cycle of western philosophy (cf.
Figure III.3), replacing Plato's Socrates as the foundation for a new
philosophical age, often called "post-modernism". We shall examine that
the latter movement in more detail in Lecture 24.
Another interesting point is that the relationship between Kant and
Nietzsche is comparable in some ways to the relationship in ancient
Chinese philosophy between Confucius and Chuang Tzu. The former in
each case developed a massive philosophical system revolving around the
principle of inwardly legislated moral action, whereas the latter in each
case tried to break through the typically rigid ways of interpreting that
system, by living a wanderer's life and urging us all to be guided by the
passionate "Way" that is in some sense the essence of life itself. Unfortunately, we do not have time to pursue this parallel relationship in the
context of this class. So it will suffice merely to note that, like Nietzsche,
Chuang Tzu's radical destruction of traditional values often makes him look
like a nihilist; yet we can avoid this error by keeping in mind that the Way
serves as an ineffable, but nonetheless real limit for human action.
At this point we may want to ask: which is truly life-denying,
Nietzsche's interpretation of man as either purely Apollonian or purely
Dionysian, or a confession of the inevitable tension between these two
aspects of human nature (as in Kant)? The person who crosses the
tight-rope and is successfully transformed into Superman (i.e., into the
Dionysian hero) will be just as one-sided as the one who sits back and
remains satisfied to be a mere animal (i.e., part of the Apollonian herd). In
either case, if we try to regard life in terms of either one of these outlooks on
its own, we will surely end up denying life: this can be visually represented
by noting that the tight-rope of humanity in Figure VIII.5 would fall to the
ground if either building supporting it were to be taken away. This surely
suggests that the only truly life-affirming view is the one that regards
humanity as both Apollonian and Dionysian. Whether the tension be
between love and passion, consciousness and unconsciousness, knowledge
and ignorance, or any other pair of Nietzschean opposites, it is in each case
the tension itself that keeps us alive. Indeed, this is simultaneously the
greatness and the tragedy of human life: that we are capable of taking great
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risks in the pursuit of high ideals; and yet, that we cannot reach those ideals
without losing our very life. And the good life, just as the good tight-rope
walker, will be the one that exhibits the best balance (e.g., by integrating the
opposites).
Finally, I should mention that, for the last eleven years of his life,
Nietzsche was insane. Trying to explain what caused his insanity can only
be a matter of conjecture. Some believe it was the result of a physical
illness. Others interpret his suffering as that of a true prophet, as if he were
symbolically accepting such a punishment on behalf of those who could not
see mankind's tendency toward self-destruction so clearly. Still others
regard his final fate as a natural outcome of his philosophical outlook. In
the latter case his example could certainly serve as a warning to anyone who
wishes to experiment with a philosophy cut off from its natural roots in
metaphysics. In any case, because of her brother's insanity, Nietzsche's
sister ended up taking charge over the publication of his writings and the
promotion of his ideas. Unfortunately, she perverted his ideas in such a way
that Hitler was able to use what looked like Nietzsche's ideas as a
philosophical support for his own fascist political regime. Political
philosophy will, in fact, be the focus of next week's lectures. But we can end
today by noting that the use Hitler (and others) made of Nietzsche is now
generally recognized to be a gross misrepresentation. For Nietzsche was no
anti-Semitic fascist, but truly a philosopher unto himself-a new Socrates
(or anti-Socrates) if ever there was one.
24.Perspectivism:ReconstructingtheBoundaries
Probably the most common myth to be assumed (and sometimes
defended with arguments) in the insight papers written by my past students
has been the view known as relativism. Students frequently claim there is
nothing absolute in the world, though few think very deeply about the
implications of such a position. The reasons typically cited are that actions
can be right in one situation yet wrong in another situation, or that
propositions can be true in one context yet false in another, or that a
physical feature regarded as beautiful in one culture may be ugly in another
culture. As these examples illustrate, the issue of relativism concerns not
only moral philosophy, but virtually all aspects of applied philosophy.
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Wherever a boundary has to be drawn and a wise choice made as to what

falls inside the boundary and what should remain outside, the question of
whether or not the boundary is "absolute" (i.e., fixed, or true in every
respect, without considering context or individual differences) eventually
arises. In ordinary life, most boundary issues are obviously relative. For
example, there is no absolute principle to tell you whether or where to erect
a fence between your property and your neighbor's; such a decision depends
on a variety of "relative" factors, such as what laws apply to the district
where you live, what kind of relationship you have with your neighbor, how
you feel about fences, etc.
The philosophical question concerning relativism is not whether
anything is relative; that is obviously true. Rather, the question is whether
everything is relative, or whether, by contrast, some fundamental principles might be absolute. And nowhere is this question more important than
in moral philosophy. This week we have seen that the twentieth century's
tendency toward relativism derived to a large extent from (or at least, was
foreseen by) Nietzsche. But its roots go way back. As early as 1651, Thomas
Hobbes wrote in Chapter 13 of his book, Leviathan, that "moral philosophy
is nothing else but the science of what is good, and evil, in the conversation,
and society of mankind; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines
of men, are different." The distinction between good and evil is thus
regarded as purely a matter of social custom, not rooted in any absolute
moral principles. Furthermore, Hume argued that "ought" statements
cannot be justified by appealing to "is" statements (THN 469-470). For
example, just because abortion is a common practice nowadays does not
mean that it ought to be regarded as "right". This gap between the "is" and
the "ought" prevents moral "science" from ever reaching the level of
objectivity that natural science aims to obtain. Indeed, Hume inferred from
the absence of any empirical justification for moral beliefs that they are
merely a matter of custom or habit (cf. Lecture 21)-a view that leads
directly to extreme forms of relativism.
Strict relativism, the view that no opinion is ultimately any better than
any others, must be clearly distinguished from "perspectivism". For
Nietzsche, as we have seen, the latter means that everything is false. Yet, if
we really take this seriously, we are left with a tree without roots-and
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perhaps even without a trunk! Throughout this course I am defending a

radically different version of perspectivism. Instead of arguing from the
perspectival nature of all knowledge (as demonstrated by Kant) to the
falseness of all language, we can regard each well-defined perspective as an
opportunity to gain truth within boundaries. Thus, for example, I have
defended a philosophy of perspective wherein truth does exist, but can be
known as such only within the boundary of a distinct perspective. In this
way we can say truth is relative, without saying it all boils down to personal
opinions: once we realize that the love of wisdom requires first and
foremost a search for the proper perspective for interpreting ideas such as
truth and goodness, then and only then will we be able to affirm that
opinions (sometimes even the majority opinion) can be wrong! Rather than
saying, with Nietzsche, that all interpretations of the world are false, we
can then affirm that many of them can be true. Indeed, even when two views
appear to conflict with each other, they may both be right, if they are
assuming different perspectives.
Of the current movements in western philosophy that look back to
Nietzsche as the father of the "post-modern" era, "deconstructionism" is
one of the most influential. Deconstructionism originated as a method of
interpreting literary texts (cf. Lecture 18), but has now grown into a distinct
philosophical school, based on the assumption that the world has no "deep
structure" whatsoever, so that the search for the foundations of anything is
necessarily futile and counterproductive. I think the life of this movement
will be short-lived, because, like logical positivism (cf. Lecture 16), it
attempts the impossible task of growing a tree without roots. While rightly
claiming that the belief in metaphysical foundations is all too often used to
close off the possibility of alternative explanations, and can therefore be
misused as a tool of oppression, deconstructionists themselves, in effect,
close off the possibility for any communication whatsoever, by their belief
that there is no common ground we can all stand on. Because they focus
much of their attention on interpreting past classical texts, many of their
legitimate insights can be found in a less extreme form in the writings of
more conventional philosophers. Nevertheless, let's look at a few of the
ideas defended by one of the most influential deconstructionists.
Jacques Derrida (1930-) is an Algerian-born scholar who has spent
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most of his professional life living and writing in Paris. He attracted much
attention during the last one-third of the twentieth century, thanks to his
provocative and insightful writing style. The most popular of his works,
Margins of Philosophy (1972), sets out the most detailed defense and
explanation of the main features of his new, "deconstructionist" approach
to philosophy. Derrida rejects a number of key assumptions made by past
philosophers (especially the "structuralists" whose views were very
influential in France during the middle part of the century), such as: the
priority of speech over writing; the notion that texts have an objective
structure giving each a primary or most correct "meaning"; the belief that
the author rather than the reader gives the text its true meaning; etc. In
place of such views he demonstrates with his own writing that texts have
many layers of genuine meanings and that the reader's own meaning(s) may
be just as valid as the one(s) intended by the author. Moreover, he refuses to
give philosophical texts a privileged position in relation to other types of
writing; they are simply another form of literature to be interpreted and
critically assessed.
As a literary critic, Derrida values the act of writing as the primary
category of all philosophy and the most basic form of verbal
communication. The essence of writing is a "free play" of language, not the
communication of some deeper "meaning". As he puts it: "There is nothing
outside the text." Rather than searching for some elusive "true meaning",
interpreters should view their task as playing with the text until some new
insight arises as a result. Some of the "tricks" Derrida uses to deconstruct
classical texts in this way are to find a dominant metaphor that guides the
way the key terms are used and understood, to trace all such terms back to
their original or literal meanings, to focus on differences between what
might seem to be the "obvious" meaning of a text and other, hidden
meanings, and to explore the way different types of differences interact
(including differences in sound, spelling, etc.). He coined the term
"diffrance" to refer to the latter, the interplay between different
differences, emphasizing that we are able to examine only one type of
difference at a time: the other types must "defer" to the one that grabs our
attention at any given time. To locate such alternative or underlying
metaphors, meanings, differences-such diffrance-Derrida often utilizes
concepts from depth psychology, arguing that unconscious connections are
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imbedded in the text. In so doing, his aim is not to deny a text's "traditional"
interpretation(s), so much as to play around with the wide variety of other
interpretations that might be just as plausible.
So convinced is Derrida that the proper interpretation of a text must
always remain an "open", unstructured question, that he claims that the
margins of a book are as important as the printed words. The margins,
together with all the spaces between the words, constitute the diffrance
that makes reading possible in the first place. On the one hand, the margins
represent what is not written, and this tells us as much about a text's
meaning as what is written. On the other hand, when a reader writes his or
her own comments in the margins, these become as much a part of the text's
meaning as what the original writer had in mind.
Though deconstructionism is by no means limited to texts relating to
issues in moral philosophy, this is the best week to deal with the movement,
because it tends to result in the notion of a text's meaning being totally
relativized. And the implications of this total relativization are nowhere felt
more strongly than in the realm of ethics. Derrida and other
deconstructionists go so far as to claim that any attempt to insist on a "true"
meaning, or to regard any principle as absolutely true, is a political ploy
used to "oppress" people who hold different views. As such, the whole
movement takes on a moralistic tone not unlike that of Nietzsche's,
whereby any attempt to support traditional ideas is cast into disrepute. In
fact, I was once at a seminar where a deconstructionist argued that even a
simple logical principle such as the law of noncontradiction is nothing but a
tool of oppression that ought therefore to be rejected! Another influential
deconstructionist, Michel Foucault (1926-1984), applied such ideas in far
more detail to moral issues, especially those relating to sexuality and
mental illness But rather than examining his or others' ideas at this point,
let us return to Kant in order to draw some conclusions about the
implications of a healthy perspectivism for moral wisdom.
On the standard interpretation of Kant, as assumed by Nietzsche, he
regarded the categorical imperative and perhaps even the specific maxims
justified by it (such as "Never tell a lie") as absolute moral principles.
However, Kant's moral theory need not be interpreted so rigidly. For, just as
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he regarded everything that appears in space and time (i.e., in the world) as
contingent and therefore relative, while only what our mind imposes on the
world a priori (i.e., as the world's boundary) is necessary or absolute, so also
he regarded the moral worth of an action as stemming not from its result in
the world of outer objects, but from its source in the agent's world of inner
motives. Hence, Kant's moral theory is relativistic at least in this sense: the
same action can be right in one situation and wrong in another if the
underlying motivation is different in each case. Where Kant parted with
strict relativism, in his moral theory as well as in other areas of his
philosophy, was in believing there are absolute principles that underlie all
such "relative" decisions. These principles are absolute only in the sense
that they define specific perspectives; but we are free to adopt different
perspectives to interpret any given situation. In this way, Kant's position
transcends both the foundationalism that naively upholds the maxims of
traditional morality as if they were absolutes and the antifoundationalism
of deconstructionist relativism that wipes away all boundaries. Instead,
Kantian perspectivism recognizes the boundaries as "relatively fixed"-i.e.,
fixed only in relation to the principles that define each perspective. No
principle is true from every perspective, so nothing we know is "absolutely
absolute".
Kant did recognize a level of reality that goes beyond the relatively
absolute principles of his perspectivism. But as we saw in Lecture 8, he
regarded this absolute or "ultimate" reality, the realm of the "thing in itself",
as unknowable. Rather than merely defending the "old" morality, as
Nietzsche claimed, Kant's perspectivism thus provided us with a third
alternative. Traditional morality lives in the myth that a specific set of
moral maxims (e.g., those found in the Bible) are absolutely true for all
people and at all times. Relativism breaks through this myth by arguing
that, because nothing is absolute, anything can be true or right. "Cultural
relativism" is the more specific view that each culture sets its own
boundaries, and that right and wrong are in fact nothing but cultural norms.
But if this were the case, then no culture could ever be wrong and it would
be difficult to imagine how or why a culture would ever change its moral
standards. Nietzsche's relativism is not cultural, for he clearly accuses
some cultures (namely, the Apollonian ones) of being morally corrupt. His
view might rather be called absolute relativism, inasmuch as he argued that
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the only healthy moral theory is one that breaks through all boundaries,
cultural or otherwise. Kant's position goes beyond relativism by
encouraging us to return to the boundary of morality even though we are
ignorant of exactly how fully we are following the moral law at any given
time. For Kant, we are to believe there is something absolute, even though
we cannot know exactly what it is; only when we humbly accept this
unknowable absolute as a boundary-defining reality will we be able to make
moral decisions that are genuinely our decisions (i.e., free) and yet
genuinely moral as well.
The presence of a moral absolute, even if it is in a sense outside the
world of our actions, has important implications for how we treat those
who disagree with our opinions. Relativists usually encourage us always to
be tolerant of the views of others. Tolerance in general is, of course, a very
good thing. It is a reaction against an older way of looking at the world, as
full of absolute, black and white distinctions that ought to be strictly forced
onto all other people. In the name of absolute truth and goodness many
people down through history have been attacked, ostracized, beheaded, and
burned at the stake, merely for holding opinions differing from those of the
people with more political power. Nevertheless, the danger in relativism is
that it ultimately leads to the destruction of both knowledge and morality.
By blurring the distinction between true and false or between right and
wrong, it convinces people nowadays to ignore the inner guidelines that
reason provides for us to determine truth and goodness. Must we, so to
speak, "throw out the baby with the bath water"? Kant would say "No!" Be
tolerant up to a point, but not at the expense of denying two of the highest
values in human life. Kantian perspectivism provides an alternative to
relativism by maintaining that there are rational absolutes, and that,
although these absolutes are objectively unknowable, practical reason itself
communicates them to each person, if only we will listen to its voice.
Because goodness and truth have their absolute basis not in the actions and
objects found in the world, but in the rational voice within each individual,
intolerance can still be opposed, but not so systematically as to destroy the
possibility of knowledge and morality.
Kant's own keyword for the basic principle of morality, respect is
actually related in a significant etymological way (at least in English) to the
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whole notion of a perspective. To "re-spect" a person is "to look again" at

them and their situation-to think twice before judging or acting according
to one's own inclinations. To "per-spect" a situation is "to look through (or
by means of)" a given presupposition at the various details under
consideration. Interestingly, at least one translator has used "to perspect"
for Kant's term "einsehen", literally meaning "to see in" and as a noun,
"understanding" or "insight". This accurately reflects the close relationship
we have seen operating throughout this course between perspectives and
insights. Thus we could say that, as respecting is to morality, perspecting is
to insight, and so also to philosophy in general.
Before concluding this lecture, I would like to mention that some of you
are still falling into the self-reference trap (see Lecture 10) in your insight
papers. Now that we have a deeper understanding of perspectives and how
they function in relation to myths, I hope you will be more adept at stating
your arguments more carefully. With this in mind, let me now give another
example of how to deal with philosophical questions without falling into
this fallacy. Once I read a paper that claimed "Truth always hurts", and
another that similarly argued "The only time we can be certain of what is
true is when it inflicts pain on us." Such claims may be true and even wise in
a variety of human situations. But if we present such an insight as a
universal principle, then it obviously fails the self-reference test. For
merely believing the statement "Truth always hurts" does not, in itself,
inflict any pain on the believer. If the principle is true, then there is at least
one truth that does not hurt!
Kant's perspectivism, on my interpretation, is unique and superior to
all the other options we have considered, inasmuch as it argues that each
area of applied philosophy does have its proper boundary, but that none of
these are absolute in the sense of applying to all situations. On the contrary,
we may choose to impose one set of boundaries on a situation at one point
in time, thereby treating it as a determined event in a scientific framework,
yet impose a different set of boundaries on the same situation at a later
time, thereby treating it as a moral situation. Whereas Nietzschean
perspectivism, like deconstructionism, regards the perspectival nature of
all knowledge as virtually doing away with the notion of truth, Kantian
perspectivism reconstructs what has been relativized by regarding
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perspectives as truth-defining boundaries -or in the case of moral

philosophy, as goodness-defining boundaries. To say that an act is good only
relative to the moral standpoint does not reduce morality to a cultural norm
or personal preference, but raises it to the status of a philosophically
justified belief.
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. Can a single action be both free and determined at the same time?
B. Are there any absolute (i.e., unchangeable) boundary lines?
2. A. Can a value judgment ever be false?
B. Can two genuine duties contradict each other?
3. A. Are "life-denying" acts ever morally right?
B. Could a human being kill God?
4. A. Is a "breakthrough" always good?
B. Is philosophy without reason really possible at all?
RECOMMENDED READINGS
1. Immanuel Kant, Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals, Second
Section, "Transition From the Popular Moral Philosophy to the Metaphysics of Morals" (FMM 405-445).
2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Book II, "Dialectic of Pure
Practical Reason" (CPrR 106-148).
3. J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. Oskar Piest (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1957).
4. G.E. Moore, Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965[1912]).
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5. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, ?25 (JW).

6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Prologue (TSZ).
7. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a philosophy of the
future, tr. R.J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973).
8. Jacques Derrida, "Diffrance", Margins of Philosophy, tr. A. Bass
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp.1-27.
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22. Freedom and the Boundary of Morals

There is, however, a similar kind of philosophical question that is more

phenomenal objects), the Critique of Practical Reason, as we shall see (cf.

in Figure VIII.1, looks like a goblet if we focus

theoretical ignorance. By examining in the second Critique the necessary

unconditional demand. "Hypothetical" imperatives, by contrast, are ones

universal law" (FMM 403). In other words, if we imagine a world where it

by J.S. Mill (1806-1873), an English philosopher who argued that an action

both virtue and happiness. Happiness without virtue would be unjust;

(a) The bounds of knowledge

(b) The bounds of action

realms have, unfortunately, been completely ignored.) In this lecture we

musician, Richard Wagner. After teaching for ten years, however, he

In these and other ways the Dionysian outlook enables us to go "beyond

"we must...posit hypothetically the causality of

the earth now move? Whither do we ourselves move?

assembled to watch a tight-rope walker whose performance is about to

metaphor the picture of humanity shown in Figure VIII.5, Nietzsche told

Figure VIII.5: Nietzsche's Tight-Rope

be of utmost value to the philosopher. However, for Nietzsche, the

synthetic logic.) This is why I have suggested we regard his philosophy as

Wherever a boundary has to be drawn and a wise choice made as to what

perhaps even without a trunk! Throughout this course I am defending a

whole notion of a perspective. To "re-spect" a person is "to look again" at

perspectives as truth-defining boundaries -or in the case of moral

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

5. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom, ?25 (JW).

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