Nietzsche: "altruistic evaluation... which Dr Rée, like all English genealogists, sees as the moral method of valuation as such." (On the Genealogy of Morals)
I am consistently astounded by the morality=altruism equation that permeates all discussions of morality's origins. Today, 120 years after Nietzsche rightly taught us that 'morality' is many different things at many different times and places, our scientific philosophers can still say things like this:
Were Nietzsche alive, he would almost certainly be livid with frustration: in his day, perhaps only a dozen persons fit the bill, but it appears as though we are all English Genealogists, now.
I am consistently astounded by the morality=altruism equation that permeates all discussions of morality's origins. Today, 120 years after Nietzsche rightly taught us that 'morality' is many different things at many different times and places, our scientific philosophers can still say things like this:
How does a non-realist like me proceed?... I go rather with the late John Rawls in his Theory of Justice, thinking that natural selection put morality into place. Those proto-humans who thought and behaved morally survived and reproduced at a better rate than those that did not. (There are all sorts of good biological reasons why cooperation can be a much better strategy than just fighting all of the time.) (Michael Ruse, "Scientism Continued")Yup, morality is co-operation, co-operation can be selected-for, and that's basically all we need to say about 'morality'. I am not picking on Ruse: the number of books and papers published every year which cleave to this hypothesis and this hypothesis alone is staggering.
Were Nietzsche alive, he would almost certainly be livid with frustration: in his day, perhaps only a dozen persons fit the bill, but it appears as though we are all English Genealogists, now.
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