BEYOND OBJECTIVITY LIES ONLY RELATIVISM:

Nietzsche believes that the promotion of human greatness demands a new moral system that favors unique, particular perspectives instead of universalized dogmas.

Nietzsche suggests that the degeneration of Western morality began with the writings of Plato. He was responsible for moral dogmatism, "the worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors."[2] In his "invention of the pure spirit and the good as such," Plato created transcendent standards of morality and ultimately denied that personal perspectives should influence moral decisions.[3] Nietzsche critiques not only Plato but many modern philosophers for engaging in similar dogmatism by striving to demonstrate the existence of absolute moral truth. Spinoza, for instance, claimed to develop a moral philosophy based upon permanent "mathematical forms," while Kant spoke of the "categorical imperative."[4] These pretensions for absolutes and objectivity, Nietzsche argues, are deceptive and opportunistic. These philosophers were merely taking their own unique personal preferences and attempting to impose them upon everyone else by "proving" their universality. Nietzsche suggests that moral philosophers are not actually the disinterested, rational, and objective calculators that they believe themselves to be. Though they claim to reach their opinions only after the "self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic," they actually had their minds made up long before they wrote anything down.[5] Under the guise of "absolute truth" philosophers from Plato to Kant have universalized their personal preferences as eternal moral dogmas when they are no such thing.

Nietzsche labors to destroy the philosophic search for absolute moral truth, not because he is disinterested in morality, but because he desires that moral decision-making would take into account unique individual circumstances.

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