Nietzsche as Optimistic Nutritionist

Reading Ecce Homo as a Practical Guide to a Spinozistic Ethics of Self‐Preservation

Bibliographic Data

ID20142080
AuthorsJohan Dahlbeck (0000-0003-1669-7132, Faculty of Education and Society Malmö University Malmö Sweden, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume91
Issue4
Publication date2025-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheoria (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0040-5825 • E-ISSN: 1755-2567
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/theo.70002
OpenAlexW4407670068
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited20

In his From Bondage to Freedom , Michael LeBuffe argues that Spinoza's theory of ethics hinges on a figure that he calls the optimistic nutritionist. LeBuffe sets up the optimistic nutritionist as a thought experiment useful for illustrating how Spinoza's ethical theory can be put into practice. While LeBuffe offers some illuminating examples intended to illustrate how the optimistic nutritionist would function as a pedagogical guide of sorts, the practical aspects of this figure remain vague and underdeveloped. In this paper, the aim is to read Nietzsche's controversial autobiography Ecce Homo as an exemplification of how the optimistic nutritionist might be conceived in situ, in terms of a person applying a systematic form of selectivity to different things so as to determine whether or not they are useful for furthering their self‐preservation and empowerment. This amounts to a practical guide to a form of Spinozistic ethics, where Nietzsche's optimistic nutritionist functions by setting up concrete guidelines for the selectivity of useful things, without succumbing to the hazards of moral universalism and abstract perfectionism

Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Linguistics · Nutritionist · Reading (process) · Sociology · Medicine · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Psychology · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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