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THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS

Friedrich Nietzsche

Rochie Roasa

TVL Advance

11 – Pearl

Sir Luis Palay

October 14, 2016

 I. Introduction

The Genealogy of Morals is an 1887 book by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It

consists of a preface and three interrelated essays that expand and follow through on concepts

Nietzsche sketched out in Beyond Good and Evil (1886).  It is a book about interpretation and

the history of ethics which raises profoundly disquieting issues about the violence of both. This

is the most sustained of Nietzsche's later works and offers one of the fullest expressions of his

characteristic concerns. The introduction places his ideas within the cultural context of his own

time and stresses the relevance of his work for a contemporary audience.

II. Comprehensive Summary

a. Preface

Nietzsche's treatise outline his thoughts "on the origin of our moral prejudices"

previously given brief expression in his Human, All Too Human (1878). Nietzsche attributes

the desire to publish his "hypotheses" on the origins of morality to reading his friend Paul

Rée's book The Origin of the Moral Sensations (1877) and finding the "genealogical

hypotheses" offered there unsatisfactory.

Nietzsche decided that "a critique of moral values" was needed, that "the value of these

values themselves must be called into question". To this end Nietzsche provides a history of

morality, rather than a hypothetical account in the style of Rée, whom Nietzsche classifies as

an "English psychologist" (using "English" to designate an intellectual temperament, as

distinct from a nationality).

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

In the "First Treatise", Nietzsche demonstrates that the two opposite pairs "good/evil" and

"good/bad" have very different origins, and that the word "good" itself came to represent two
opposed meanings. In the "good/bad" distinction, "good" is synonymous with nobility and

everything which is powerful and life-asserting; in the "good/evil" distinction, which

Nietzsche calls "slave morality", the meaning of "good" is made the antithesis of the original

aristocratic "good", which itself is re-labeled "evil". This inversion of values develops out of

the ressentiment of the powerful by the weak.

Nietzsche rebukes 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 sees it as

psychologically absurd that altruism derives from a utility that is forgotten: if it is useful,

what is the incentive to forget it? Such meaningless value-judgment gains currency . . . by

expectations repeatedly shaping the consciousness.

From the aristocratic mode of valuation another mode of valuation branches off, which

develops into its opposite: the priestly mode. Nietzsche proposes that longstanding

confrontation between the priestly caste and the warrior caste fuels this splitting of meaning.

The priests and all those who feel disenfranchised and powerless in a situation of subjugation

and physical impotence (slavery), develop a deep and venomous hatred for the powerful.

Thus originates what Nietzsche calls the "slave revolt in morality", which, according to him,

begins with Judaism (§7), for it is the bridge that led to the slave revolt by Christian morality

of the alienated, oppressed masses of the Roman Empire (a dominant theme in The

Antichrist, written the following year).

 While it seems to the noble life that justice is immediate, real and good, necessarily

requiring enemies, to slave morality, through "ressentiment" and self-deception; that the

weak are the wronged meek, deprived of the power to act with immediacy. For the meek,

justice is a deferred event, an imagined revenge which will eventually win everlasting life for

the weak and vanquish the strong. This imaginary "good" (the delusion of the weak) replaces

the aristocratic "good" (the strong decide) which in turn is rebranded "evil", to replace "bad",

which to the noble meant "worthless" and "ill-born."

In the First Treatise, Nietzsche introduces one of his most controversial images, the

"blond beast". He had previously employed this expression to represent the lion, an image

that is central to his philosophy and made its first appearance in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Nietzsche expressly insists 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 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 his First Treatise by hypothesizing a tremendous historical struggle

between the Roman dualism of "good/bad" and that of the Judaic "good/evil", with the latter

eventually achieving a victory for ressentiment, broken temporarily by the Renaissance, but

then reasserted by the Reformation, and finally confirmed by the French Revolution when the

"ressentiment instincts of the rabble" triumphed.

 The First Treatise concludes with a brief section (§17) stating his own allegiance to the

good/bad system of evaluation, followed by a note calling for further examination of the

history of moral concepts and the hierarchy of values.

c. Second Treatise: "'Guilt', 'Bad Conscience', and Related Matters"

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 mere inertia or absentmindedness. Man needs to develop

an active faculty to work in opposition to this, so promises necessary for exercising control

over the future can be made : this is memory.

This control over the future allows a "morality of custom" to establish. (Such morality is

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"—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 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 pays homage to

its ancestors, offering sacrifices as a demonstration of gratitude. 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,

although he will come one day: he will emerge only in a time of emboldening conflict, not in

the "decaying, self-doubting present" (§24).

d. 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 selects

the composer Richard Wagner as example. 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 is to satisfy his desire for independence. It is only in the guise

of the ascetic priest that the philosopher is 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, its meaning 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 to

India); (iii) the exhaustion of a race (e.g. Parisian pessimism from 1850); (iv) bad diet

(e.g. vegetarianism); (v) diseases of various kinds, including malaria and syphilis (e.g.

German depression after the Thirty Years' War) (§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 neighbor; (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 of the Middle

Ages, witch-hunt hysteria, 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 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 they suffer. In apparent opposition to the ascetic ideal, science has

succeeded merely in demolishing the ideal's "outworks, sheathing, play of masks, its

temporary solidification, lignification, dogmatization" (§25). By dismantling church claims

to the theological importance of man, scientists substitute their self-contempt [cynicism] 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, 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 Ernest Renan as an example). 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).

III. Review of the Content

a. Impression of the Book

More people have been influence by this text then would care to admit it.

Communists to Christians, psychologists to artists, etc.. And it is with good reason.

Nietzsche comes to the shocking conclusion that man is sick, his sickness self hatred and

its symptom the ascetic life style. But this is no negative text. In fact, he is looking for an

immensely human response to the problem, a response that celebrates our nature. The

distinction between slave and master moralities is fascinating as is his insistence that only

the masters are sovereign. Here the motion toward healthy living is shown in contrast to

the many forms of decadence that have manifested themselves in the Western World

since Plato and Christ's early followers. It is the kind of book capable of making you
 question the most fundamental assumptions of why we believe in the morality we hold so

dear to us and presume to be true.

b. Analysis

Nietzsche is difficult to read because he demands that we overturn or suspend

many of the assumptions that our very reasoning relies upon. He is one of the Western

tradition's deepest thinkers precisely because he calls so much into question. If we can

come to understand Nietzsche's genealogical method, his doctrine of the will to power,

and his perspectivism as all linked, his arguments will become much easier to follow.

In Nietzsche's distinction between a thing and its meaning, we find the initial

doubt with which Nietzsche unravels so many of our assumptions. We are generally

tempted to see things as having inherent meanings. For instance, punishment is at once

the act of punishing and the reason behind the punishment. However, Nietzsche argues,

these things have had different meanings at different times. For instance, the act of

punishment has been at times a celebration of one's power, at times an act of cruelty, at

times a simple tit-for-tat. We cannot understand a thing, and we certainly cannot

understand its origin, if we assume that it has always held the same meaning.

Central to Nietzsche's critique, then, is an attempt at genealogy that will show the

winding and undirected route our different moral concepts have taken to arrive in their

present shape. Morality is generally treated as sacred because we assume that there is

some transcendental ground for our morals, be it God, reason, tradition, or something

else. Yet contrary to our assumption that "good," "bad," or "evil" have always had the

same meanings, Nietzsche's genealogical method shows how these terms have evolved,

shattering any illusion as to the continuity or absolute truth of our present moral concepts.
 Because they can have different, even contradictory, meanings over the course of

their long life spans, Nietzsche does not believe that concepts or things are the

fundamental stuff that makes up reality. Instead, he looks beneath these things to see

what drives the different meanings that they adopt over time. Hiding beneath he finds

force and will. All of existence, Nietzsche asserts, is a struggle between different wills for

the feeling of power. This "will to power" is most evident on a human level, where we

see people constantly competing with one another, often for no other purpose than to feel

superior to those that they overcome.

That a thing has a meaning at all means that there is some will dominating it,

bending it toward a certain interpretation. That a thing may have different meanings over

time suggests that different wills have come to dominate it. For instance, the concept of

"good" was once dominated by the will of healthy, strong barbarians, and had the

opposite meaning that it does now that it is dominated by the will of weak, "sick"

ascetics.

According to Nietzsche, then, a belief in an absolute truth or an absolute anything

is to give in to one particular meaning, one particular interpretation of a thing. It is

essentially to allow oneself to be dominated by a particular will. A will that wishes to

remain free will shun absolutes of all kinds and try to look at a matter from as many

different perspectives as possible in order to gain its own. This doctrine that has deeply

influenced postmodern thought is called "perspectivism."

Nietzsche's inquiries are thus conducted in a very irreverent spirit. Nothing is

sacred, nothing is absolute, nothing, we might even say, is true. Our morality is not a set

of duties passed down from God but an arbitrary code that has evolved as randomly as
 the human species itself. The only constant is that we, and everything else, are constantly

striving for more power, and the only constant virtue is a will that is powerful, and free

from bad conscience, hatred, and ressentiment.

Nietzsche's main project in the Genealogy is to question the value of our morality.

Ultimately, he argues that our present morality is born out of a resentment and hatred that

was felt toward anything that was powerful, strong, or healthy. As such, he sees our

present morality as harmful to the future health and prosperity of our species. While the

"blonde beasts" and barbarians of primitive master morality are animalistic brutes, at least

they are strong and healthy. On the other hand, our present ascetic morality has

"deepened" us by turning our aggressive instincts inward and seeing ourselves as a new

wilderness to struggle against. Nietzsche's ideal is to maintain this depth and yet not be

ashamed of our animal instincts or of the life that glows within us.

c. Style

This is a complex, often confusing, yet a very important book, because it gets at the

bottom line of one of the thorniest conundrums ever to face man: The problem of where

his morals originate. Although several books have readdressed this issue in light of new

findings in psychology (Freud in his Civilization and its discontents), social psychology

(Robert Wright's Moral Man), and Anthropology (Ernest Becker, Angel in Armor), none

have done so with either the emotional intensity or philosophical depth as has Nietzsche.

d. Generalization

Nietzsche's writing is dense and not for the faint-hearted, but ultimately rewarding.