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Friedrich Nietzsche did his philosophizing while he was coming apart at the seams. His writing is disorienting for readers because he was all over the place when he produced it. But Nietzsche's philosophy is about coming apart at the seams and being all over the place, and it is a philosophy meant to cope with that predicament - which makes it both fascinating and important. Elijah Millgram provides a new way of reading Nietzsche through this insight. Nietzsche not only recommended that you invent values for yourself; his books show you how it is done, and what it is to make a value you invent into the meaning of your life.

From principle to project -- Mill's epiphany -- Mill's postdoc -- How to write a letter of recommendation -- Logic and the problem of necessity -- Mill's incubus -- Justice, freedom of speech and other higher pleasures -- Taking liberties with utilitarianism -- Mill's aftermath -- A very quiet tragedy -- Concluding remarks -- A Mill's metaphysical paradox.

Examining how practical reasoning can be put into the service of ethical and moral theory, the papers in this volume support a methodological approach and trace the connections between two kinds of theory in utilitarianism, in Kantian ethics, in virtue ethics, in Hume's moral philosophy, and in moral particularism

Abstract:The more obvious forms of corruption are often preceded and explained by the etiolation of a practice: as its participants lose track of the point of their activities, their moral immune system is disabled. The argument is developed via a case study, philosophy itself. After advancing the hypothesis that philosophy is in the first instance the machine tool industry of the intellect—that its task is making the intellectual tools that make the intellectual tools—we consider what becomes of such an enterprise when this objective slips out of focus.

AbstractAggregation-friendly moral theories such as classical utilitarianism are forced to invest a great deal of ingenuity in damping out and modulating the effects of welfare aggregation. In Mill's treatment, the problem famously appears as the puzzle of how the Principle of Liberty is meant to be compatible with the Principle of Utility, and there have been a great many attempted interpretations of his solution, all, in my view, unsatisfactory. I will first reconstruct Mill's generally unnoticed account of the psychological implementation of higher pleasures; this will allow me to explain what the distinction between higher and lower pleasures was, and how Mill was introduced lexical preference orderings into his theory. Then I will show how the underlying psychological theory permits Mill to argue for the lexical priority of liberty over the goods which liberty allows us to obtain. Finally, I will turn to the Millian considerations omitted from the argument I will have reconstructed. By way of explaining why they are so difficult to accommodate, I will consider why Mill might have abandoned his projected sciences of character. I will take my leave by asking what Mill's failure to turn his implementation analysis of the higher pleasures into an argument expressing the importance of individuality and originality means for us.