Nietzsche's Conception of Skepticism as Intellectual Virtue and Vice

Abstract Recent approaches are unable to make full sense of Nietzsche's distinction between weak and strong skepticism (BGE 208–209; A54). In this paper, I propose an alternative interpretation. My suggestion is that this distinction is best understood in the context of his virtue epistemology. My approach follows and extends Alfano's proposal to interpret Nietzsche as an inquiry responsibilist virtue epistemologist. However, I part ways with Alfano about the normative framework for Nietzsche's virtue epistemology. My contention is that Alfano's framework for Nietzschean virtue is unable to satisfactorily frame the distinction between strong and weak skepticism. In contrast, I offer an alternative framework that is better suited to interpreting Nietzsche's distinction and to articulating his conception of skepticism in terms of intellectual virtue and vice. I provide an account of Nietzsche's virtue/vice conception of skepticism that is currently lacking in the literature, and that is worthy of the attention of virtue epistemologists.