On the Genealogy of Morality
Encyclopedia
On the Genealogy of Morality, or On the Genealogy of Morals (German: Zur Genealogie der Moral), subtitled "A Polemic
Polemic
A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...

" (Eine Streitschrift), is a work by German
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

, composed and first published in 1887 with the intention of expanding and following through on certain new doctrines sketched out in his previous work Beyond Good and Evil
Beyond Good and Evil
Beyond Good and Evil is a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1886.It takes up and expands on the ideas of his previous work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but approached from a more critical, polemical direction....

. The most straightforward of Nietzsche's books and the least aphoristic in form and style, it is considered by Nietzsche scholars to be a work of sustained brilliance and power, and Nietzsche's masterpiece.

It consists of a preface and three interrelated Abhandlungen ("treatises" or "essays"), which trace episodes in the evolution of moral concepts with a view to undermining "moral prejudices", and specifically the morality of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

 and Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

.

Preface

The subject of Nietzsche's treatises are his thoughts "on the origin of our moral prejudices", thoughts a long time in the making and already given brief and imperfect expression in his Human, All Too Human
Human, All Too Human
Human, All Too Human , subtitled A Book for Free Spirits , is a book by 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, originally published in 1878...

(1878). Nietzsche attributes the desire to publish his "hypotheses" on the origins of morality to reading his friend Paul Rée
Paul Rée
Paul Ludwig Carl Heinrich Rée was a German author and philosopher, and friend of Friedrich Nietzsche.-Biography:...

's book The Origin of the Moral Sensations (1877) and finding the "genealogical hypotheses" offered there unsatisfactory.

Nietzsche has come to believe that "a critique of moral values" is in order, that "the value of these values themselves must be called into question". To this end it is necessary to provide an actual history of morality, rather than a hypothetical account in the style of Rée, whom Nietzsche refers to as an "English psychologist" (using the word "English" to designate a certain intellectual temperament rather than a nationality).

First Treatise: "'Good and Evil', 'Good and Bad'"

In the "First Treatise" Nietzsche is concerned to show that the valuations "good/evil" and "good/bad" have distinct origins and that the two senses of "good" are, in their origins, radically opposed in meaning. The noble mode of valuation calls what it itself stands for "good", that is, everything which is powerful and life-asserting. In the "good/evil" distinction, which is the product of what he calls "slave morality", what is called "evil" equates to what aristocratic morality calls "good". This valuation develops out of the ressentiment
Ressentiment
Ressentiment , in philosophy and psychology, is a particular form of resentment or hostility. It is the French word for "resentment" . Ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one's frustration...

of the weak in the face of the powerful, by whom they are oppressed and whom they envy.

Nietzsche indicts the "English psychologists" for lacking historical sense. They seek to do moral genealogy by explaining altruism in terms of the utility of altruistic actions, which is subsequently forgotten as such actions become the norm. But the judgment "good", according to Nietzsche, originates not with the beneficiaries of altruistic actions. Rather, the good themselves (the powerful) coined the term "good". Further, Nietzsche contends that it is psychologically absurd to suggest that altruism derives from a utility which is forgotten: if it is useful, what is the incentive to forget it? Rather such a value-judgment gains currency by being increasingly burned into the consciousness.

From the aristocratic mode of valuation another mode of valuation branches off which develops into its opposite: the priestly mode of valuation. Nietzsche suggests this process is encouraged through a confrontation between the priestly caste and the warrior caste. The priests, and all those who feel disenfranchised and powerless in a situation of subjugation and physical impotence (i.e. slavery), develop a deep and venomous hatred of the powerful. This is the origin of what Nietzsche calls the "slave revolt in morality", which, according to him, begins with Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

 (§7), for it is the bridge which led to the slave revolt of Christian morality by the alienated, oppressed masses of the Roman Empire (a dominant theme in The Antichrist, written the following year).

Slave morality in feeling ressentiment does not seek redress for its grievances by taking revenge through action, as the noble would, but by setting up an imaginary revenge. It therefore needs enemies in order to sustain itself, unlike noble morality, which hardly takes enemies seriously and forgets about them instantly having dealt with them. The weak deceive themselves into thinking that the meek are blessed and will win everlasting life, thereby ultimately vanquishing the strong. They invent the term "evil" to apply to the strong, and that which proceeds from strength, which is precisely what is "good," according to the noble, aristocratic valuation. These latter call their inferiors "bad"—in the sense of "worthless" and "ill-born" (as in the Greek words κακος and δειλος)—not "evil."

It is in the First Treatise that Nietzsche introduces one of his most controversial images, the "blond beast". Nietzsche had previously employed this metaphor of the "blond beast" to represent the lion, an image that is central to his philosophy and which makes its first appearance in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885...

.

Nietzsche expressly insists that it is a mistake to hold beasts of prey to be "evil," for their actions stem from their inherent strength, rather than any malicious intent. One should not blame them for their "thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs" (§13). Similarly, it is also a mistake to resent the strong for their actions, because, according to Nietzsche, there is no metaphysical subject. Only the weak need the illusion of the subject (or soul) to hold their actions together as a unity. But they have no right "to make the bird of prey accountable for being a bird of prey."

Nietzsche concludes the First Treatise by considering that the two opposing valuations "good/bad" and "good/evil" have been locked in a tremendous struggle for thousands of years, a struggle that originated with the war between Rome (good/bad) and Judea (good/evil). What began with Judea was the triumph of ressentiment; its hold was broken for a moment by the Renaissance, but reasserted by the Reformation (which, in Nietzsche's view, restored the church), and refreshed again by the French Revolution (in which the "ressentiment instincts of the rabble" triumphed).

Second Treatise: "'Guilt', 'Bad Conscience', and the Like"

In the "Second Treatise" Nietzsche advances his thesis that the origin of the institution of punishment is in a straightforward (pre-moral) creditor/debtor relationship.

Man relies on the apparatus of forgetfulness which has been bred into him in order not to become bogged down in the past. This forgetfulness is, according to Nietzsche, an active "faculty of repression", not a mere inertia or absentmindedness. Man needs to develop an active faculty to work in opposition to this in order that promises can be made that are necessary for exercising control over the future: this is memory.

This control over the future allows a "morality of custom" to get off the ground. (Such a morality is to be sharply differentiated from Christian or other "ascetic" moralities.) The product of this morality, the autonomous individual, comes to see that he may inflict harm on those who break their promises to him. Punishment, then, is a transaction in which the injury to the autonomous individual is compensated for by the pain inflicted on the culprit. Such punishment is meted out without regard for moral considerations about the free will of the culprit, his accountability for his actions, and the like: it is simply an expression of anger. The creditor is compensated for the injury done by the pleasure he derives from the infliction of cruelty on the debtor. Hence the concept of guilt (Schuld) derives from the concept of debt (Schulden).

Nietzsche develops the "major point of historical methodology" that one must not equate the origin of a thing and its utility. The origin of punishment, for example, is in a procedure that predates punishment. Punishment has not just one purpose, but a whole range of "meanings" which "finally crystallizes into a kind of unity that is difficult to dissolve, difficult to analyze and [...] completely and utterly undefinable" (§13). The process by which the succession of different meanings is imposed is driven by the "will to power
Will to power
The will to power is widely seen as a prominent concept in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. The will to power describes what Nietzsche may have believed to be the main driving force in man; achievement, ambition, the striving to reach the highest possible position in life; these are all...

"—the basic instinct for domination underlying all human action. Nietzsche lists eleven different uses (or "meanings") of punishment, and suggests that there are many more. One utility it does not possess, however, is that of awakening remorse. The psychology of prisoners shows that punishment "makes hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of alienation" (§14).

The real explanation of bad conscience is quite different. A form of social organization, i.e. a "state," is imposed by "some pack of blond beasts of prey, a race of conquerors and lords." Such a race is able to do so even if those they subject to their power are vastly superior in numbers because these subjects are "still formless, still roaming about", while the conquerors are characterized by an "instinctive creating of forms, impressing of forms" (§17). Under such conditions the destructive, sadistic instincts of man, who is by nature a nomadic hunter, find themselves constricted and thwarted; they are therefore turned inward. Instead of roaming in the wilderness, man now turns himself into "an adventure, a place of torture". Bad conscience is thus man's instinct for freedom (his "will to power") "driven back, suppressed, imprisoned within" (§17).

Nietzsche accounts for the genesis of the concept "god" by considering what happens when a tribe becomes ever more powerful. In a tribe, the current generation always pays homage to its ancestors, offering sacrifices to them as a demonstration of gratitude to them. As the power of the tribe grows the need to offer thanks to the ancestors does not decline, but rather increases as it has ever more reason to pay homage to the ancestors and to fear them. At the maximum of fear, the ancestor is "necessarily transfigured into a god" (§19).

Nietzsche ends the Treatise with a positive suggestion for a counter-movement to the "conscience-vivisection and cruelty to the animal-self" imposed by the bad conscience: this is to "wed to bad conscience the unnatural inclinations", i.e. to use the self-destructive tendency encapsulated in bad conscience to attack the symptoms of sickness themselves. It is much too early for the kind of free spirit—a Zarathustra-figure—who could bring this about to emerge, although he will come one day: he will emerge only in a time of emboldening conflict, not in the "decaying, self-doubting present" (§24).

Third Treatise: "What do ascetic ideals mean?"

Nietzsche's purpose in the "Third Treatise" is "to bring to light, not what [the ascetic] ideal has done, but simply what it means; what it indicates; what lies hidden behind it, beneath it, in it; of what it is the provisional, indistinct expression, overlaid with question marks and misunderstandings" (§23).

As Nietzsche tells us in the Preface, the Third Treatise is a commentary on the aphorism prefixed to it. Textual studies have shown that this aphorism consists of §1 of the Treatise (not the epigraph to the Treatise, which is a quotation from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra).

This opening aphorism confronts us with the multiplicity of meanings that the ascetic ideal has for different groups: (a) artists, (b) philosophers, (c) women, (d) physiological casualties, (e) priests, and (f) saints. The ascetic ideal, we may thus surmise, means very little in itself, other than as a compensation for humanity's need to have some goal or other. As Nietzsche puts it, man "will rather will nothingness than not will".

(a) For the artist, the ascetic ideal means "nothing or too many things". Nietzsche confines his attention to the composer Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

. Artists, he concludes, always require some ideology to prop themselves up. Wagner, we are told, relied on Schopenhauer to provide this underpinning; therefore we should look to philosophers if we are to get closer to finding out what the ascetic ideal means.

(b) For the philosopher, it means a "sense and instinct for the most favorable conditions of higher spirituality," which he needs to satisfy his desire for independence. It was only in the guise of the ascetic priest that the philosopher was first able to make his appearance without attracting suspicion of his overweening will to power. As yet, every "true" philosopher has retained the trappings of the ascetic priest; his slogans have been "poverty, chastity, humility."

(e) For the priest, it is the "'supreme' license for power." He sets himself up as the "saviour" of (d) the physiologically deformed, offering them a cure for their exhaustion and listlessness (which is in reality only a therapy which does not tackle the roots of their suffering).

Nietzsche suggests a number of causes for widespread physiological inhibition: (i) the crossing of races; (ii) emigration of a race to an unsuitable environment (e.g. the Indians
Demographics of India
The demographics of India are inclusive of the second most populous country in the world, with over 1.21 billion people , more than a sixth of the world's population. Already containing 17.5% of the world's population, India is projected to be the world's most populous country by 2025, surpassing...

 to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

); (iii) the exhaustion of a race (e.g. Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

ian pessimism from 1850); (iv) bad diet (e.g. vegetarianism
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets , with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat...

); (v) diseases of various kinds, including malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...

 and syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...

 (e.g. German depression after the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....

) (§17).

The ascetic priest has a range of strategies for anesthetizing the continuous, low-level pain of the weak. Four of these are innocent in the sense that they do the patient no further harm: (1) a general deadening of the feeling of life; (2) mechanical activity; (3) "small joys", especially love of one's neighbour; (4) the awakening of the communal feeling of power. He further has a number of strategies which are guilty in the sense that they have the effect of making the sick sicker (although the priest applies them with a good conscience); they work by inducing an "orgy of feeling" (Gefühls-Ausschweifung). He does this by "altering the direction of ressentiment," i.e. telling the weak to look for the causes of their unhappiness in themselves (in "sin"), not in others. Such training in repentance is responsible, according to Nietzsche, for phenomena such as the St Vitus' and St John's dancers
Dancing mania
Dancing mania was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people, sometimes thousands at a time, who danced uncontrollably and bizarrely...

 of the Middle Ages, witch-hunt
Witch-hunt
A witch-hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials...

 hysteria
Hysteria
Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes unmanageable emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to an overwhelming fear that may be caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part, or,...

, somnambulism (of which there were eight epidemics between 1564 and 1605), and the delirium characterized by the widespread cry of evviva la morte! ("long live death!").

Given the extraordinary success of the ascetic ideal in imposing itself on our entire culture, what can we look to to oppose it? "Where is the counterpart to this closed system of will, goal, and interpretation?" (§23) Nietzsche considers as possible opponents of the ideal: (a) modern science; (b) modern historians; (c) "comedians of the ideal" (§27).

(a) Science is in fact the "most recent and noblest form" of the ascetic ideal. It has no faith in itself, and acts only as a means of self-anesthetization for sufferers (scientists) who do not want to admit that they are such. In its apparent opposition to the ascetic ideal, it has succeeded merely in demolishing the ideal's "outworks, sheathing, play of masks, [...] its temporary solidification, lignification, dogmatization" (§25). By succeeding in dismantling the claims to the theological importance of man, it has merely come to substitute the self-contempt of man as the ideal of science.

(b) Modern historians, in trying to hold up a mirror to ultimate reality, are not only ascetic but highly nihilistic. As deniers of teleology
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...

, their "last crowings" are "To what end?," "In vain!," "Nada!" (§26)

(c) An even worse kind of historian is what Nietzsche calls the "contemplatives": self-satisfied armchair hedonists who have arrogated to themselves the praise of contemplation (Nietzsche gives the example of Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan was a French expert of Middle East ancient languages and civilizations, philosopher and writer, devoted to his native province of Brittany...

). Europe is full of such "comedians of the Christian-moral ideal." In a sense, if anyone is inimical to the ideal it is they, because they at least "arouse mistrust" (§27).

The will to truth that is bred by the ascetic ideal has in its turn led to the spread of a truthfulness the pursuit of which has brought the will to truth itself in peril. What is thus now required, Nietzsche concludes, is a critique of the value of truth itself (§24).

Influence

On the Genealogy of Morality is considered by many academics to be Nietzsche's most important work, and, despite its polemical style, out of all of his works it perhaps comes closest to a systematic and sustained exposition of his ideas.

It is a matter of contention whether there is any such thing as a "genealogical method" as practised by Nietzsche, but there have been attempts, notably by Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

, to apply "genealogy" as a novel method of research in sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 (evinced principally in "histories" of sexuality and punishment).

Others have adapted "genealogy" in a looser sense to inform their work. An example is the attempt by the British philosopher Bernard Williams
Bernard Williams
Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams was an English moral philosopher, described by The Times as the most brilliant and most important British moral philosopher of his time. His publications include Problems of the Self , Moral Luck , Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy , and Truth and Truthfulness...

 to vindicate the value of truthfulness using lines of argument derived from genealogy in his book Truth and Truthfulness (2002).

Inspired by Nietzsche's On The Genealogy of Morality Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

 wrote Civilization and its Discontents
Civilization and Its Discontents
Civilization and Its Discontents is a book by Sigmund Freud. Written in 1929, and first published in German in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur , it is considered one of Freud's most important and widely read works....

.

Editions

  • Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Zur Genealogie der Moral, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2002.
  • On The Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, translated and edited by Walter Kaufmann (translation of On the Genealogy in collaboration with R. J. Hollingdale
    R. J. Hollingdale
    Reginald John Hollingdale was best known as a biographer and a translator of German philosophy and literature, especially the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, G. C. Lichtenberg, and Schopenhauer. Hollingdale was also elected president of The Friedrich Nietzsche Society in 1989...

    ), New York: Vintage, 1967; this version also included in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, New York: Modern Library, 2000, ISBN 0679724621.
  • On the Genealogy of Morality, translated by Carol Diethe and edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, ISBN 0521871239.
  • On the Genealogy of Morals, translated and edited by Douglas Smith, Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 1996, ISBN 019283617X.
  • On the Genealogy of Morality, translated and edited by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998, ISBN 0872202836.
  • The Genealogy of Morals, translated by Horace Barnett Samuel, New York: Courier Dover Publications, 2003, ISBN 0486426912.
  • The Birth of Tragedy & the Genealogy of Morals, translated by Francis Golffing, Anchor Books, 1956, ISBN 0-385-09210-5

External links

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