Two of history’s most influential philosophers separated by nearly two millennia offer radically different answers to one of humanity’s most enduring questions: What does it mean to live excellently?
Aristotle, the systematic Greek thinker who tutored Alexander the Great, championed a balanced, socially integrated path to human flourishing. Friedrich Nietzsche, the iconoclastic German philologist writing in the shadow of modernity’s upheavals, called for the creation of new values and the transcendence of conventional morality. Their competing visions continue to shape how we think about success, virtue, and the good life today.
Aristotle’s Vision: Excellence as Harmony
For Aristotle, excellence—what he called arete—meant the full realization of human potential through rational activity in accordance with virtue. Writing in the 4th century BCE, Aristotle approached ethics like a biologist studying natural phenomena. He believed that just as an excellent knife cuts well and an excellent horse runs swiftly, an excellent human being actualizes distinctively human capacities.
At the heart of Aristotle’s ethical framework lies the concept of eudaimonia, often translated as happiness or flourishing. But this isn’t the fleeting pleasure of a good meal or the temporary thrill of victory. Eudaimonia represents a complete life well-lived, characterized by the sustained exercise of reason and virtue. It’s the satisfaction that comes from knowing you’ve become the best version of yourself possible.
Aristotle identified two categories of virtue essential to achieving this flourishing. Intellectual virtues like wisdom and practical judgment develop through education and experience. Moral virtues like courage, temperance, and justice emerge through habit and practice. His famous doctrine of the mean positioned virtue as a balance between extremes—courage stands between cowardice and recklessness, generosity between stinginess and wastefulness.
Crucially, Aristotle saw human beings as inherently social creatures. We cannot flourish in isolation. Excellence requires participation in a well-ordered community where we can develop friendships, exercise civic responsibilities, and engage in the shared project of the good life. The excellent person contributes to their community while the community provides the framework for individual development. Virtue and social harmony reinforce each other in a mutually beneficial cycle.
This vision offers clear advantages. It’s democratic in spirit, suggesting that excellence is available to anyone willing to cultivate good habits and exercise reason. It’s stable and sustainable, built on moderation rather than extremes. It integrates the individual with society rather than setting them in opposition. The excellent Aristotelian citizen is reliable, balanced, and socially valuable—someone you’d want as a neighbor, friend, or colleague.
Nietzsche’s Vision: Excellence as Self-Overcoming
Friedrich Nietzsche approached the question of excellence from a fundamentally different starting point. Writing in the late 19th century, Nietzsche diagnosed European culture as suffering from a crisis of meaning. The death of God—by which he meant the collapse of traditional religious and metaphysical certainties—had left a void. Most people responded with nihilism or by clinging to hollow conventions. Nietzsche saw this as humanity’s greatest danger and greatest opportunity.
For Nietzsche, genuine excellence required radical individuality and continuous self-overcoming. His ideal, the Übermensch represents not a fixed state of perfection but an ongoing project of creating values and transcending limitations. Excellence means becoming who you truly are rather than conforming to society’s expectations or ancient philosophical systems.
Nietzsche rejected the Aristotelian emphasis on moderation and social integration as life-denying mediocrity. The doctrine of the mean, in his view, encouraged conformity and suppressed exceptional individuals. True excellence requires extremes—passionate engagement, risk-taking, creative destruction of old values, and the courage to stand alone. The excellent individual doesn’t balance competing virtues but pours themselves fully into their unique vision and capacities.
Central to Nietzsche’s ethics is the concept of “will to power“—not primarily power over others, but the drive to overcome obstacles, master oneself, and create meaning. Excellence manifests in artistic creation, intellectual innovation, physical vitality, and the courage to live according to self-chosen values rather than inherited moral codes. Nietzsche celebrated figures like Goethe and Napoleon who shaped reality according to their own vision rather than accepting prescribed roles.
Nietzsche distinguished between “master morality” and “slave morality.” Master morality, associated with ancient aristocratic cultures, defined good as noble, powerful, and life-affirming. Slave morality, which Nietzsche traced to religious and democratic movements, defined good as useful, harmless, and equal. He argued that modern morality, systematically suppressed excellence by elevating weakness, humility, and equality while demonizing strength, pride, and hierarchy.
This vision appeals to anyone who feels stifled by convention or convinced they have unique potential the world fails to recognize. It celebrates creativity, authenticity, and the courage to forge your own path. It suggests that excellence isn’t about fitting in but about standing out—that the truly excellent individual necessarily exists in tension with society.
The Fundamental Divide
The contrast between these visions reveals different assumptions about human nature, society, and the structure of reality itself.
Aristotle operated within a framework where everything has a natural purpose or end goal. Humans have an essential nature, and excellence means fulfilling that nature. Morality isn’t arbitrary or conventional but rooted in objective features of reality. The virtues represent real excellences that any rational person should recognize.
Nietzsche rejected this entire framework as comforting fiction. For him, there is no fixed human essence, no objective moral truths. We exist in a world without inherent meaning, and excellence consists in creating meaning through acts of will. Morality is always someone’s morality—a set of values serving particular interests and power dynamics.
This leads to divergent views on the relationship between individual and community. Aristotle saw individual excellence and social harmony as complementary. The community provides the context for individual development while excellent individuals strengthen the community. Virtue ethics naturally supports civic engagement and social responsibility.
Nietzsche saw society as fundamentally hostile to genuine excellence. Communities enforce conformity, punish deviation, and promote the interests of the mediocre majority over exceptional individuals. The truly excellent person must break free from social conditioning and have the courage to stand alone. Social harmony often means the suppression of greatness.
Testing the Visions
Which vision better captures what excellence means? Several criteria might help us evaluate them.
Practical livability favors Aristotle. His ethical framework provides clear guidance for daily life—cultivate good habits, practice moderation, develop friendships, contribute to your community. It’s sustainable over a lifetime and compatible with ordinary human relationships and social institutions. Nietzsche’s vision, while inspiring, offers less practical guidance. How exactly does one overcome oneself? What does it mean to create values? The Übermensch remains an inspiring but vague ideal that few could actualize and even fewer could sustain throughout a complete life.
Psychological realism presents a more mixed picture. Aristotle’s emphasis on habit formation and gradual character development aligns well with what psychology tells us about how people actually change. But his assumption that humans naturally seek rational harmony may underestimate the role of unconscious drives. Nietzsche’s faith in self-overcoming may overestimate human capacities for radical transformation.
Social implications reveal deep tensions. Aristotle’s framework naturally supports stable, cooperative communities where people work together toward shared goals. It encourages civic virtue and social cohesion. However, it can also justify conformity and the suppression of genuine difference. When society defines excellence, those who don’t fit conventional molds, they suffer.
Nietzsche’s individualism celebrates innovation and authenticity but struggles with social cooperation. If everyone pursues their own vision of excellence without regard for shared values, how do we build functional communities? Nietzsche’s celebration of hierarchy and inequality makes many modern readers uncomfortable, though his defenders argue he opposed political domination while supporting cultural and intellectual excellence.
Moral depth might favor Nietzsche in one sense and Aristotle in another. Nietzsche’s willingness to question all inherited values and his genealogical critique of morality display philosophical courage and depth. He forces us to confront difficult questions about the origins and justifications of our moral beliefs. Yet Aristotle’s careful attention to the complexity of moral life, and his integration of reason and emotion offer a different kind of depth—one that emerges from sustained practical wisdom rather than radical questioning.
A Synthesis?
Must we choose between these visions, or might they complement each other?
The excellent life might involve cultivating the classical virtues—courage, temperance, justice, practical wisdom—as a foundation while remaining open to questioning inherited values and creating new possibilities. We need Aristotelian stability and social integration to function in the world, but also Nietzschean courage to break free from stifling conventions when necessary.
Consider scientific pioneers who master their fields through Aristotelian discipline but achieve breakthroughs through Nietzschean audacity in challenging established paradigms. Or social reformers who draw on traditional moral language about justice and equality (Aristotelian) while creating new visions of human possibility (Nietzschean).
So whose vision of excellence wins? The answer depends on what we value and what challenges we face.
If you seek a livable ethical framework that provides practical guidance, and offers a realistic path to flourishing, Aristotle offers the more complete and satisfying vision. His ethics have endured for over two millennia because they capture something essential about human social life and the development of character. The Aristotelian excellent person—balanced, virtuous, socially engaged—remains an attractive and achievable ideal.
If you seek to maximize human potential, create new possibilities, and resist the deadening effects of conformity, Nietzsche provides the more challenging and transformative vision. In times of cultural transition or personal crisis, when old answers no longer satisfy, Nietzsche’s call to create your own values and overcome yourself offers a path forward. The Nietzschean excellent person—creative, courageous, authentic—represents aspirations that Aristotelian virtue ethics cannot fully capture.
Perhaps the deepest insight is that excellence itself has no single definition. Aristotle was right that humans flourish through the exercise of reason and virtue in community. Nietzsche was right that greatness requires the courage to transcend conventions and create new values. The truly excellent life might require knowing when to embrace each wisdom. In the end, both philosophers agree on one crucial point: excellence requires effort, discipline, and the courage to become more than you are.
