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Interview

Brian Leiter

Brian Leiter is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago, and founder and Director of Chicago’s Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values. Angela Tan chatted with him about Nietzsche.

In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, you wrote that Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900] aims at freeing higher human beings from their false consciousness about morality. Can you give us an example of this false consciousness which has been assimilated by our society?

There’s a very high value placed on being altruistic: taking account of other people’s interests and looking out for others.

Brian Leiter
Leiter © University of Chicago 2012 Creative Commons 3

Now Nietzsche is not a fool. He understands that a lot of people who talk about altruism aren’t altruistic at all.