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This paper attributes to Nietzsche a theory of cultural development according to which pyramid societies—steeply hierarchical societies following a unified morality—systematically alternate with motley societies, which emerge when pyramid societies encounter other cultures or allow their strict mores to relax. Motley societies contain multiple value systems due to individual innovation or intercultural contact, and are less stringent in dictating individuals' roles. Consequently, many people are torn between incompatible values and lack direction, so they are drawn to a morality of mediocrity, which offers the modest goals of comfort and conformity. However, the need to mediate between conflicting values also tends to yield exceptional individuals who create new values, and can reshape the society into a new pyramid society governed by those values. I argue that Nietzsche favors neither type of society at the expense of the other, but believes the alternation itself is valuable: a pyramid society develops a value system to its full potential; then, when it encounters alternative values, the extraordinary individuals in the resulting motley society synthesize the competing systems into a fuller vision of human flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With regard to the sociality of agency and the role that second‐person address plays, I propose to contrast and develop (1) a Fichtean‐Darwallian account that seems to tie agency to mutual recognition but tacitly presupposes a more fundamental agency independent of it that enables us to enter the circle of recognition. (2) A Brandomian account that although initially proposing a more robustly social account of agency, ultimately remains entrapped in a game of mirrors. (3) Hegel's own approach recasts the issue by giving up the idea that the sociality of agency can be understood in terms of what I call a game of recognitional tag. Instead, we are inhabiting a practice that involves a social struggle about the very form of this practice, and it is this that Hegel has termed a "struggle for recognition." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]