Genealogy of Morals

Notes

From the Cambridge Texts Version

...can justifiably be regarded as one of the key texts of European intellectual modernity.

It is a deeply disturbing book that retains its capacity to shock and disconcert the modern reader. Nietzsche himself was well aware of the character of the book. There are moments in the text where he reveals his own sense of alarm at what he is discovering about human origins and development, especially the perverse nature of the human animal, the being he calls "the sick animal" (GM, III, 14). Although the Genealogy is one of the darkest books ever written, it is also, paradoxically, a book full of hope and anticipation.

Nietzsche finds that "all modern judgments about men and things" are smeared with an over-moralistic language; the characteristic featureof modern souls and modern books is to be found in their "moralistic mendaciousness" (GM, III,19).

Preface

In the Preface, Nietzsche makes clear the aim of the book: it is to answer the question quoted below. "Under what conditions did man construct the value judgments good and evil? And what is their intrinsic worth?" In this book Nietzsche questions the widely-held notions of good and evil, and pulls apart notions of "good". At the center of the book is the following thesis, also from the preface:

What if the "good" man represents not merely a retrogression but even a danger, a temptation, a narcotic drug enabling the present to live at the expense of the future? More comfortable, less hazardous, perhaps, but also baser, more petty - so that morality itself would be responsible for man, as a species, failing to reach the peak of magnificence of which he is capable? What if morality should turn out to be the danger of dangers? ...

- Preface, VI

Unfortunately, this is an extremely toxic and dangerous notion to be planted in the wrong mind. This is one of the troubles with interpreting Nietzsche - he writes in generalities and metaphors, so he speaks to every a little differently.

As the book launches into its opening, there are several attacks on "the Jews", a group that Nietzsche uses throughout the book, in very biting ways, to illustrate what he sees as an inversion of values that was introduced by Judaism and the Judeo-Christian tradition - and culminating in "Jesus of Nazareth, the gospel of love made flesh, the 'redeemer', who brought blessing and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinners - what was he but temptation in its most sinister and irresistible form, bringing men by a roundabout way to precisely those Jewish values and renovations of the ideal?"

Nietzsche also refers to the Judeo-Christian moral value system as "slave ethics" - a repugnant term from a different time. As Nietzsche scores points trolling everyone from psychologists to Jews, to Germans, to Christians, it becomes clear how an ignorant mind with ill-formed ideas could easily twist this book into an intellectual hammer with which to smash everything.

This is how Nietzsche is, though - he has his own world-view and perspective and system of thinking and internal logic, and if you understand it all (if you've "read all of his prior books" as he would put it) it all makes sense - but Nietzsche is tone-deaf to the implications his moral attitudes and proposed value systems would have in more ignorant minds.

This book brings to mind a quote about Nietzsche from Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, which seems to apply to virtually every page of this book:

He [Nietzsche] has never conceived of the man who, with all the fearlessness and stubborn pride of the superman, nevertheless does not inflict pain because he has no wish to do so. Does any one suppose that Lincoln acted as he did from fear of hell?

- Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy

Quotes

Preface

We have no right to isolated thoughts, whether truthful or erroneous. Our thoughts should grow out of our values with the same necessity as the fruit out of the tree. Our yeas and nays, our ifs and buts should all be intimately related and bear testimony to one will, one health, one soil, one sun. Supposing you find these fruits unpalatable? What concern is that of the trees - or of us, the philosophers?

- Preface, II

Under what conditions did man construct the value judgments good and evil? And what is their intrinsic worth?

- Preface, III

What if the "good" man represents not merely a retrogression but even a danger, a temptation, a narcotic drug enabling the present to live at the expense of the future? More comfortable, less hazardous, perhaps, but also baser, more petty - so that morality itself would be responsible for man, as a species, failing to reach the peak of magnificence of which he is capable? What if morality should turn out to be the danger of dangers? ...

- Preface, VI

Should this treatise seem unintelligible or jarring to some readers, I think the fault need not necessarily be laid at my door. It is plain enough, and it presumes only that the reader will have read my earlier works with some care - for they do, in fact, require careful reading.

- Preface, VIII

First Essay: Good and Evil, Good and Bad

There is nothing very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs whisper among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and does not this give us a right to say that whatever is the opposite of a bird of prey must be good?" there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such an argument - though the birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, "We have nothing against these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a tender lamb."

Links

PDF copy of Cambridge Press edition: http://www.inp.uw.edu.pl/mdsie/Political_Thought/GeneologyofMorals.pdf