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On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic (translation of Zur Genealogie der Moral: Eine Streitschrift, also translated On the Genealogy of Morality or Toward a Genealogy of Morals), is a polemic written by the 19th century German philosopher and philologist Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche in 1887.
The book was "meant to supplement and clarify" his previous work Beyond Good and Evil. It is primarily concerned with exploring the origins of morality, specifically, moral prejudice and Christian morality.
The preface begins with the famous line, "We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge—and with good reason."
The First Essay: "'Good and Evil', 'Good and Bad'"
Nietzsche reflects on this section in Ecce Homo. He writes,
The truth of the first inquiry is the birth of Christianity: the birth of Christianity out of the spirit of ressentiment, not, as people may believe, out of the "spirit" — a countermovement by its very nature, the great rebellion against the dominion of noble values." (trans. Walter Kaufmann, p 312)According to Nietzsche, morality comes from “the good themselves, that is to say the noble, mighty, highly placed and high-minded who decreed themselves and their actions to be good… in contradistinction to all that was base, low-minded and plebian.”
Important quotation - “political supremacy always gives rise to notions of spiritual supremacy.” (p. 160, 165)
In the first essay, Nietzsche examines the origin of the concepts of good and evil. He does this by contrasting the noble races ("master morality"), such as the Greeks and ancient Germans, from the priestly races ("slave morality"), namely Christianity and Judaism.
For the noble societies, good is defined in terms of a reflexive mentality, that is, a noble man asserts his own goodness on the basis of his own authority. "Bad" is defined as the opposite of the good. In contrast the priestly societies, out of ressentiment, "evil" is defined first, and good is defined as the opposite of the evil.
Ressentiment (French for envy), more specifically, is a feeling of envy that the priests had for the nobles. Out of this develops the spirit of Christianity, and the desire to see one's enemies punished. This culminates in the idea of a vengeful God, Hell, and of God's self-sacrifice through Jesus. (This is elaborated on in the second essay.) Out of this disdain for the current reality and a focus on the afterlife develops nihilism, which Nietzsche sees as the chief problem of the present day.
Nietzsche condemns the slave morality because its values are values of weakness, whereas the master morality has values of strength and power. Nevertheless, it is in the priestly existence, which he says is "essentially dangerous," that man acquires depth and becomes evil, and thus is interesting.
This essay also contains the first mention of the blond beast (blonde Bestie) one of Nietzsche's most notorious and abused concepts. According to Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann, the blondeness of the beast, contrary to the subsequent Nazi interpretation, does not refer to typical Nordic coloring, but merely the color of the philosopher's imagined beast. Nietzsche makes specific references to conduct of, "the Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, the Homeric heroes, the Scandinavian Vikings," of antiquity, and although he does briefly allude to the foregone European centuries terrorized by, "that raging of the blond Germanic beast," he immediately points out that, "between the old Germanic tribes and us Germans there exists hardly a conceptual relationship, let alone one of blood."
The Second Essay: "'Guilt', 'Bad Conscience', and Related Matters"
The second essay traces the roots of bad conscience and guilt. In Ecce Homo Nietzsche writes regarding this section:
The second inquiry offers the psychology of the conscience — which is not, as people may believe, 'the voice of God in man': it is the instinct of cruelty that turns back after it can no longer discharge itself externally. Cruelty is here exposed for the first time as one of the most ancient and basic substrata of culture that simply cannot be imagined away. (trans. Walter Kaufmann, p. 312
The essay begins with Nietzsche's assertion that forgetfulness is a form of robust health, "Positives Hemmungsvermogen" or positive repression. The man who has good memory, who makes promises and can firmly say "I will" burdens himself with responsibility. From this responsibility springs man's conscience and the petty societal views of morality that he then becomes trapped by.
"Bad Conscience" refers to man's desire for cruelty turned (sublimated) inwards. The concept of guilt (in German "Schuld") springs from the concept of debts ("Schulden"). Guilt then refers to primordial economic relations that are underwritten by cruelty (as a form of re-payment) and is an expression of the 'internalization' of this structure. Bad conscience then takes hold of the sadistic element of this structure in order to facilitate an extreme form of self harm in the form of Christianity. Guilt is thus a rationalization of desire for cruelty turned inward, [man's 'reason' for suffering is Guilt - original sin - Christ is the deification of this principle of self harm - God pays himself off with his own (Christs) suffering just as man pays himself off with his own suffering. Self punishment that comes from the "bad conscience" is used to relieve that guilt.
The Third Essay: "What do ascetic ideals mean?"
In Ecce Homo Nietzsche writes regarding this section,
The third inquiry offers the answer to the question whence the ascetic ideal, the priests' ideal, derives its tremendous power although it is the harmful ideal par excellence, a will to the end, an ideal of decadence. Answer: not, as people may believe, because God is at work behind the priests but faute de mieux something better-because it was the only ideal so far, because it had no rival. 'For man would rather will even nothingness than 'not will.'-Above all, a counterideal was lacking-until Zarathustra. (trans. Walter Kaufmann, p 312)Nietzsche begins by asking what ascetic ideals mean with reference to artists and their work. Using the opportunity to echo a leitmotif occurring throughout his work, he critiques Wagner, especially the work of his later career. Nietzsche concludes that an artist only echoes the ideology of great thinkers, in Wagner's case Schopenhauer, and thus moves directly to a critique of the meaning ascetic ideals in the mouths of Schopenhauer, Kant and Stendhal.
Nietzsche argues that Kant, the revered enlightenment philosopher, saw aesthetic value as something which, like knowledge, was dispassionate and impersonal. He compares this with Stendhal, who argues aesthetic value as something stirring which excites personal passion; for Stendhal the possibility of personal appreciation of art is the "promise of happiness" which underwrites the aesthetic worth of beautiful things.
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche argues, shares Stendhal's agent-relative analysis of aesthetic value, however, follows Kant in discerning an ascetic or Epicuran character to the appreciation of aesthetic value. Indeed, Nietzsche presents Schopenhauer's understanding of aesthetic value as a means of escape from torture. This metaphor of torture is expanded with reference to those temptations which Nietzsche takes to be the 'enemies' Schopenhauer, viz. sensuality, sexuality and Hegel.
Sexuality and temptation, Nietzsche argues, are impediments to the achievement of 'power' for the man of philosophical temperament. In the case of a philosopher, therefore, Nietzsche joins his precursors in the yarak philosophical tradition by interpreting ascetic ideals as "optimum conditions for the highest and boldest spirituality". This, however, is not a selfless act, as boldly spiritual experiences are tools of power for the philosopher. Thus Nietzsche argues philosophers advocate ascetic values as they benefit their own temperament, rather than for any dispassionate or impersonal reasons.
Therefore, the fact that ascetic ideals were advocated and followed by the likes of Kant, Descartes, Plato, Leibniz and Schopenhauer does not give us any moral 'knowledge' about the value of these ideals. Rather, what we should observe is that the worth of ascetic values to those of philosophical temperament, with reference to the idiosyncratic path to power which these sort of people choose. This perspective takes moral virtue as something irreducibly agent relative and dovetails with Nietzsche's robust defence of the notion of moral autonomy which extends throughout his work.
The asectic ideal becomes the last remnant of man's will when sumberged in the void of unjustifiable nothingness. Both the ascetic priest and the scientist contain in them a will to truth. This faith in the concept of truth is unjustified (whether it is justifiable is a different issue). Eventually, this will itself should 'overcome itself' to point out this unjustifiable faith in truth and present something in its place. The asecetic ideal becomes a bastion of man's will during its struggle with suffering and subsequent guilt brought on by a lack of justifiable meaning.
References
- On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Carol Diethe of Middlesex University''
- Nietzsche, Friedrich. On The Genealogy Of Morals and Ecce Homo''. ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
- Nietzsche, F. W. The Genealogy of Morals'' Doubleday Anchor Books: Gargen City, New York, 1956.
External links
1887 books | Books by Friedrich Nietzsche | Books critical of Christianity
"On the Genealogy of Morals"