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Full Idea
A virtue has to be our invention, our most personal defence and necessity: in any other sense it is merely a danger. What does not condition our life harms it: a virtue merely from a feeling of respect for the concept 'virtue', as Kant desires it, is harm
Gist of Idea
Virtues must be highly personal; if not, it is merely respect for a concept
Source
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Anti-Christ [1889], §11)
Book Ref
Nietzsche,Friedrich: 'Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ', ed/tr. Hollingdale,R.J. [Penguin 1972], p.121
A Reaction
Presumably he sees virtue as the cutting edge of stiffling conventional morality. I'm a bit nervous about embracing highly personal virtues, partly because they might isolate me from my community. I ain't no übermensch.
| 20375 | Virtues must be highly personal; if not, it is merely respect for a concept [Nietzsche] |
| 20138 | Christianity is at war with the higher type of man, and excommunicates his basic instincts [Nietzsche] |
| 2915 | Each person should devise his own virtues and categorical imperative [Nietzsche] |
| 2917 | Christianity is a revolt of things crawling on the ground against elevated things [Nietzsche] |
| 2916 | The great lie of immortality destroys rationality and natural instinct [Nietzsche] |
| 2918 | The story in Genesis is the story of God's fear of science [Nietzsche] |
| 23520 | Truth has had to be fought for, and normal life must be sacrificed to achieve it [Nietzsche] |
| 2920 | A God who cures us of a head cold at the right moment is a total absurdity [Nietzsche] |
| 2919 | 'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true [Nietzsche] |
| 2921 | Philosophy grasps the limits of human reason, and values are beyond it [Nietzsche] |
| 2922 | All intelligent Romans were Epicureans [Nietzsche] |
| 2914 | One must never ask whether truth is useful [Nietzsche] |