The Genealogy of Morals

First published in German in 1887, The Genealogy of Morals was intended by Nietzsche as a clarification and supplement to his 1882 treatise Beyond Good and Evil . In his last published work, Ecce Homo , Nietzsche described the essays constituting The Genealogy of Morals as “three decisive overtures on the part of a psychologist to a revaluation of all values” and claimed that they were “as regards expression, aspiration, and the art of the unexpected, perhaps the most curious things that have ever been written.”

While this self-assessment is probably an overstatement, The Genealogy of Morals is widely acknowledged to be a unique contribution to philosophy in both content and style. The style is intentionally difficult, contrived by turns to embolden, to repel, and to mislead. “In each case,” he wrote, “the beginning is calculated to mystify; it is cool, scientific, even ironical, intentionally thrust to the fore, intentionally reticent. … At the end, in each case, amid fearful thunderclaps, a new truth shines out between thick clouds.”

In the first essay, Nietzsche introduces the idea of ressentiment , the source and basis (he contends) of the Christian and Jewish religions and the fundamental psychological mechanism of the associated “slave revolt” in morality, an evaluative inversion performed by the oppressed to compensate for, and to enable themselves to endure, their powerlessness and its attendant frustration. Nietzsche contrasts “noble” values, the central opposition of which is that of “good” and “bad” as applied to human beings themselves, with “slavish” values, the central opposition of which is “good” and “evil” as applied to actions.

The second essay begins with a discussion of promising and the value of forgetfulness, then traces the origins of guilt and bad conscience to self-directed cruelty, the inward application of a naturally brutal animal instinct that has been prevented from finding outward expression. Nietzsche goes on to supply an analysis of the origin and purpose of punishment in human societies. “Cruelty,” Nietzsche asserts controversially in Ecce Homo , “is here exposed, for the first time, as one of the oldest and most indispensable elements in the foundation of culture.”