Nietzsche and interpersonal communication: The significance of self-knowledge in interpersonal justice

This article argues that Friedrich Nietzsche offers a generative contribution to communication ethics through his conception of self-knowledge as a rhetorical and symbolic practice. Drawing especially on The Gay Science and On the Genealogy of Morality , the article interprets Nietzsche’s aesthetic ideal not as moral relativism, but as an ethical demand to become the kind of self who can relate justly. In contrast to rationalist or rule-based ethics, Nietzsche offers a model of intrapersonal justice grounded in coherence, stylistic integrity and symbolic self-formation. The article places Nietzsche in dialogue with communication ethics scholars, rhetorical theorists and the continental tradition, developing a view of justice as responsive presence rather than prescriptive conformity. By doing this, it advances an existential-ethical account of communication as the space where the self becomes answerable to the other. Nietzsche emerges not as an enemy of ethics, but as a thinker of moral formation whose insights deepen our understanding of rhetorical subjectivity and interpersonal responsibility.