Uma contribuição de Nietzsche à filosofia moral : a moralidade como imoralidade

Abstract

This dissertation aims to reflect on the philosophy of Friedrich W. Nietzsche, with particular regard to its contribution and place in the contemporary reflection on morality. Nietzsche’s self-proclaimed negation and critique of morality enable a new ethical perspective. As an immoralist, not only does he deny the validity and effectiveness of Christian morality, but also sees himself as a peculiar kind of moralist, one who seeks to reverse the authority and the power of morality against itself. The philosopher calls himself the first immoralist in his 1888 book Ecce Homo, where he defines his “most intimate nature” as amor fati. This refutation occurs through his corrosive and ruthless criticism of the epistemic foundations of metaphysics and morality, especially morality of a rational nature. Thus, he puts the belief in all morality under suspicion, unveils its foundations, and destroys its axiological constructs. Here we have the destructive side of the philosophy of Nietzsche, the philosopher from the depths who takes up the task of demolishing moral tradition with a hammer. However, there is also the creative side, which aspires to devise a new morality that is free of metaphysical principles. Nietzsche takes morality as a philosophical problem. Placing the dominant morality under suspicion, Nietzsche brings down the foundation on which it was built, allowing for the glimpse of other possible moralities, such as the tragic one, which affirms life. In other words, the morality of an immoralist. In this regard, some argue that Nietzsche's peculiar position in the history of moral philosophy consists in the critical analysis of the multiplicity of different moral values, always referred to its human (all too human) sources. Focusing on the circumstances and conditions of emergence, development, and decline of the various ideals, moral values, and religious doctrines, we seek to show how Nietzsche sets up a philosophy that breaks with the notion of divine and immutable values. Thus the transvaluation of all values is the “formula” for overcoming all values consecrated up to modernity as supreme and the nihilism they engendered. The condition for the transvaluation is also present in the ideas of the eternal recurrence – a new relation to time, in which life is fully affirmed – and of amor fati, that states every instant ever liver must be desired infinitely. Through the critique carried out by the immoralist, we understand that to love one’s existence as a fatum is a devoid of metaphysical elements, tragic affirmation of life. Based on a bibliographic research of the work of Nietzsche and his commentators (such as Wotling, Conway, Clark, Schacht, Bailey, Leiter, Marton, Giacoia, Araldi, Paschoal, Medrado, among others), we argue that the defense of an (im)moralistic stance on the part of Nietzsche ensures him highlight in the history of ethics and allows for a contemporary reflection on morality.