Nietzsche's Revolutionary Claim: There is No Objective Right or Wrong - A Scholar's Defense of Moral Anti-Realism

Nietzsche argued that moral judgments are subjective emotional responses rather than objective facts, challenging 2,000 years of moral philosophy and empowering creative geniuses to forge their own values.

Harvard's Brian Leiter reveals why Nietzsche believed moral facts are superfluous, how disagreement among philosophers proves there's "nothing there," and why anti-realism paradoxically leads to intolerance rather than tolerance.

Key Takeaways

• Nietzsche's moral anti-realism claims there are no mind-independent facts about right and wrong, making all moral judgments dependent on human emotional responses and cultural conditioning
• Unlike typical anti-realism leading to tolerance, Nietzsche used it to empower "higher men" and creative geniuses to forcefully establish their own value systems without accommodation to dominant morals
• The persistent disagreement among moral philosophers over 2,000 years suggests there are no objective moral facts to discover, unlike the convergence seen in sciences and mathematics
• Moral judgments emerge from basic affects of inclination and aversion that are culturally shaped, with reason playing a limited role in adjusting these emotional foundations rather than establishing first principles
• Nietzsche's disturbing moral content includes anti-egalitarianism, justification of slavery for cultural greatness, and "severe self-love" exemplified by figures like Beethoven who sacrificed everything for creative projects
• The comparison with Marx reveals complementary insights: Marx focuses on social structures while Nietzsche emphasizes individual psychology, both critiquing capitalism from different angles
• Perspectival objectivity emerges through adopting multiple viewpoints like Thucydides, who suspended moral judgment to show how different parties really think rather than imposing abstract moral frameworks

Timeline Overview

• 00:00–02:38 — Introduction: Overview of Nietzsche's moral anti-realism and why it matters, distinguishing his position from typical tolerance-based anti-realism toward empowering higher men
• 02:38–07:12 — Introduction: Nietzsche's Moral Views: Examining the disturbing content of Nietzsche's morality including anti-egalitarianism, justification of slavery, and severe self-love exemplified by creative geniuses
• 07:12–12:31 — Introduction: Nietzsche and Marx: Exploring the complementary relationship between Nietzsche's focus on individual psychology and Marx's emphasis on social structures and economic analysis
• 12:31–15:46 — Introduction: Nietzsche's Inegalitarianism: Analyzing Nietzsche's rejection of moral equality and the philosophical challenge this presents to modern egalitarian assumptions
• 15:46–37:37 — What is Anti-Realism?: Defining moral anti-realism through fashion analogies, explaining value dependence on human minds, and distinguishing community-relative from purely subjective judgments
• 37:37–57:28 — Arguments & Objections to Anti-Realism: Three key arguments supporting anti-realism: superfluousness of moral facts, sentimentalist explanation of moral judgments, and persistent philosophical disagreement
• 57:28–01:16:19 — How to Live Life if Anti-Realism is True: Practical implications including Nietzsche's critique of objective morality, the relationship between force and tolerance, and perspectival objectivity through Thucydides
• 01:16:19–END — Postscript: Nietzsche after Nazism: Historical context of Nietzsche scholarship, Nazi appropriation, and efforts by scholars like Walter Kaufmann to rehabilitate or misrepresent Nietzsche's philosophy

The Disturbing Content of Nietzsche's Moral Vision

• Nietzsche explicitly endorses anti-egalitarianism, rejecting the fundamental assumption that all human beings deserve equal moral consideration simply by virtue of being human
• His famous statement that "slavery in some sense is a condition of every high culture" reflects both descriptive observation about historical societies and normative acceptance of such arrangements
• The concept of "severe self-love" differs dramatically from pathological narcissism, exemplified by figures like Beethoven who organized their entire lives around creative projects rather than Christian moral obligations
• Nietzsche argues that if Beethoven had taken Christian morality seriously regarding altruism and compassion, he wouldn't have become the creative genius we celebrate today
• The justification of slavery emerges from Nietzsche's belief that cultural greatness requires leisure classes supported by the labor of others, making some human suffering worthwhile for extraordinary achievements
• His critique of egalitarianism challenges modern assumptions by questioning what philosophical basis exists for moral equality once religious foundations are abandoned

Leiter acknowledges finding Nietzsche's anti-egalitarianism disturbing while recognizing it presents a genuine philosophical challenge. The rejection of human equality becomes particularly problematic once we abandon Christian foundations that traditionally supported such beliefs through concepts like souls created by God in divine image.

The Complementary Insights of Nietzsche and Marx

• Marx provides sophisticated analysis of social structures and economic forces but lacks systematic attention to individual psychology, unconscious motivations, and the emotional wellsprings of human behavior
• Nietzsche focuses exclusively on individual psychology and drives while ignoring social structures and economic arrangements that shape human possibilities and constraints
• Both thinkers critique capitalism but from fundamentally different perspectives: Marx objects to capitalism because it makes most people badly off, while Nietzsche criticizes it for preventing cultural greatness
• Nietzsche's aesthetic objection to capitalism focuses on how "the egoism of money makers and military despots" creates obstacles to cultural flourishing rather than moral concerns about exploitation
• The aristocratic critique of capitalism differs from both Marxist and bourgeois perspectives by emphasizing cultural rather than economic or moral considerations about market society
• Marx envisions post-capitalist society enabling widespread human creativity and freedom, while Nietzsche fears egalitarian societies would eliminate the conditions necessary for the next Beethovens or Goethes

This tension reveals a fundamental disagreement about whether egalitarian social arrangements are compatible with the highest forms of human flourishing. Marx believes liberated social conditions will unleash widespread creativity, while Nietzsche sees egalitarian moral culture as inherently hostile to exceptional achievement.

The Philosophical Challenge of Moral Equality

• Nietzsche's challenge to egalitarianism forces examination of what rational basis exists for believing all humans deserve equal moral consideration without religious foundations
• The traditional Christian answer relied on all humans being made in God's image with souls of equal worth, but these metaphysical foundations collapse without religious belief
• Attempts to ground equality in shared human characteristics face the problem that all empirical attributes are distributed unevenly among people, making equality claims difficult to defend rationally
• Nietzsche operates as a sentimentalist who believes moral judgments reflect emotional responses inculcated from early childhood through family, school, and cultural institutions rather than rational principles
• Egalitarian feelings can be deeply embedded without any rational or empirical foundation, representing learned emotional responses rather than discoveries of objective moral facts
• The persistence of egalitarian commitments despite God's death suggests either that Nietzsche was wrong about religion's necessity for equality, or that these feelings remain culturally powerful despite lacking rational foundation

Contemporary evidence suggests Nietzsche overestimated religion's role in sustaining egalitarian commitments, as basic equality assumptions remain powerful in secular societies. However, his challenge to provide non-religious foundations for equality continues to occupy moral philosophers without clear resolution.

Understanding Moral Anti-Realism Through Analogies and Examples

• Fashion provides a useful analogy for understanding anti-realism: being fashionable depends on human judgments and cultural consensus rather than mind-independent facts about objective aesthetic value
• A Platonist about fashion would absurdly claim eternal forms of fashionability exist independently of human beliefs, allowing criticism of entire cultures for failing to instantiate true fashion
• Fashion operates through communal consensus rather than pure subjectivity—individual claims about fashionable dress can be correctly challenged by reference to shared cultural standards
• Moral anti-realism occupies middle ground between extreme subjectivism (slavery is wrong for you, right for me) and objective realism (slavery is mind-independently wrong)
• Nietzsche's position approaches extreme subjectivism for basic evaluative judgments while recognizing that moral responses often reflect shared cultural conditioning and community standards
• The distinction between community-relative and purely subjective judgments depends on whether shared emotional responses exist within particular cultural groups or represent individual preferences

Basic evaluative judgments like whether it's worth sacrificing many people for Beethoven's existence represent "bedrock" evaluative positions where rational argument reaches its limits. Nietzsche supports Beethoven while most modern people prioritize the welfare of the majority, reflecting fundamental differences in emotional orientation rather than rational disagreement.

Three Powerful Arguments Supporting Moral Anti-Realism

"After 2,000 years moral philosophers cannot agree on what we really ought to do... this persistent disagreement distinguishes moral theory from inquiry in the sciences"

The argument from disagreement devastates moral realism. In science, intelligent people converge on central truths despite cultural differences. In ethics, they remain fundamentally divided. This suggests either moral philosophers are uniquely incompetent (unlikely) or there's simply "nothing there" to discover. The quote highlights how Nietzsche uses empirical observation about intellectual history to undermine metaphysical claims about moral reality.

• The superfluousness argument claims moral facts are unnecessary for explaining our moral judgments, similar to how hallucinated oases explain desert travelers' behavior without requiring real oases to exist
• Gilbert Harman's burning cat example demonstrates that emotional responses shaped by upbringing provide sufficient explanation for moral judgments without assuming objective moral wrongness exists in the world
• Social transformations like apartheid's collapse can be explained by people believing injustice exists rather than requiring actual objective injustice, making moral facts explanatorily redundant
• The sentimentalist explanation describes moral judgments as emerging from basic affects of inclination and aversion that are culturally shaped into complex emotional responses through layered conditioning
• Christian cultures teach shame about pulling back from dangerous enemies while Homeric cultures celebrate such withdrawal, showing how identical basic emotions receive opposite moral evaluations through cultural training
• The argument from disagreement highlights the embarrassing fact that 2,000 years of moral philosophy have produced persistent foundational disagreement among intelligent, well-informed thinkers

Unlike sciences and mathematics where intellectual discourse transcends cultural boundaries and produces consensus on central propositions, moral philosophy remains characterized by intractable disagreement. When philosophers reach bedrock evaluative differences, rational argument fails and they resort to abuse, with Kantians calling utilitarians "reprobates" and utilitarians calling Kantians "insane."

Practical Implications: Living in an Anti-Realist World

"There is only one source of value and it's you—there is no real moral fact, there is just an emotional affective response"

This encapsulates Nietzsche's revolutionary inversion of 2,000 years of moral philosophy. Where Plato sought eternal forms of justice and Christianity posited divine command, Nietzsche locates all value in human psychology. The profound implication: we are not discovering moral truths but creating them through our emotional responses. This makes humans simultaneously the authors and authorities of all value—a terrifying freedom that most people cannot psychologically handle.

• Nietzsche's critique of morality aims to liberate "rightful readers" from assuming Judeo-Christian morality represents objective requirements rather than human cultural products
• The realization that values depend entirely on human beings rather than God or objective moral facts empowers individuals to create their own value systems
• Higher human beings can handle more truth than ordinary people, making them capable of living without the illusion of objective moral foundations
• Anti-realism typically leads to tolerance since subjective values lack authority over others, but Nietzsche paradoxically uses it to justify intolerance and force in spreading values
• When people share attitudes, reasoning about values becomes possible, but when fundamental attitudes conflict, only force prevails—whether rhetorical force changing attitudes or physical force suppressing contrary positions
• The question of whether anti-realism leads to tolerance or force depends on particular circumstances and the specific values at stake, with some conflicts requiring forceful resolution

Nietzsche recognizes that different types of people require different moralities, rejecting "one morality for all" as inappropriate for the diversity of human psychology and capability. Higher individuals need liberation from conventional moral constraints to pursue their creative projects, while ordinary people may benefit from traditional moral structures.

Perspectival Objectivity and the Thucydides Model

• Thucydides exemplifies perspectival objectivity by suspending his own moral judgments to show how different parties really think rather than imposing abstract moral frameworks
• The Melian Dialogue demonstrates Thucydides' ability to present Athenian power politics realistically without moral condemnation, showing how empire really operates through force rather than justice
• Multiple perspectives increase objective knowledge similar to seeing physical objects from different angles, providing more complete understanding than single viewpoints
• Plato's approach represents the most partial perspective disguised as objectivity, condemning everyone he morally dislikes rather than understanding their actual motivations and reasoning
• Excessive partiality in presenting all viewpoints creates a form of objectivity superior to abstract philosophical systems that impose predetermined moral categories
• Nietzsche's complaint against Plato involves the latter's moral prejudice preventing genuine understanding of different value systems and their internal logic

This perspectival approach suggests that objectivity emerges through multiplying subjective viewpoints rather than transcending subjectivity toward abstract universal principles. Understanding requires empathetic engagement with different moral frameworks rather than judging them by external standards.

The Role of Reason in an Emotional Foundation

• Reason plays a significant but limited role in moral life by correcting false beliefs that underlie moral judgments and adjusting higher-level cultural feelings about basic emotional responses
• Nietzsche's genealogical method attempts to change readers' feelings about Christian morality by showing its historical origins and psychological mechanisms rather than providing rational arguments
• The effectiveness of reason depends on whether moral disagreements involve factual errors versus fundamental evaluative differences, with the latter remaining beyond rational resolution
• Basic drives toward power, sexuality, and cruelty represent shared human nature, but their expression varies dramatically based on individual psychology and social circumstances
• Master and slave psychologies represent different ways of organizing these basic drives rather than entirely different human natures, explaining why social class doesn't determine psychological type
• Contemporary ruling classes often exhibit slavish psychologies despite their social position, while some individuals in subordinate positions maintain masterly psychological orientations

Moral improvement becomes possible through correcting false factual beliefs underlying moral positions and helping people achieve greater consistency between their stated values and actual practices. However, fundamental evaluative differences remain beyond rational adjudication.

Common Questions

Q: How does Nietzsche's anti-realism differ from typical relativism?
A: While relativism usually promotes tolerance since all views are equally valid, Nietzsche uses anti-realism to justify force and intolerance when fundamental values conflict.

Q: What's the difference between Nietzsche's "severe self-love" and ordinary selfishness?
A: Severe self-love involves organizing life around great creative projects like Beethoven's music, unlike pathological narcissism that serves no higher purpose beyond ego gratification.

Q: Why does persistent disagreement among philosophers prove moral anti-realism?
A: If objective moral facts existed, intelligent and well-informed thinkers should eventually converge on them as they do in sciences, but 2,000 years of moral philosophy show no such progress.

Q: How can reason play a role if morality is based on emotions?
A: Reason can correct false factual beliefs underlying moral judgments and help adjust cultural conditioning, but cannot establish fundamental evaluative principles from scratch.

Q: What makes someone a "higher human being" in Nietzsche's view?
A: Higher individuals can tolerate more truth, pursue great creative projects requiring severe self-discipline, and create new values rather than merely following conventional morality.

Conclusion: The Dangerous Liberation of Moral Anti-Realism

Nietzsche's moral anti-realism presents a profound challenge to contemporary moral thinking by undermining the objective foundations we typically assume for our most cherished values. His argument that persistent philosophical disagreement, the superfluousness of moral facts, and the emotional basis of moral judgment all point toward anti-realism cannot be easily dismissed. The implications prove particularly troubling because Nietzsche uses this insight not to promote the tolerance typically associated with relativism, but to justify the forceful imposition of values by exceptional individuals who refuse to be constrained by conventional morality.

For contemporary readers, Nietzsche's framework raises urgent questions about the foundations of liberal democratic values, particularly the assumption of human equality that underlies modern political arrangements. While Leiter finds Nietzsche's inegalitarianism disturbing and prefers liberal to Nietzschean states as a practical matter, he acknowledges that egalitarian feelings may indeed lack rational justification beyond cultural conditioning. This creates a paradox where our most important moral commitments—including tolerance, equality, and human rights—may rest on emotional foundations no more secure than those supporting very different value systems.

Perhaps most significantly, Nietzsche's perspectival approach to objectivity through figures like Thucydides suggests that understanding requires engaging seriously with fundamentally different moral frameworks rather than dismissing them from the standpoint of our own values. This intellectual honesty may be disturbing when applied to figures like Hitler, but it represents the kind of fearless inquiry that Nietzsche believed necessary for genuine philosophical progress beyond the comfortable prejudices of our time.