Reimagining free will and moral responsibility: Nietzsche’s practical approach

Most scholars engage in the free will and moral responsibility debate by examining its relationship with determinism. However, this debate remains trapped in conceptual analysis, showing no sign of resolution. Inspired by Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment" (1962), I argue that Nietzsche offers a method to move beyond the compatibilism/incompatibilism dualism by analysing the development of conscience in response to moral expectations and punishment. In this account, conscience and guilt are corresponding attitudes to moral expectations and to be a free agent is a matter of competence, which hinges on one's ability to assume responsibility for oneself. I first focus on moral responsibility, suggesting that Nietzsche sees morality as a natural phenomenon evolving alongside moral practices. Through an analysis of its evolution, I argue that Nietzsche does not reject moral responsibility but instead advocates for a version promoting health, rooted in individuals' strong will to create values and hold themselves responsible based on pride and confidence in their ability to rectify misdeeds. To develop a positive account of Nietzschean free will, I claim that he explicitly defines free will as "the will to self-responsibility" (TI, Skirmishes, 39), a form of strong will. The elements shaping conscience and value creation—autonomy and amor fati—constitute Nietzsche's positive interpretation of free will. To support this, I analyse the origins of "freedom" and "the will" and examine how Nietzsche builds on Stoic ideas of fate and free will by emphasising the active embracing of suffering as essential to autonomy. Nietzsche's practical understanding of free will as a strong will in the practice of amor fati—one that actively creates its own values amid the constraints of existence—challenges traditional notions of free will and offers a new approach to the determinism-free will/moral responsibility debate. This also has the potential to free contemporary debates from endless conceptual analysis.