ABSTRACT
The publication of Lester Hunt's Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue, commentators glossed over virtue in their discussions of Nietzsche's analysis of morality; if it was mentioned it was only within the context of his criticism of Christian morality. This is unfortunate since it bolsters the idea that Nietzsche wants to do away with morality. In Christianity chastity affiliates with ressentimentand decadent character traits and is cultivated in the service of goals antithetical to self-overcoming. He strengthens this claim in WP 916, which lists a catalog of virtues–including asceticism, solitude, and fasting–that have been "ruined by the church" and which Nietzsche hopes to revive for another, more earthly, kind of human flourishing. Virtues are understood in the Greek tradition as character, whose cultivation and development constitute human flourishing. In Aristode, this is specified in more detail: virtues are dispositions to rationally choose the mean and states of character concerned with choice and reactive feelings.
