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In this essay I propose to examine the contribution the work of Jean-Marie Guyau (1854-88) makes to the articulation of a post-Kantian naturalized ethics. Although a neglected figure today, Guyau was read as making an important contribution to ethics in his own day by the diverse likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, Peter Kropotkin, William James and Josiah Royce. His major work on ethics was published in 1885 and is entitled in English Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction (Esquisse d'une morale sans obligation, ni sanction).1Prior to this work, Guyau had published studies of ancient and modern ethics, being especially concerned with Epictetus and Epicurus with regards to the ancients and with Darwin and Spencer with regards to the moderns. As one commentator notes, Guyau displays a novel and independent philosophical standpoint and in his work he presents a relentlessly honest criticism of fixed and dogmatic moralities, be they Kantian or utilitarian. 2The parallels with Nietzsche's project are especially striking, and I shall point out some affinities in what follows. For Nietzsche, conventional and prevailing moralities - what he calls the 'morality of decadence' that considers itself to be 'morality' as such - represent the denial of ascending and affirmative life. Nietzsche wishes, then, to espouse the healthy morality of an ethical naturalism grounded in the instincts of life and that seeks to overturn the core values, as well as moral psychology, of traditional Christian ethics. 3Guyau too embarks on a quest for a naturalistic ethics anchored in a philosophy of life that is built on the rejection of the divisive character of conventional morality and that rests on a dogmatic faith. However, Guyau's conception of life departs from the core assumptions of Nietzsche's thinking of life: whereas for Nietzsche the essence of life is will to power, for Guyau it is fecundity and amour, in which the most intensive life is also the most extensive. As one commentator notes, in contrast to Nietzsche's immoralism that of Guyau's stands to reinstate the key virtues of Christian morality.4It is no doubt for this reason that in spite of the affinity he felt with Guyau, Nietzsche ultimately regarded him as a...