In this article I shall attempt to give a birds-eye view of Nietzsche's ethics, with special emphasis on its affirmative aspect. I will also attempt to show that there exists one relatively simple aspect of Nietzsche's ethics that has not been realized, but that makes it much more consistent and comprehensi ble. In summary: Nietzsche's ethics, unlike almost all thinking about ethics in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth was not act-ori ented but character-or person-oriented. This kinship of Nietzsche's affirma tive ethics with ethics of virtue has not been realized, but the interest in ethics of virtue during the last twenty years now also makes it easier to grasp Nietzsche's ethics.

Let me begin by summarizing Nietzsche's profound critique of morality. One of the most common dichotomies made in respect to moral judgments is that they must be based on either the consequences of an act or the intentions of the acting person. Nietzsche rejects both these possibilities. We have no knowl edge of the future, and hence we can never know the consequences of an act. Perhaps we can know the immediate consequences, but the chain of causality never ends, and that which at first appears as a good result may well in the long run turn out to have negative consequences:" any action at all, it is and remains impenetrable; that our opinions about'good'and'noble'and'great'can never be proved true by our actions because every action is unknowable." 1 Those who emphasize that morality is based on the intentions of the act ing person are not bounded by the consequences of the act. However, Nietzsche denies that we can ever know the intentions of any other human being. In fact, Nietzsche emphasizes the relative unimportance of conscious thinking," consciousness is a surface," 2 in favor of subconscious thinking and instincts. Hence, Nietzsche argues, not only can we not know the motives of other indi viduals, we cannot even know our own motives. This is a frequent theme in Nietzsche's writings, for example," the most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception." 3