setting one's own rules does have a basis in Western philosophy

I want to discuss a quote from AClockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.

In the book (which became a controversial movie written, produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick) the story is narrated by Alex, a teenager who leads a gang and is basically living the male fantasy life. He has the respect of his peers, he gets money from stealing, he gets sex and he has the time to pursue his passion for music.

This is what Alex tells the readers after Alex's “Post-Corrective Adviser” P. R. Deltoid has left.

But when he’d ookadeeted and I was making this very strong pot of chai, I grinned to myself over this veshch that P. R. Deltoid and his droogs worried about. All right, I do bad, what with crasting and tolchocks and carves with the britva and the old in-out-in-out, and if I get loveted, well, too bad for me, O my little brothers, and you can’t run a country with every chelloveck comporting himself in my manner of the night. So if I get loveted and it’s three months in this mesto and another six in that, and the, as P. R. Deltoid so kindly warns, next time, in spite of the great tenderness of my summers, brothers, it’s the great unearthly zoo itself, well, I say: “Fair, but a pity, my lords, because I just cannot bear to be shut in. My endeavour shall be, in such future as stretches out its snowy and lilywhite arms to me before the nozh overtakes or the blood spatters its final chorus in twisted metal and smashed glass on the highroad, to not get loveted again.” Which is fair speeching. But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don’t go into the cause of goodness, so why the other shop? If lewdies are good that’s because they like it, and I wouldn’t ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? I am serious with you, brothers, over this. But what I do I do because I like to do.

This speech captures a good amount of Western philosophy. Yes, the speech is in Nadsat, a fictional dialect. You can look up words in this glossary/dictionary.

The speech starts with Alex stating he is willing to take the consequences for his actions before he's experienced the consequences. When he experiences the consequences he finds them much more horrific than he could have imagined.

Alex then gives a nod to Rousseau's conception of the “general will”. He accepts society has a responsibility to make rules against his behavior.

Alex then plays off Nietzsche questioning good and evil and asserting the right to disregard arbitrary morality.

The existentialists and objectivists would acknowledge that Alex is who he is because of the choices he makes.

And finally Alex swings back to Rousseau by portraying himself as the natural man struggling with a society that constrains the individual. Nietzsche could be used to Alex aspiring to be his own kind of Ubermensch (superman).