From the genealogy of morality to moral education. Nietzsche's search for virtue

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show the correspondence between two basic aims of Nietzsche’s philosophy: genealogically-critical research of the sources of our values and the positive attempt to establish human greatness and virtue. Genealogy can help us to discern in different kinds of virtue and greatness different potentialities of human existence. This is why it opposes moral absolutism, which says that true reality can give us only one, universally valid answer to the question of the good life and which, according to Nietzsche, today prevents endowing the notion of human perfection with moral significance. By showing the real origin of ideals and measures of human greatness, genealogy helps us to get over our unbelief in virtue, which at least partly follows from the fact that we are no longer able to evaluate the quality and greatness of human life according to a common measure which for us simply no longer exists.