Friedrich Nietzsche and the Attack on Morality
1. What is your conception of the good life? What goals or
principles are primary? What are the roles of success, wealth,
freedom, and friendship? Are they ends or means? If they are
means, how do they lead to the end in question?
2. What qualities do you consider to be the most important virtues
a person can possess? What are the qualities most valued by our
society?
3. In our sense, is it always the case that everyone strives for
happiness? Are there other goals or principles that might be
more important?
4. What considerations do you use to tell whether someone’s action
is selfish? Is selfishness always wrong? Sometimes wrong?
When? Be specific.
5. Under what circumstances, if any, is it permissible to lie? What
does your answer indicate about the justification of the principle
that one ought not to lie?
6. How would you apply the first formulation of Kant’s categorical
imperative to a specific circumstance? Imagine, for instance, that
you are considering stealing a book when no one is looking. How
would you decide, according to Kant, that this act is immoral?
7. The British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once wrote,
“What is morality in any given time and place? It is what the
majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what
they dislike.” Do you agree?
8. A hungry cannibal chieftain looks you over and declares that
you will indeed make a fine dinner. What can you say to him to
convince him that cooking you would be wrong? (Convincing
him that you won’t taste good is not enough.)
