Nietzsche on Morality Quotes

“Even though there is neither much altruism nor equality in the world, there is almost universal endorsement of the values of altruism and equality - even, notoriously (and as Nietzsche seemed well aware), by those who are is worst enemies in practice. So Nietzsche's critique is that a culture in the grips of MPS [Morality in the Pejorative Sense], even without acting on MPS, poses the real obstacle to flourishing, because it teaches potential higher types to disvalue what would be most conductive to their creativity and value what is irrelevant or perhaps even hostile to it.”
― Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality

“Ahistorical commentators who too readily dismiss Nietzsche's interest in physiological questions (e.g., DeMan 1979: 119; Nehamas 1985: 120) miss the centrality of such ways of thinking to Nietzsche's naturalism and to the whole intellectual climate of the period. 'The naturalization of the image of man under the influence of natural science was the work of the materialist movement of the middle of the century' (Schnädelbach 1983: 229). In this regard, Nietzsche was very much a thinker of his times.”
― Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality

“Even though there is neither much altruism nor equality in the world, there is almost universal endorsement of the values of altruism and equality - even, notoriously (and as Nietzsche seemed well aware), by those who are its worst enemies in practice. So Nietzsche's critique is that a culture in the grips of MPS [Morality in the Pejorative Sense], even without acting on MPS, poses the real obstacle to flourishing, because it teaches potential higher types to disvalue what would be most conductive to their creativity and value what is irrelevant or perhaps even hostile to it.”
― Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality

“One important reason that philosophers should take Nietzsche seriously is because he seems to have gotten, at least in broad contours, many points about human moral psychology right. Consider:

(1) Nietzsche holds that heritable type-facts are central determinants of personality and morally significant behaviors, a claim well supported by extensive empirical findings in behavioral genetics.
(2) Nietzsche claims that consciousness is a “surface” and that “the greatest part of conscious thought must still be attributed to [non-conscious] instinctive activity,” theses overwhelmingly vindicated by recent work by psychologists on the role of the unconscious (e.g., Wilson 2002) and by philosophers who have produced synthetic meta-analyses of work on consciousness in psychology and neuroscience (e.g., Rosenthal 2008).
(3) Nietzsche claims that moral judgments are post-hoc rationalizations of feelings that have an antecedent source, and thus are not the outcome of rational reflection or discursiveness, a conclusion in sync with the findings of the ascendent “social intuitionism” in the empirical moral psychology of Jonathan Haidt (2001) and others.
(4) Nietzsche argues that free will is an “illusion,” that our conscious experience of willing is itself the causal product of non-conscious forces, a view recently defended by the psychologist Daniel Wegner (2002), who, in turn, synthesiyes a large body of empirical literature, including the famous neurophysical data about “willing” collected by Benjamin Libet.”
― Brian Leiter, Nietzsche and Morality

“Become who you are!”
The misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s point is suggested immediately by the mistranslation: one becomes “what” (was) one is, according to Nietzsche, not “who” (wer) one is. But to speak of “what” rather than “who” suggests precisely the objectification of the person that one would expect from a philosopher who views persons as having immutable, determining characteristics, such that one may ask of a human being, as one may ask of a tree, “What is it made of essentially?”
― Brian Leiter, Nietzsche on Morality