Your complimentary articles

You’ve read all of your complimentary articles for this month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

If you are a subscriber please sign in to your account.

To buy or renew a subscription please visit the Shop.

If you are a print subscriber you can contact us to create an online account.

Interview

Brian Leiter

Brian Leiter is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago, and founder and Director of Chicago’s Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values. Angela Tan chatted with him about Nietzsche.

In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, you wrote that Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900] aims at freeing higher human beings from their false consciousness about morality. Can you give us an example of this false consciousness which has been assimilated by our society?

There’s a very high value placed on being altruistic: taking account of other people’s interests and looking out for others.

Now Nietzsche is not a fool. He understands that a lot of people who talk about altruism aren’t altruistic at all.

…