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.tw Here I am indebted to the important insights of Philippa Foot.See her Virtues and Vices(Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 1 18.I am not, of course, committed to the details of her analysis,nor to the idea that all virtues should be understood in this way or that this is all there is to theunderstanding of virtue.x Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans.D.F.Swenson and W.Lowrie (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1941).y C.Swanton, Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), ch.8.p Camus, from The Fall, in R.Solomon (ed.), Existentialism (New York: Random House,1974), 189. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans.Justin O Brien (New York: VintageBooks, 1955), 58. From The Stranger, ed.Solomon, 177. From The Myth of Sisyphus, ed.Solomon, 183.t Ed.Solomon, 183. Can Nietzsche be Both an Existentialist and a Virtue Ethicist? 175Heidegger s discussion of being-towards-death also concerns the proper atti-tude to a fundamental problem of the human condition.If, in the contemplationof one s death, one immerses oneself in the they (das Man Heidegger s termfor the collectivity of which one is a member, under an aspect where individu-als are relatively undifferentiated) one also manifests a form of hyperobjectivevice indifferent tranquillity as to the fact that one dies.u The they doesnot permit us the courage of anxiety in the face of death but rather a constanttranquillization because one experiences dying as in no case is it I myself ,and death belongs to nobody in particular. Fleeing in this way needs to bereplaced by the courage of anxiety , which is distinguished from its pervertedform, cowardly fear.v The courage of anxiety is occasioned by the realizationthat our being is essentially one for which we have a concern.To flee from thisconcern is to have the wrong perspective on our nature: it is to think of ourselveswrongly as beings which simply occur.Heidegger s discussion thus highlights animportant virtue intellectual and moral courage.Sartre s emphasis on freedom and personal responsibility for choice alsohighlights the virtues of moral courage and integrity.In his famous discussion ofthe waiter, Sartre illustrates the latter virtue.The discussion does not advocate alack of commitment to being in a role: on the contrary, the authentic waiter ofintegrity is one who does not see the role as a game in which one plays at beinga waiter.One should not see one s job through the eyes merely of convention, orceremony, which are demanded by, as Heidegger would put it, das Man.Thereis nothing wrong with fulfilling the function of a waiter, but there is somethingwrong with doing so mechanically, for then one infects one s being a waiterwith nothingness , in the way that a pupil who exhausts himself in playing theattentive role w ends up by no longer hearing anything.x As Sartre puts it, Iwould then be a waiter in the mode of being what I am not.y Sartre is notadvocating a light-minded or irresponsible desertion of others or dereliction ofrole duties.Suddenly abandoning one s employer on the grounds of existentialinsight is not a mark of courage or integrity, but is narcissistic.Integrity, then, is the expression of practical choice as opposed to a driftinginto modes of behaviour and comportment which deny, or are an escape from,self.Like Aristotle s practical wisdom, integrity is the precondition or core ofvirtue, though not necessarily the whole of virtue.pu From Being and Time, ed.Solomon, 111.v Ibid.116.This position changed, according to Julian Young, in the later Heidegger (See hisHeidegger s Later Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2002).)w From Being and Nothingness, ed.Solomon, 214.x Ibid.y Ibid.p For an advocate of this view, see Robert C.Solomon, Corporate Roles, Personal Virtues:An Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics , in Daniel Statman (ed.), Virtue Ethics: A CriticalReader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 205 26.Solomon claims that integrity isthe linchpin of all the virtues (215). 176 Christine SwantonI have argued that existentialism focuses on traits which are necessary to leada good life.Central to the goodness of a life is that it is not, in one way oranother, a fleeing from self
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