Abstract

Foot discusses Nietzsche's immoralism in the light of the foregoing account of moral evaluation. She begins with a preliminary account of Plato's response to immoralism in the first two books of the Republic. Foot distinguishes three theses in Nietzsche that may be called ‘immoralist’: the denial of free will, the attack on Christian or ‘pity’ morality, and the denial of intrinsic badness in acts; she discusses only the latter two. Regarding the attack on Christian morality, Foot argues that Nietzsche got the facts about human life wrong; regarding the claim that an act was right or wrong only in relation to the nature of the person who performs the act, Foot argues that this is a poisonous doctrine that has no sound basis in psychology. She concludes that Nietzsche's revaluation of all values might be valid for a different species, but cannot be valid for human beings.