UC Riverside

Nietzsche is often interpreted as an important precursor to contemporary moral philosophers, like Bernard Williams and Susan Wolf, who criticize morality for its demandingness. I argue that Nietzsche agrees with the claim that morality is extremely demanding. But, contra Williams, Wolf, and the “demandingness critics,” I also argue that Nietzsche recognized the positive value of morality's demandingness rather than launching a wholesale condemnation of it. Finally, and from a Nietzschean point of view, I argue that the attack on moral demandingness in contemporary ethics could be plausibly read as an expression of the kind of nihilism Nietzsche feared and combatted.