Work · Nietzsche
On the Genealogy of Morals
1887 · Three essays
Where did "good" and "evil" come from? A history of morality as the slave’s revenge on the master.
1887
Published
3
Essays
A Polemic
Its subtitle
Three essays, three excavations
Not a treatise but three linked digs into the buried origins of morality. Each essay takes something we treat as eternal, our values, our conscience, our reverence for self-denial, and asks where it actually came from and what it conceals.
The shape of the argument
Preface
The real question is not which morality is true but what our morality is worth, and where its values came from.
First Essay
Two value systems: master morality (good/bad) and the slave revolt that, out of ressentiment, recoins the strong as "evil."
Second Essay
Conscience traced to the creditor/debtor relation; the "bad conscience" as the instincts turned inward when society caged them.
Third Essay
Why the ascetic ideal has ruled: the will would rather will nothingness than not will at all, and science is its latest disguise.
The cast
Nietzsche — writes his most systematic book to make the scattered Beyond Good and Evil case land
Ressentiment — the impotent rancor of the weak that, denied action, takes its revenge by inventing values
The ascetic priest — the figure who gives suffering a meaning and so rules the herd
The "blond beast" — the predator-core of every noble race (Roman, Arab, Greek, Viking), not the Germanic emblem the Nazis made of it
The famous bits
The slave revolt in moralityFirst Essay
When the powerless cannot strike back, they take their revenge in the imagination, by recoining their masters as "evil."
RessentimentFirst Essay
A morality born not of self-affirmation but of a festering "No" to everything strong and noble.
The bad conscienceSecond Essay
When the old instincts can no longer discharge outward, they turn inward, and that turning is the origin of the soul.
The ascetic idealThird Essay
Self-denial has ruled because a meaning, any meaning, was better than the void of meaninglessness.
Rather will nothingnessThird Essay
The closing verdict: the human will would sooner will nothingness than not will at all.