"Being Just Is Always a Positive Attitude": Justice in Nietzsche's Virtue Epistemology

TY - JOUR

T1 - "Being Just Is Always a Positive Attitude"

T2 - Justice in Nietzsche's Virtue Epistemology

AU - Cristy, Rachel

PY - 2019/2

Y1 - 2019/2

N2 - In his early-middle works, most notably “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1874) but also “Schopenhauer as Educator” (1874) and Human, All Too Human (1878–9), Nietzsche uses the concept of ‘justice’ (Gerechtigkeit) in an unusual way: he treats it as an individual virtue rather than a structural virtue of societies and political or legal systems; he distinguishes between practical and epistemic justice and focuses his analysis and praise almost exclusively on the latter; and he places unusual emphasis on the distinctive feeling or affect associated with the exercise of epistemic justice. This paper aims to make sense of Nietzsche’s peculiar conception of justice in by contextualizing it in two respects. First I show how it fits into and supports an interpretation of Nietzsche as a virtue epistemologist, as outlined by Mark Alfano in a 2013 paper. Then, with that interpretive framework in hand, I show how elements of Nietzsche’s epistemic and affective notion of justice persist into his later work, notably in his doctrine of perspectivism, in the more straightforwardly practical and political account of justice sketched in the Second Essay of On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), and his conception of the role of the philosopher of the future.

AB - In his early-middle works, most notably “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1874) but also “Schopenhauer as Educator” (1874) and Human, All Too Human (1878–9), Nietzsche uses the concept of ‘justice’ (Gerechtigkeit) in an unusual way: he treats it as an individual virtue rather than a structural virtue of societies and political or legal systems; he distinguishes between practical and epistemic justice and focuses his analysis and praise almost exclusively on the latter; and he places unusual emphasis on the distinctive feeling or affect associated with the exercise of epistemic justice. This paper aims to make sense of Nietzsche’s peculiar conception of justice in by contextualizing it in two respects. First I show how it fits into and supports an interpretation of Nietzsche as a virtue epistemologist, as outlined by Mark Alfano in a 2013 paper. Then, with that interpretive framework in hand, I show how elements of Nietzsche’s epistemic and affective notion of justice persist into his later work, notably in his doctrine of perspectivism, in the more straightforwardly practical and political account of justice sketched in the Second Essay of On the Genealogy of Morality (1887), and his conception of the role of the philosopher of the future.

M3 - Article

SN - 0968-8005

VL - 50

SP - 33

EP - 57

JO - Journal of Nietzsche Studies

JF - Journal of Nietzsche Studies

IS - 1

ER -