Abstract

Nietzsche endorses the ancient conception of philosophy as a way of life insofar as he aims at supporting and promoting the development of individuality. In this aspiration he links up with the movement of American Transcendentalism. Its members indeed refused abstract speculation and rather focused on the reform of interiority and, on a larger scale, society as a whole. Nietzsche exposes his moral proposal through the characters of the educator Schopenhauer, protagonist of the third Untimely Meditation, of the free spirit as the wayfarer, protagonist of the works of the middle period, and, finally, of Zarathustra. Each of these characters illustrate different nuances of self-reliance, the cardinal virtue of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ethics. Importantly, these virtues are just formal ones, i.e. purely instrumental virtues, which simply allow everyone to express their individual talents or true virtues, i.e. their unique individuality.