The Will That Gives the Law

Two philosophers, a century apart, place the same astonishing power at the center of human life: the power to be a law unto oneself. Immanuel Kant calls it autonomy, the will legislating the moral law for itself. Friedrich Nietzsche calls it self-overcoming, the creation of new values after the death of God. Paul Guyer reads the first in his Rebind commentary on Kant, Clancy Martin the second in his commentary on Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and set side by side their readings reveal two thinkers who agree on the most radical point, that the human being is a lawgiver, and disagree, completely, about what kind of law gets given.