Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality and Other Writings: 'On the Genealogy of Morality' and Other Writings

by Friedrich Nietzsche, Keith Ansell-Pearson (Editor), Carol Diethe (Translator)

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential thinkers of the past 150 years and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is his most important work on ethics and politics. A polemical contribution to moral and political theory, it offers a critique of moral values and traces the historical evolution of concepts such as guilt, conscience, responsibility, law and justice. First published in 1994, and revised in 2006, the third edition of this best-selling, concise introduction and translation has been revised and updated throughout, to take account of recent scholarship. Featuring an expanded introduction, an updated bibliography and a guide to further reading, the third edition also includes timelines and biographical synopses. The Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought edition of Nietzsche's major work is an essential resource for both undergraduate and graduate courses on Nietzsche, the history of philosophy, continental philosophy, history of political thought and ethics.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory

223 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 16, 2017

About the author

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24, but resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes.
Nietzsche's work spans philosophical polemics, poetry, cultural criticism, and fiction while displaying a fondness for aphorism and irony. Prominent elements of his philosophy include his radical critique of truth in favour of perspectivism; a genealogical critique of religion and Christian morality and a related theory of master–slave morality; the aesthetic affirmation of life in response to both the "death of God" and the profound crisis of nihilism; the notion of Apollonian and Dionysian forces; and a characterisation of the human subject as the expression of competing wills, collectively understood as the will to power. He also developed influential concepts such as the Übermensch and his doctrine of eternal return. In his later work, he became increasingly preoccupied with the creative powers of the individual to overcome cultural and moral mores in pursuit of new values and aesthetic health. His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, music, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from Greek tragedy as well as figures such as Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
After his death, Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth became the curator and editor of his manuscripts. She edited his unpublished writings to fit her German ultranationalist ideology, often contradicting or obfuscating Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism. Through her published editions, Nietzsche's work became associated with fascism and Nazism. 20th-century scholars such as Walter Kaufmann, R.J. Hollingdale, and Georges Bataille defended Nietzsche against this interpretation, and corrected editions of his writings were soon made available. Nietzsche's thought enjoyed renewed popularity in the 1960s and his ideas have since had a profound impact on 20th- and early 21st-century thinkers across philosophy—especially in schools of continental philosophy such as existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism—as well as art, literature, music, poetry, politics, and popular culture.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not so much a single argument as a braid of related thoughts, this is a brilliant, confused little book. The aphorisms, moment by moment, are capable of being enormously generative; reading this after a full summer of Foucault was especially fun. As a whole ... well, I can't help but read it as a theology, laugh at the many very funny jokes, and scratch my head at the methodological and argumentative gaps.

I'll give the man this, though. If we were all allowed to write like him, we'd have a less exact world, but quite possibly a better one.

[Henrique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who am I to review Nietzsche's work? Who are any of us?

[Alan Johnson]

I am informed that this translation by Carol Diethe is the best (most accurate) translation of these writings.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the Geneology of Morals is Nietzsche’s greatest work because he finally understands and can explain Hegelianism, albeit still somewhat unconsciously. He gives Schopenhauer crap the same way Schopenhauer always gave Hegel crap. Which is an important development. And yet Nietzsche simply becomes the biggest bully in German philosophy, like the last guy. The spirit of Nietzsche and a Germany folding in on itself, leads not to a postmodern utopia. Instead it leads to madness and a doubling down on exploiting Schopenhauer’s evolutionary idealism for Social Darwinism in the following generations.

Nietzsche finally understand Buddhism and the east, but only still on the mental level. Resultantly his western arrogance gets followed, and not his understanding of modernity or the Buddhist antidote to Christianity. All his brining to light of the guilt and shaming of credit/debtor Christianity fails to do anything. From this point on Germany descends into self conscious obscurity while attempting to hold onto a Wagnerian authoritarianism. The thing that Nietzsche expects to happen, and is yet powerless to stop within himself.

“All great things being about their own demise through an act of self-sublimation: that is the law of life, the law of necessary ‘self-overcoming' in the essence of life”

Not surprising that Baudrillard who is somewhat obsessed with Nietzsche in his younger days, based his dialectic deconstruction around this idea^

“Suppose that everything man ‘knows’ does not satisfy his desires but instead contradicts them and arouses horror, what a divine excuse it is to be permitted to lay the guilt for this at the door of 'knowing' rather than wishing'! There is no knowing: consequently - there is a God'”

Evil me? Oh yeah, I know…
He begins to outline the disease and not just the symptom of modernity. The ascetic need to consume information and control over morality (God)to become superior, and the psychological reason for it.

“there is no 'presuppositionless' know-ledge, the thought of such a thing is unthinkable, paralogical: a philosophy, a 'faith' always has to be there first, for knowledge to win from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist.”

Duck!! Watch out scientists, philosophers and anti-semites! He’s coming after you too! It’s not just the crazy God worshipers! We’re all suffering from the disease of modernity!

“we deny that faith proves anything, - a strong faith which brings salvation its grounds for suspicion of the object of its faith, it does not establish truth, it establishes a certain probability- of deception.”

“in this honourable and naive life, he could no longer stand it ... moral: what prudent man would write an honest word about himself these days? - he would have to belong to the Order of Holy Daredevils.“

Nietzsche talks…well who am I kidding, YELLS, at himself, throughout this book. The saddest thing about how prophetic this book is, is that Nietzsche descends into schizophrenic/bipolar madness, and the next two hundred years of modernity he expects European society to struggle through, has continued on unaltered. It’s like he/we can psychologically understand what’s wrong with modernity but he’s/we’re unable to stop it. The ascetic paradigm and will to power is too strong on an individual basis to utilize Nietzsche’s extraordinary breakthrough at the end of the 1800s. After another hundred plus years of French philosophy it is still the sick violence and materialist optics of modernity leading society off a cliff.

[Kerri-Ann Betty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as part of my MA philosophy studies. I found it an interesting read. Challenging but captivating all the same.

[Amanda C · Rating 4 out of 5]

What am I supposed to say. It is funnier than you expect.