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Many view Nietzsche as the ultimate moral sceptic, and it is for this reason that the ability of the PGC to overcome the Nietzschean position will be addressed. His position begins from a subjective characterisation of the good, in which he argues that the concept of ‘value’ is only good insofar as it allows us to preserve a certain type of life.87 By extension, something can only be of moral value if it helps the agent preserve a certain type of life that they see as valuable: ‘[A person’s] morality which provides decidedly and decisively who he is – that is, in what hierarchy the innermost drives of his nature are arranged.’88 Morality is thus necessarily reflective of a person’s subjective priorities arising from their own lived experiences, meaning moral norms are themselves subjective insofar as they are dependent on the value preferences of the agent. Thus, an agent only has reason to accept a moral principle if to do so would further their own subjective interests.89 This subjective position appears incompatible with the claim that the PGC serves as a test for the moral permissibility of all action, regardless of the preferences of the individual agent. This section will argue that this need not be the case, and that the PGC is actually compatible with Nietzsche’s characterisation of the bindingness of moral obligations. This becomes apparent when one accepts that Nietzsche is best regarded as an ethical naturalist; he holds that moral principles can be identified if they are correlated to pre-ethical facts of those who espouse them.90 The PGC does precisely this by correlating its requirements to facts that are pre-ethical for all agents: the very fact of their agency itself, and the pragmatic value they must place on their GCAs to undertake any action whatsoever. By thus identifying a pre-ethical fact that is necessarily valuable for all agents regardless of their subjective preferences Gewirth has shown that the PGC’s requirements should be accepted by all agents, as only by doing so can an agent ensure that they are able to further their own subjective interests.

On Nietzsche’s own terms, then, it can legitimately claim moral authority over all agents and can be used to suppress non-compliant actions.91 It can also do so whilst maintaining Nietzsche’s commitment to value pluralism. It is perfectly acceptable for collective moral claims to be made by a society or an individual, provided these requirements are themselves compatible with the PGC. Its requirements are not a ceiling, but a floor – and any and all action is permissible provided it does not fall below the requirements of this critical test for moral permissibility. Nietzsche’s conception of value pluralism does not, therefore, damage the validity of the PGC. Nietzsche would likely object to this suggestion given that he downplays the possibility of identifying moral norms through use of practical reason, characterising it as ‘a scheme that we cannot throw off’ that places excessive importance on impersonal, formalistic principles that are not reflective of real-world moral deliberation.92 This can be rejected for two reasons. Firstly, the claim belies the fact that Nietzsche is conflating collective and critical moral claims and is thus directed against a straw-man characterisation of the claim being made by the PGC. Pluralism is possible, provided it does not directly undermine the agent’s dialectically necessary interests – something that Nietzsche ought to accept. Secondly, the claim highlights a logical paradox in Nietzsche’s own project. If

Nietzsche rejects reliance on formal principles of rationality and logic as being essentially interpretive and incapable of grounding truth claims, then we have no reason to accept his conclusions on his own terms. For we can presume that in writing his thesis, Nietzsche was concerned with discerning and communicating concepts that he believed to be true; were this not the case, then he would not have put pen to paper as his attempt would have been dismissible as merely subjective belief. The very fact that Nietzsche wrote his claims down is an exercise that relies on rational justification in order to advance a truth claim.93 Thus, if Nietzsche’s claim that rationality is merely one of many possible interpretations possessing no independent value, then this very claim can itself be dismissed as either paradoxical or void. A Nietzschean objection to the PGC necessarily fails.