How Not to Read Nietzsche's Ethics: The Case of Thomas Stern

Abstract

The essay examines Thomas Stern's NIETZSCHE'S ETHICS (Cambridge, 2020), which purports to offer an account of Nietzsche's "late" ethics as involving what Stern calls a "Life Theory" according to which all living things seek power and it is "ethical" to support this effort. I show that, throughout the volume, Stern either makes claims unsupported by textual evidence or misreads the textual evidence in flat-footed ways. The result is a volume that is both superficial and highly misleading about Nietzsche's work.

Keywords: Nietzsche, ethics, Thomas Stern, Maudemarie Clark, will to power