Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche on doing wrong for its own sake

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21335481
AutoresIan D Dunkle (0000-0003-3548-1433, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, autor correspondente)
Ano2026
Volume69
Fascículo3
Páginas1311-1337
Data de publicação2026-03-16
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInquiry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0020174x.2025.2591738
OpenAlexW4416591830
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas13

What does it mean to do wrong for its own sake, and is this even possible? I call this the puzzle of malice, and in this paper I review a historical dialectic that plays out between Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche on how to address it. By reviewing each author’s account of malice, and their criticism of their respective predecessor, I reach several surprising findings: First, that Nietzsche has a positive account of malice (albeit one on which it isn’t always a vice); second, that recent attempts to defend Schopenhauer’s account of malice fail; third, that Nietzsche’s account bears more resemblance to Kant’s than to Schopenhauer’s; and fourth that Nietzsche’s broad account of malice sheds light on moral phenomena left out of more conventional approaches (e.g. willful defiance of the sacred)

Argument (complex analysis) · Perspective (graphical) · Subject (documents) · Work (physics) · Education, Literature, Philosophy Research · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Philosophical Ethics and Theory