Nietzsche on Honor and Empathy

My aim here is to contribute to the literature about Nietzsche’s exemplars by excavating two undertreated but important themes in Nietzsche: first, his investment in the value of honor, which unifies many strands of thought in his ethics and his criticism of Christian morality, and second, his account of and investment in our capacity for empathy. I demonstrate Nietzsche’s consistent preoccupation with honor, and give a specific account of what he means by it and why he is invested in it, offering some new additions to accounts of familiar Nietzschean themes along the way. I then describe Nietzsche’s account of empathy and offer some remarks on its connection to honor in the case of the higher type. I conclude by setting out some implications the addition of these two concepts to our conception of Nietzsche’s central concerns might have for philosophers.