1001Philosophers

Friedrich Nietzsche vs Immanuel Kant on Virtue

Kant grounds virtue in the rational will's submission to the moral law: a virtuous action is one done from duty in accordance with the categorical imperative. Nietzsche rejects the framework as the most refined form of slave morality — a universalization of resentment dressed up as the autonomy of reason. Where Kantian virtue is the will's respect for the moral law, Nietzschean virtue is the cultivated affirmation of life by a higher type capable of creating new values.

About this topic

Virtue has been a central category of ethics since the Greeks treated it as the excellence proper to a human being. Plato analyzed the cardinal virtues, Aristotle developed virtue ethics as habituated dispositions of character, and Confucian and Buddhist traditions parallel this concern with cultivated moral excellence. Medieval thinkers added the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity to the classical inheritance. The modern revival of virtue ethics in the twentieth century returned attention to character and practical wisdom as the ground of moral life.

For a side-by-side overview of the two philosophers more broadly, see the full Friedrich Nietzsche vs Immanuel Kant comparison. To browse philosophy more widely on this theme, see the Virtue quotes hub.

Representative quotes on virtue

Friedrich Nietzsche on virtue

  • Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:

    “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

  • Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:

    “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”

  • Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:

    “Become who you are.”

  • Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:

    “What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.”

  • Attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche:

    “The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”

Immanuel Kant on virtue

  • “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

    Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

  • “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”

    Der kategorische Imperativ, der überhaupt nur aussagt, was Verbindlichkeit sei, ist: handle nach einer Maxime, welche zugleich als ein allgemeines Gesetz gelten kann.

  • “Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology , and first establishes a Theology ; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology , which is incapable of any definite concept.”

    Immanuel Kant , Kant's Critique of Judgment (1892) Tr. J.H. Bernard

  • Attributed to Immanuel Kant:

    “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means.”

  • Attributed to Immanuel Kant:

    “He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men.”

All 6 Immanuel Kant quotes on virtue →

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