Forthcoming in Nietzsche’s Engagements with Kant, Volume I: Ethics,

Kant and Hegel agree that normative claims are justified only if they are manifestations of freedom. Yet they develop this idea in strikingly different ways: Kant attempts to derive substantive ethical content from a formal notion of autonomy, whereas Hegel argues that this approach fails. I argue that Nietzsche develops a theory of normativity that incorporates aspects from both Kant and Hegel. Like Hegel, Nietzsche denies that Kant can derive any content from the notion of autonomy. However, Nietzsche departs from Hegel in arguing that one norm can be extracted from the bare idea of freedom, independently of any facts about the particular system of values, practices, and institutions that the individual inhabits. This norm is will to power. Its connection to freedom and its independence from extant social norms gives it a position outside of our current system of ethical judgments, making possible a radical critique of these judgments. Developing these points, I argue that Nietzsche develops a theory of normative authority that proceeds, in part, by reconciling the most compelling aspects of the Kantian and Hegelian accounts—aspects that have seemed, to many interpreters, to be incompatible. This results in a novel account of normative authority.