On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo

by Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann (Translator), R.J. Hollingdale (Translator)

On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) is Nietzche's major work on ethics. It shows him using philosophy, psychology, and classical philology in an effort to give new directions to an ancient discipline. The work consists of three essays. The first contrasts master morality with slave morality and indicates how the term "good" has widely different meanings in each. The second inquiry deals with guilt and the bad conscience; the third with ascetic ideals—not only in religion but also in the academy.

Ecce Homo, written in 1888 and first published posthumously in 1908, is Nietzche's review of his life and works. It contains separate chapters on all the books he himself published. His interpretations are as fascinating as they are invaluable. Nothing Nietzche wrote is more stunning stylistically or as a human document.

Walter Kaufmann has again provided masterful translations that are faithful to the word and spirit of Nietzche. In an Appendix to the Genealogy, Professor Kaufmann also offers aphorisms from Nietzche's earlier books, many of them referred to by Nietzche in the Genealogy, but never before published in the same volume. An Appendix to Ecce Homo contains drafts and variants, not previously translated. This edition also contains indices to each volume and to the aphorisms. Walter Kaufmann's running footnote commentaries on both books are more comprehensive than those in his other Nietzche translations because these two works have been so widely misunderstood. He also has contributed an illuminating introductory essay to each title.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Classics, German Literature, Psychology, Theory, History

367 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1887

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

[T.J. Beitelman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Make no mistake: Nietzsche was a nut. Bertrand Russell famously dismissed him as a megalomaniac, and maybe that’s true. People blame the Nazis on him, they say he was a misogynist, and on and on. I don’t really know about all that, one way or another (though the Nazi thing is demonstrably false — Nietzsche consistently rails against all things German, especially what he considered the Germanic tendency toward mindless group-think. He was also vehemently opposed to anti-Semitism. Maybe a Nazi or two misconstrued and/or appropriated his ideas, but it’s very likely he would’ve ended up in Dauchau had he been around).

At any rate, there’s no question the guy cracked up and spent the last few years of his life as a catatonic and drooling shade of himself, being looked after by a sister he hated and mocked when he’d had his wits about him. If that aint a cautionary tale re: the risks of spending your life thinking heady thoughts, what is? (Good thing me and the Anonymous Sister are on good terms…)

Still. Just cuz you’re crazy don’t mean you aint onto something. (Which is pretty much a direct quote from ol’ Freddie himself. You know. In translation.)

On the Genealogy of Morals has stuck in my craw for a few reasons: 1) a madcap, brilliant professor-type introduced me to it. He was great because he was the type of madcap, brilliant professor who could work the alchemical magic of turning an inscrutable text into a sacred one but — and I witnessed this — you put him in a grocery store and tell him to find the vanilla extract and he quickly comes to his wit’s end. Something about that strikes me as being exactly the way it should be; 2) it’s about the roots of asceticism and how asceticism is and always will be rooted in hedonism, how Yes! and No! do their necessary little dance. (This is a dance I must admit I know at least a little too well.); 3) Also: how there’s a difference between Yes! vs. No! and Right vs. Wrong. Not just a difference but a sequence: Yes! comes first. Then comes No! Then come the qualifiers.

This is the important thing, though: Nietzsche is, first and foremost, an artist. A poet, in fact. (“Nut” / “Poet;” “Tomato” / “Tomahto.”) His background as a philologist is not a tangent to who and what he was. You can’t expect science or fact or consistency from him. He is interested in bigger things than just that. His language is beautiful and his metaphorical leaps are exhilarating. That’s where his Truth resides.

The good thing about Nietzsche is you can pick him up, open to any page, and read a few sentences to chew on for several hours, days, or years. You don’t even have to understand him. Just be with him as if he was your crazy uncle.

Everyone needs a crazy uncle.

In fact, Nietzsche might say that everyone needs to be a crazy uncle. Or at any rate this: if you’re a crazy uncle, aint no use pretending otherwise.

Du sollst werden, der du bist: You must become what you are.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's try an exercise. It may be a controversial one, but after all, I am talking about Nietzsche here. In this review, I will attempt an exegesis, through the lens of two relevant sociopolitical issues, of an English translation by editor and Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufman of two of Nietzsche's greatest works: "The Genealogy of Morals" and the autobiographical "Ecce Homo." Hopefully in doing so, I can demonstrate how influential his psychology and philosophy can be on issues of today.

We will begin with an easy one: "addiction and recovery." Nietzsche himself shunned the drinking of alcohol, considered smoking a horrible habit, and didn't even like coffee. Nietzsche seemed to have an innate understanding of what it means to be sober, because in these two books, Nietzsche has much to say about the concept of "ressentiment." The English word is resentment. According to 12-step philosophy, resentment is the root of addictive behaviors and the antithesis of wellness. Resentment will lead you to relapse. AA and NA try to tackle the problem of resentment in the individual. Nietzsche, in his exploration of the origins of the human concepts of good and evil, is more interested in the global and cultural effects of resentment, which he calls "slave morality." Resentment actually creates values, but it does so by negatively judging what is "outside," focusing on what others are doing rather than on critically examining one's own goals for personal improvement. A person who has resentments has the need to direct one's view outward instead of onto oneself. This is why recovery coaches and addiction professionals are so keen to look out for resentment in the people they are trying to help. If someone in treatment for substance use is too busy complaining about the food in the hospital, or that they are not allowed to smoke while in rehab, or that their multiple arrests and drug-related charges are because the police are picking on them unjustly, or that the rules of their structured monitoring programs are unfair, this person is not practicing sobriety, and therefore, will not remain abstinent for long. Nietzsche calls this "slave" morality, because "ressentiment" requires a hostile external environment, a victim mentality, in which to rage against perceived injustice and immorality in "the other."

Let's move on to a political movement dominating the news, YouTube channels, and dinner tables of today: "identity politics." Identity politics certainly has the power to create moral judgments, and does. But even the term "identity politics" is fraught with antipodal moral values, depending on who you are talking to. For folks on the conservative side, it is a term that indicates mediocrity on the part of lawmakers and influencers who judge people as good or bad based on outward appearances such as skin-color or gender and not on a person's individual accomplishments, experience, and competence. The term "identity politics" has therefore been weaponized as being something "bad," and has so quickly gotten entrenched as meaning "bad" that folks on the progressive side do not like to even hear it. But the idea behind "identity politics" was supposed to be "good," a righting of centuries of systemic discrimination, to create a more equitable world of representation of all human identities across all spheres. Guiding principles of equity derived from identity politics is an inversion of values believed to be once held by a dominantly white society, and thus is held as "good" because of a "ressentiment" felt by the "weak" towards the "powerful."

Today, we hear daily examples of diversity and inclusion strategies born from this "ressentiment." Anne Boleyn should be portrayed by a black actor and Doctor Who should be played by a woman, because "it's about time." There should be more Hispanic and black airline pilots. There should be less Asians and whites enrolled in our most elite universities. There should be a female president or a transgendered governor. These ideas of equity are considered moral because they are the antithesis of what was expected by the traditional "nobility" of the powerful white patriarchy. However, they are considered as noble by the people that adhere to them as much as they are considered as malevolent, racist, and sexist by the people who oppose them. So which side on the issue of identity politics represents the "good"?

Nietzsche might suggest both and neither, or that history will eventually tell--when we only remember the end result of the victor and forget the voice of the losing side. But for now, which ideas are good and which are bad are based on the concept of the "other" which itself is based on "ressentiment." Each side identifies themselves as having the moral authority completely inasmuch as they separate and contrast themselves from the other. But the more one side looks upon the sphere that they despise from a distance, the more they have trouble SEEING the other side. And over time, blindness to the other side allows for confabulation and even a willful distortion and falsification of the other side. In essence, those on the opposing side become effigies. One could argue that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were demonstrating this phenomenon when Clinton referred to "the deplorables," and Trump spoke of "shitholes." When we listen to the news these days, we aren't listening to reporting, we are listening to combatants of opposing cults who see the other side as "less than". So when it comes to the debate on identity politics, the moral authority on the left can only respond to opposition with such charges as racist, sexist, homophobe, conspiracy theorist, right-winger, white supremacist, fascist, and Nazi, because in their view they are surrounded by a hateful and bigoted world of orange men, deranged serial killer cops, Russian bots, and Alex Joneses. The moral authority on the right is only able to respond to opposition by name-calling with such terms as snowflake, soy-boy, simp, cuckhold, China apologist, socialist, communist, leftist--they too are surrounded by an evil world of Orwellian social engineering manipulated by supervillains like George Soros, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Disney. Each side holding the moral high-ground has their "blond beast," a Nietzschean archetype first mentioned in "The Genealogy," and though based upon the perceived physical attributes of those with aristocratic power of Celtic, Gaulic, and Germanic myth, the "blond beast" does not have to be blond, but can be African, Arabic, Asian, or otherwise--as long as the "beast" represents who has power of the oppressed, the enslaved.

"Ressentiment" is the French Revolution, where a group of elites were able to capitalize on the envy and anger of the downtrodden proletariat by whipping them into a frenzied mob capable of taking down the power of kings. These same elites, not knowing what on earth to do after they successfully took down the monarchy, themselves became the "blond beast" of the masses, and so suffered the same fate as the Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. But to the founders of the United States, the French Revolution was certainly a force for "good," setting the stage for America's own revolution against their "blond beast," the English Crown. And now with contemporary identity politics, THOSE revolutionaries are the new "blond beasts," as statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and even Abraham Lincoln are toppled with self-righteous and furious anger.

So you see, when applying Nietzschean concepts to contemporary debates, one can really understand how it could be argued that Nietzsche held a very pessimistic view of the genealogy of morals--a never-ending cycle of resentment no matter who has power--with no solution offered by his crazed mind that recognized no morality, that was anti-Christian, and that believed everything was permissible. But not so fast, says editor Walter Kaufman, who believes Nietzsche is one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted writers in history. Nietzsche's sister contributed much to this misunderstanding, as she took on executorship of his works and infused them with her own nationalist and Nazi sympathies, even though Nietzsche himself refused to ever become "reichsdeutsch" and was a fervent enemy of antisemitism. Nietzsche's reputation was further sullied by the two World Wars, as he was a Prussian intellectual of much repute--an easily visible target to denounce in anti-German propaganda. Kaufman's thoughts on Nietzsche and his legacy are worth reading, and you can find good examples of such in his separate introductions to "The Genealogy" and "Ecce Homo" here in this volume.

I do think many of Nietzsche's views on human group-think and psychology as noted in these two books are spot-on and observable throughout history and today. In fact, after reading this volume, I can understand how his work inspired the likes of Freud. And I do see hints of a solution to our world woes in these pages. For many readers throughout history, these two Nietzschean masterpieces have provided enough healthy caution and skepticism that has liberated folks across the world, helping them find peace by transgressing political parties and organized religion, right vs. left thinking, and the need to dominate and subdue others with a singular point of view. This is not to say that Nietzsche would demand of his readers to renounce their faith or their political affiliation or their nationality, but to see "beyond good and evil," to look away from the pornography of victimhood, to be mindful of unhealthy thinking, to embrace the will to life, and most of all to truly practice sobriety.

It is truly ironic that the second book in this volume, "Ecce Homo," means "Behold the man." "Behold me!" Nietzsche says through this title of his final book, "Behold this body! This is who I am." What is ironic was that the book wasn't published until after Nietzsche's collapse, when what may have been a critical stroke left the great man a shell of himself, this energetic mind that encouraged us to affirm life, to find joy in worldliness, in unabashedly experiencing life through sober eyes. And that leads to my final thoughts:

Many readers think they already know Nietzsche. Some view him as a deranged nut who gradually completely lost his mind. Some see him as a nihilist, an anarchist, an anti-feminist, an anti-Christian. He is still believed by some to be an influence on the ideas of Nazi Germany. And others simply adore him, finding in his work a genius who looked through the the human façade and delivered a message that everyone should hear. But I encourage every reader to revisit this collection by Kaufmann carefully and rediscover two of the great wonders of world literature. To do so would be a great service to the great philosopher, for as he passionately cried in his preface to "Ecce Homo":

"Hear me! For I am such and such a person. Above all, do not mistake me for someone else."

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me sputtering mad when I read it in college. In retrospect, I'm just grateful that it was easy to read.

Also, did you know that there's a brand of bread called Ecce Panis? Thus Baked Zarathustra! Try it with Hummus, All Too Hummus and The Dill to Power. The latter tends to rankle purists, though.

[Joshua Nomen-Mutatio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here Nietzsche returns to the form of the essay after several complete works largely composed aphoristically. The second essay in the polemic On the Geneology of Morals is excellent and my personal favorite of the three essays that comprise this work. He discusses the historical tossings and turnings that have led to weird inversions of moral standards throughout the ages. The ways in which many eggs are often broken to make various omelettes and how the omelettes often turn out much differently than intended. Social psychology at its most fearless and polemicized.

Ecce Homo (tr. "Behold the man!" in reference to Pontius Pilate's presentation of Jesus to the blood thirsty crowd) is interesting as well. Nietzsche gives several short "reviews" of each of his own books written up until that time, some are a bit forgettable, some a bit more interesting. For a good example of official self-critique see his essay ("Attempt at Self-Criticism") about his first book The Birth of Tragedy which can be found in the intro to some copies of the same book.

The rest of this Beholding of the Man consists of four short chapters entitled "Why I Am So Wise", "Why I Am So Clever", "Why I Write Such Good Books", and "Why I Am a Destiny". These are probably best read as something written on the brink of insanity and steeped in deliberate irony and sarcasm--but not completely. I'll just admit that I had a hard time taking much of it all that seriously. For several pages Nietzsche goes on about his ideas concerning nutrition. He also equates drinking alcohol with subscribing to Christianity. It's a bit of a laugh riot from some angles but one that includes a series of doubtful and perplexed moments about from where or why the laughter comes.

[Kirstian · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the few books that absolutely changed my life, and filled in as something not unlike a spiritual guide (between a time-gap following my denouncing formal religion, then not knowing how to proceed with philosophy as a "spiritual endeavor," which is how many "Eastern" philosophers define spirituality, by the way...)...

Although any of Nietzsche's works might fit this bill (most would recommend Zarathustra), for some reason--probably due to my innate interest in the etymological significance of words as they relate to and/or have the capacity to transcend the sphere of mere labels into the territory of what Marx (via David Harvey's reading of him) might describe as their "fetish" character*; that is, Nietzsche's presentation offers insight into one way in which words get reified, or "essentialized." For this reason, it is one of his most important works (On Truth and Lie in the Extramoral Sense" essay would be the other); even though it isn't his most enjoyable read; perhaps for the same reason; e.g., it's fundamentally intellectual nature.


*Despite this analogy, to my knowledge, this work of Nietzsche's draws no overt connection with Marx.

[GD · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dude thinking harder than any dude before him ever thought, this book will make you break your head open on the floor.

[Kenna Day · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nietzsche is like a long lost friend to me. I read Zarathustra in high school and I remember connecting so deeply to his dissatisfaction with religion. Granted, I grew out of my flaming violent antitheism. But Nietzsche takes me back.

My favorite part regards slave morality in essay 1 of On the Genealogy of Morals. He talks about the structure of noble morality, in which strength and power and wealth-all aspects of nobility-are "good." And all else is bad. Slave morality is simply a reaction to that noble morality. Slaves (anyone not in power) perceive a hostile environment and, as self protection, determine that which is not themselves (the nobles) must be evil. Nietzsche cites the Hebrew revolt as example. By determining enslavement as good, slaves decide their weakness is a true strength. (The meek shall inherit the earth.)

And there you have it: my view of the power of religious brainwashing.

Note: the binary flipping of "good and bad" and "good and evil" feels like a Derrida deconstruction, doesn't it?

[Mr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nietzsche's complex sequel to Beyond Good and Evil is a remarkable achievement of philosophy, philology, and history. It laid the groundwork for such 20th century thinkers as Foucault and Deleuze, though they would never reach Nietzsche's complexity and moral sophistication. In the preface to the book, Nietzsche proposes the project of investigating the origins of morality on the grounds that human beings are unknown to themselves. He is ultimately concerned with the development of moral prejudices, and the value of morality itself. He criticizes mankind in its acceptance of moral principles, and writes: "we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values themselves must first be called in question-and for that there is needed a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which they grew, under which they evolved and changed" (456).
Nietzsche begins the essay (Good and Evil, Good and Bad), with a philological examination of the words and roots of the words related to good and evil, and a delimitation of their evolution. He makes a connection between the creations of words and places them within the historical context of rulers and nobility. Linguistically, Nietzsche has discovered that the `good' is linked with nobility. He writes: "everywhere `noble,' `aristocratic' in the social sense, is the basic concept from which `good' in the sense of `with aristocratic soul,' `noble,'" (464). Alternatively, words associated with the `bad' invariably were linked with the `plain,' `simple,' and `low.' In this way, morality as a human construction is an extension of power, wealth, and civilization. The origin of evil is intertwined with priestly aristocracies.
Nietzsche moves into a discussion of a shift in the history of morality, in which the morality of the priestly aristocracy is superceded by Jewish morality. For Nietzsche, the Jews inverted the morality of nobility and established a system which places value on the lower order of mankind. He indicates that the Jews believed "the wretched alone are the good; the poor, impotent, lowly alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly alone are pious, alone are blessed by God" (470). Nietzsche describes this turn as `the slave revolt' of morality. He describes the triumph of Judeo-Christian morality over the previous system of values, and indicates that this turn is a triumph for the herd instinct, and for ressentiment. He writes: "The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge" (472). Noble morality develops as an affirmation of itself, while slave morality always says No to what is external to it. For Nietzsche, the need to constantly turn outward to an external `other' and place judgment on it is the essence of ressentiment.
In the proceeding section of the treatise, Nietzsche discusses civilization's taming of man the animal. Here he writes: "Supposing that what is at any rate believed to be the `truth' really is true, and the meaning of all culture is the reduction of the beast of prey `man' to a tame and civilized animal, a domestic animal, then one would undoubtedly have to regard all those instincts of reaction and ressentiment through whose aid the noble races and their ideal were finally confounded and overthrown as the actual instruments of culture" (478). Nietzsche insists that Europe's taming of man is a tremendous danger, for we are made to be weary of our own being. For Nietzsche, this weariness and fear of man has compelled us to lose our love for him, to turn our backs on our instincts, to reject affirmation.

[Lucio Constantine: has left this site for YouTube · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the Genealogy of Morals is about master morality versus slave morality, bad conscious and guilt and Ressentiment.

Ecce Homo is a autobiography and overview of Nietzsche’s works told in a humorous and witty style that Christopher Hitchens couldn’t beat, it is also at the same time insightful. At the end of the book Nietzsche wants us to say YES to life;
“It would be permissible to consider the second contradiction the more decisive one, since I take the overestimation of goodness and benevolence on a large scale for a consequence of decadence, for a symptom of weakness, irreconcilable with an ascending Yes-saying life: negating and destroying are conditions of saying yes.” (Nietzsche 328)

I enjoyed each of the collected works, the translation is a great and although I could’ve save Ecce Homo as my last Nietzsche read I just had to read both.
___________
There is a passage at the end of On the Genealogy of Morals that means a lot to me:

"Apart from the ascetic ideal, man, the human animal, had no meaning so far. his existence on earth contained no goal; "why man at all?"- was a question without an answer; the will for man and earth was lacking; behind every great human destiny there sounded as a refrain a yet greater "in vain!" This is precisely what the ascetic ideal means: that something was lacking, that man was surrounded by a fearful void- he did not know how to justify, to account for, to affirm himself; he suffered from the problem of his meaning. He also suffered otherwise, he was in the main a sickly animal: but his problem was not suffering itself, but that there was no answer to the crying question, "why do I suffer?" (Nietzsche 162)
This passage speaks a lot to me because to me there is no answer to the endless void of questioning that comes with "why do I suffer?" maybe it is the same for everyone, I tend to think that my problems are solitary and not universal, but then again maybe everyone thinks the same way about themselves as how I view my problem; that I am alone in my suffering.

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting. While I don't agree with most of what Nietzsche posits, I appreciate the read to hear his perspective. Marx speaks with a greater darkness than Nietzsche, so the crazy hammering of the soul when evil is taught wasn't present for me here. I completely disagree with his ideas about the "ascetic priest," they sound closer to Korihor's philosophy (and what a sad end he came to - hmmm, very similar to Nietzsche's), because they're all recycled stories from the same author, the devil. Oh wait, but there is no devil, right? THere is no good or evil, we're just told that so we're more tame, easier to control...funny, but anyone who ever goes down the path of carnal indulgence never finds happiness.

His theory on the man of ressentiment is also interesting, although completely backwards. Nietzsche claims those who live life in peace and espouse Christian behavior are really weak and tell themselves they are stronger than those oppressing them because of their virtues, that one day they'll be greater than all of them, this couched in the beatitudes. He even addresses his sister who petitions him to see how difficult it is to keep the passions in control and allow the spirit to dominate the flesh, telling her how difficult it is to be alone, think these "new" thoughts and go forward in it without any support. THIS, of course, is far more difficult. Interesting ideas.

[Wiom biom]

Second essay: Guilt, Bad Conscience, and Related Matters

I won't try to summarise a thesis for the essay because quite frankly there are quite a few ideas put across and I probably did not understand everything.

Some noteworthy points:

1. We should not venture to understand the origin of something (its causa fiendi) by its current purpose
"The 'purpose in law,' however, is the very last idea we should use in the history of the emergence of law. It is much rather the case that for all forms of history there is no more important principle that the one which we reach with such difficulty but which we also really should reach, namely that what causes a particular thing to arise and the final utility of that thing, its actual use and arrangement in a system of purposes, are separate absolutely, that something existing, which has somehow come to its present state, will again and again be interpreted by the higher powers over it from a new perspective, appropriated in a new way, reorganized for and redirected to new uses, that all events in the organic world involve overpowering, acquiring mastery and that, in turn, all overpowering and acquiring mastery involve a re-interpretation, a readjustment, in which the 'sense' and 'purpose' up to then must necessarily be obscured or entirely erased."
- which reminded me of Rousseau's writing in the Origins of Inequality with regard to the emergence of the State, the state of society, the state of nature; perhaps the Lockean Social Contract theory makes the most sense for us today but that's probably insufficient in explaining the very origin of the state

2. His repudiation of the social contract
"I used the word 'State'—it is self-evident who is meant by that term—some pack of blond predatory animals, a race of conquerors and masters, which, organized for war and with the power to organize, without thinking about it, sets its terrifying paws on a subordinate population which may perhaps be vast in numbers but is still without any shape, is still wandering about. That's surely the way the "State" begins on earth. I believe that that fantasy has been done away with which sees the beginning of the state in some "contract." The man who can command, who is naturally a "master," who comes forward with violence in his actions and gestures—what has a man like that to do with making contracts! We cannot negotiate with such beings. They come like fate, without cause, reason, consideration, or pretext. They are present as lightning is present, too fearsome, too sudden, too convincing, too 'different' even to become hated. Their work is the instinctive creation of forms, the imposition of forms. They are the most involuntary and unconscious artists in existence. Where they appear something new is soon present, a living power structure, something in which the parts and functions are demarcated and coordinated, in which there is, in general, no place for anything which does not first derive its "meaning" from its relationship to the totality."

3. That punishment further alienates criminals from societal norms
"In general, punishment makes people hard and cold. It concentrates. It sharpens the feeling of estrangement and strengthens powers of resistance. If it comes about that punishment shatters a man's energy and brings on a wretched prostration and self-abasement, such a consequence is surely even less pleasant than the ordinary results of punishment—characteristically a dry and gloomy seriousness."

4. The origin of religions/gods
"If we think this crude logic through to its conclusion, then the ancestors of the most powerful tribes must, because of the fantasy of increasing fear, finally have grown into something immense and have been pushed into the darkness of a divine mystery, something beyond the powers of imagination, so the ancestor is necessarily transfigured into a god. Here perhaps lies even the origin of the gods, thus an origin out of fear!"
"...that stroke of genius of Christianity—God's sacrifice of himself for the guilt of human beings, God paying himself back with himself, God as the only one who can redeem man from what for human beings has become impossible to redeem—the creditor sacrifices himself for the debtor, out of love (can people believe that?), out of love for his debtor!"
"In this way, the [Greek] gods then served to justify men to a certain extent, even in bad things. They served as the origin of evil—at that time the gods took upon themselves, not punishment, but, what is nobler, the guilt."

5. The repression of human nature has resulted in what we call "bad conscience"
"We modern men, we are the inheritors of the vivisection of the conscience and the self-inflicted animal torture of the past millennia. That's what we have had the most practice doing, that is perhaps our artistry—in any case it is something we have refined to spoil our taste. For too long man has looked at his natural inclinations with an 'evil eye,' so that finally in him they have become twinned with 'bad conscience.'"

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nietzsche is truly a psychologist of the first rank. In this treatise, he ingeniously transforms the 'what' of morality into the 'who' of morality. Who are perpetrators of the value of value itself? And what can be said about their physiological condition? As always, Nietzsche's language of physiology
is a joy to read and digest...

(1)

'Good' was a self-descriptive valuation of warriors who were possessed of healthy, vigorous and physical constitution, and an active capacity to forgive and forget the violence that was inflicted on them. They held no resentiment against their enemies, unable to take them seriously. The 'good' are self-centred, positing themselves as 'good' in advance. But they do not regard their enemies as bad or evil, only that they are not-good.

On the other hand, a different kind of valuation is secreted by the enemies of the warrior class- the priestly, ascetic class. Physically sick, pale and morbid, their first creative deed is to posit the other class as 'bad' and 'evil' and only secondarily define themselves as 'good'. The best examplar of this valuation secreted by the downtrodden and the sick is the Christian religion, with Christ as the figure of the ascetic priest who administers this valuation as a palliative to the suffering masses.

"Rome" against "Judea"; in Nietzsche's view, there is an ongoing conflict between the warrior class and the priestly. While the struggle is yet to be conclusively decided, it is abundantly clear that the Judean valuation has presently triumphed. That is, the priestly class has installed its value of values as the dominant valuation. After all, we have become very tame through the instruments of culture. But not all hope is lost.

(2)

'Justice' is essentially active, and functions to rein in the morbid excesses of the 'reactive' pathos, sublimating the resentiment of the reactive man from its object to the community as a whole. However it is futile to speak of justice "in itself" or injustice "in itself", since even the partial limitation of the will to power imposed by the institution of law goes against the will to power (justice is a means to acquiring greater power)

Simply grasping the purpose of a concept or an institution does not suffice as an explanation as to its genesis; punishment for example is a concatenation of a whole host of uses and utilities and whose original purpose is buried under layers and layers of historical sedimentation. The sequence of procedures associated with 'punishment' therefore always already precedes our intentional conferral of meaning or purpose to it.

What is the origin of bad conscience? Bad conscience is 'animal soul is turned on itself'. The formation of society curtailed the instincts of men who previously acted freely on their drives. Unable to discharge these instincts outwards, men began to project them inwards into a regime of self infliction and self mortalization. "Hostility, cruelty, joy in persecuting, in attacking, in change, in destruction-all this turned against the possessors of such instincts: that is the origin of the "bad conscience", concludes Nietzsche. Bad conscience is responsible for the Abrahamic conception of God, which in Nietzsche's opinion, amounts to man's self-laceration instead of his self valorization as in the case of the tribal gods. Is there a way out of 'bad conscience'? A redeemer with a vitalistic (life affirming) and immanent (oriented to the actual world) eye to morality must be on the distant horizon...

(3)

Is ascetic ideal necessarily a denial and repudiation of sensuality? In the case of a philosopher, the ascetic ideal amounts to "an optimum condition for the highest and boldest spirituality". However, it is unfortunate that the philosopher type has hitherto only able to survive by taking the posture and the appearance of the priestly type-world denying, hostile to life, suspicious of the senses, freed from sensuality, etc. In the end Nietzshe asks us rhetorically if the conditions of the current world are conducive to the emergence of the free spirit from the philosopher-priest caterpiller.

The ascetic mode of valuation is truly 'monstrous' in so far as it subordinates all other valuations under it. It condemns the actual world to the effect to holding up the 'beyond' or the 'ideal' world as the beacon of truth. The ascetic priest offers a palliative to suffering through the neutralization of our affects and senses to the point of absolute indifference, and the sublimation of our consciousness to mechanical repetition in works and rituals. The ascetic priest neutralizes suffering by rendering it meaningful.

But if the ascetic ideal is a will and an ideal nonetheless, then what is its possible counter-will or counter ideal? It is not scientific conscience, because it does not believe in itself sufficiently and above all still invests itself in a will to [disinterested] truth without offering a justification of this will, a will which it shares with the ascetic ideal. In the end, Nietzsche gestures towards the notion that the will to truth must overcome itself and in a stroke of self conciousness present itself the following question- "why the will to truth?" Man would rather will nothingness than not will at all...

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Far more mature than his furious work in 'Beyond Good and Evil', and really something to behold if you are willing to looking past the book's primary misgivings that arrive in the form of archaic thought. He rambles off the deep end in his meditations on the dangers of mixing not only race, but class in the next inevitably more mingled generations. These sentiments, however dated and faintly racist they may be, shouldn't take away from his general interest, that of the mechanisms of constraint imposed on the modern subject by virtue of their virtues. Nietzsche cleanly breaks down some notable differences between current and ancient religions, casting, at the time, new light on the realities of life under the cloud of morals, the ideas and structuring ability within the concepts of right and wrong. He is not calling for the abolishment of ethics or condoning murder, except once in a terrible but hypothetical sort of pre-fascist statement. What he is pointing out are the lengths to which modern morals and in particular modern religion, their loudspeaker, whip, and key, rule our thoughts and so our actions.

Nietzsche is one of those thinkers who has been so digested that he may seem to be stating the obvious, but his status among the first to make these statements should be reason enough to read the book and touch a bit of the foundation on which so much modern thought has been set. I was raised quasi-religiously with an overactive thought process. It's a bad combination, answers don't suffice and it's said that thought should stand on faith. It leaves you (left me) feeling messed with, and Nietzsche's helped.

[Todd · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really deep read for anyone. While a lot of people are critical of Nietzsche's works, he still is a unique writer who has delved into the darkness of mankind's soul and found that there is a lot of evil in there.

The second part of this book deals with Nietzsche own life and self-interpretations on what he's wrote as a sort of overall view at the end of his life/career. Nietzsche while he's listed as a philosopher had rather unique insight into the world of psychology. He will always be treated as an outsider by the Psychology community because he studied the evil that is in mankind's nature and realized things long before others did. He was viewed as a raving nut later on in life, but this was due to staring into the abyss for too long, eventually the abyss will stare back into you.

[Woke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of all Nietzsche's texts, the Genealogy is the most useful for students of theory and captures Nietzsche at his most systemic--interrogating the concepts of master and salve morality, ressentiment, asceticism, debt, schadenfreude, etc.,-- a contrast to the polemical aphorisms that contain only segments of a larger conceptual framework to be found in BGE and the Antichrist.

To fully appreciate Ecco Homo, as with TSZ, it should be read last, because it's essentially a commentary on his own oeuvre as he was on the brink of delirium.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing! This guy really knows what he is talking about.

[Alexandre Couto de Andrade · Rating 2 out of 5]

NIetzsche does not know what he is talking about.

[Jessica Orrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

*read for my thesis and only read On the Genealogy of Morals*

I think this book is probably more important today than ever, and explores ideas that we should be willing and able to confront. This work offers a thought-provoking and (at least in my opinion) accurate account of how we developed the (flawed) morality of the modern day. He presents the slave/master morality and the concept of ressentiment, ideas which I think are pretty undeniably true if one can look past their epistemological biases.

I am very curious as to what Nietzsche would think of the state of the world today in relation to this book, especially in reference to increasing globalization, the growth of democracy worldwide, DEI, and all things mental health related. I read this during a relatively rough time and his ruminations on the importance of forgetting and also simply being able to get over shit and not dwell upon it proved more helpful to me than anything any therapist has ever told me. Just saying.

I am excited to explore this work in relation to the contemporaries that pull from him for the purposes of my thesis. Although I haven't read those yet, I am inclined to think that a lot of the extreme right-wing white supremacist thinkers that have "grown from the tradition of Nietzsche," have grown from a bad or poor reading of him. Literally anyone who can read should be able to tell Nietzsche was vehemently opposed to the anti-semites lol.

Finally, this book was refreshing to read. It's not overly academic, and I LOVE Nietzsche's prolific use of the exclamation mark. Bring that back my god. Also he's just so entertaining and just truly a great writer. Cannot recommend enough.

[Jacquie Des Rosiers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading the classiquesss! Read this one for a philosophy course and I am glad I got to peak into Nietzsche's mind. Definitely some questionable and controversial opinions/notions, but nevertheless a thought-provoking piece of history. This book is about the roots of human morals. What does it mean to be good (for which he refers to the ascetic priest)? Why do people act in bad faith? He explores the depths of history, especially religion and slavery, and tries to understand human nature and the separation we have created between good and bad.

[Travis K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too much Nietzsche is bad for the soul, but the questions are essential even if his answers are noxious.

Slave moralists unite

[Kevin K · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review only applies to On the Genealogy of Morals in this volume. Echoing Nick's review, I must say this book is far superior to Beyond Good and Evil. Here we have a tightly-focused Nietzsche in peak form, planting seeds that have grown into whole bodies of thought. Most obvious is Nietzsche's foreshadowing of Freud. Apparently Freud attributed to Nietzsche "more penetrating knowledge of himself than any man who ever lived or was likely to live"; Freud's biographer and acquaintance, Ernest Jones, even claimed that Freud avoided reading Nietzsche due to worries about the similarity of their ideas. It was an innocent era before the 19th century, blissfully unaware of the subconscious mind. Morality was taken at face value, and there was no cold-eyed probing of its underlying/subconscious motives. Nietzsche was one of the first and most acute philosophers to expose the machinations hidden under the smooth facade. Previously my impression was that Nietzsche pioneered this style of thought, but I've learned through recent reading that Marx was earlier. The two are like bookends. Marx claims that bourgeois morality is just a cynical false-front that the bourgeoisie and upper classes use to brainwash the masses; Nietzsche, meanwhile, claims that slave morality is just a cynical false-front that the rabble use to brainwash the aristocracy and elites. I'm inclined to think they're both right! Another notable offshoot of the Genealogy of Morals is Michel Foucault's classic Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

Today, evolution and sociobiology are fashionable topics, and there must be a dozen books out describing how morals are a product of the evolutionary process. A good example is The Evolution of Morality by the philosopher Richard Joyce. Joyce's book is interesting but flawed for a couple of reasons. First, in order to show morality is a product of evolution, he has to make claims about events that happened millions of years ago, and there simply aren't any pertinent facts or evidence from that time. He ends up with a "just so story," as Stephen J. Gould famously put it. Joyce's fairy tales about what characteristics helped animals to survive a million years ago may be plausible, or even true, but we simply don't know what happened back then, so fairy tales they remain. The theory is closer in impulse to historical novel writing than to a genuine empirical science like biology.

The most important reason that sociobiological moral theories fail, however, is that human morality simply isn't innate or programmed in by evolution. Emotions are biological, but morality proper is a cultural phenomenon which has gone through almost kaleidoscopic transformations over the course of history. That's Nietzsche's revolutionary insight. It's true that humans have emotional responses of empathy toward others; but it's also true that humans take pleasure in inflicting pain on others (and themselves), as Nietzsche points out. Has empathy been hard-wired into us by evolution? Very unlikely considering that the Romans tortured and murdered people as public entertainment for centuries, and no one batted an eye. It was completely normal, upstanding, moral behavior at that time.

My conclusion is that Nietzsche was right on target, and today's sociobiologists are following a red herring. There's some, but not much, moral knowledge on the path they're following. The better path is the one Nietzsche opened up here: in-depth research into the historical evolution of morality as culture. Hopefully the promise of Nietzsche's work can be fulfilled in the Internet era. There's probably never been better conditions for ferreting out the strange moral histories of the world's tribes, civilizations and peoples.

[Althea Lazzaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the section "Why I am so Wise":

"What is it, fundamentally, that allows us to recognize who has turned out well? That well-turned-out person pleases our senses, that he is carved from wood that is hard, delicate, and at the same time smells good. He has a taste only for what is good for him; his pleasure, his delight cease where the measure of what is good for him is transgressed. He guesses what remedies avail against what is harmful; he exploits bad accidents to his advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger. instinctively, he collects from everything he sees, hears, lives through, his sum: he is a principle of selection, he discards much. He is always in his own company, whether he associates with books, human beings, or landscapes: he honors by choosing, by admitting, by trusting. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that slowness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him: he examines the stimulus that approaches him, he is far from meeting it halfway. He believes neither in 'misfortune' nor in 'guilt': he comes to terms with himself, with others; he knows how to forget--he is strong enough; hence everything must turn out for his best.
"Well then, I am the opposite of a decadent, for I have just described myself."

[maerius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only read Genealogy of Morals and a few other passages from the aphorisms. 30% brilliant philosophical insights, 50% commonplace banalities and 20% incoherent and bigoted rambling of a mad man. Language rather obnoxious - one may admire it for the first few passages for its stylistic beauty but as one progresses it gets boring. The loose structure is also quite annoying but for Nietzsche, even the minimum structure shouldnt be taken for granted. I find the second essay on Guilt and Bad Conscience especially insightful and interesting. The first one on the moral categories of good and evil, good and bad is of some interest though not especially captivating, whereas the third one on ascetic ideals is just... boring, full of bigotry, and unnecessarily lengthy, though not without its (rare) merits.

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

All too untimely!

[lauren freeland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nietzsche is kinda very genuinely insane

[oceania · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love you nietzsche

[Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished: On the Genealogy of Morals

[TL · Rating 5 out of 5]

I: Genealogy Itself is Always-Already a Revaluation
Nietzsche’s account of the emergence of Judeo-Christian morality in On the Genealogy of Morals is simultaneously a revaluation of that morality due precisely to the nature of genealogy. Genealogy is not objective, dispassionate, arch-rationalist “history writing”. The genealogist can—and will—wield historical sources and archival research in order to construct their argument. Yet the crucial difference is this: while the historian likes to consider themselves outside of their history, the genealogist understands themselves as being deeply embedded within their genealogy; and the genealogist qua genealogist represents nothing but one perspective among many. The denial of absolute values—aesthetic, and especially moral—in favor of relativistic perspectivism is utterly essential to the practice of genealogy.

Thus, because Nietzsche is not pursuant of “objective truth” in On the Genealogy of Morals, and because he is absolutely self-conscious of this (as well as of the structural features of genealogy mentioned above), the very account of the emergence of moral values will be constructed with reference to moral values, implicit or explicit. Furthermore, the ethical values that undergird Nietzsche’s perspective, and thus his genealogical account on the whole, are explicitly hostile to the morality in question. Thus, we can expect Nietzsche to provide readers with an especially negative story of the birth of Judeo-Christian morality, and—given the “untimely” nature of our philosopher—one truly singular in the history of Western thought.

It is not that the genealogist strives for falsehood or seeks to “mislead”. It is not necessary to carry any profound disdain for objective truth—or heart-racing zeal for its opposite—in order to write genealogy. It is simply the case that the epistemological foundations for genealogy itself as genre, as practice—such as relativism, perspectivism, and the fact of the embeddedness of the author in their work—already foreclose upon the possibility of that sort of truth, that Enlightenment-style truth. Thus, the strength of the genealogy in question will not be a measure of its ability to establish historical-scientific fact, but a vector of its power of persuasion. And the particular mode of persuasion we ought to expect from a strong genealogy lies in its ability to unsettle, its ability to unground established values and norms-taken-for-granted. For just as the author is embedded in what is authored, we readers are embedded in what is read. Most first-time readers of On the Genealogy of Morals will begin the affair largely faithful to the very Judeo-Christian moral values that the work accounts for and critiques. This is precisely the kind of reader Nietzsche the genealogist has his sights on, because genealogical success will be directly proportional to the degree to which that faith has been shaken as a result of having read the book. Great genealogy can only be a trial by fire.

Values are only intelligible to values; the critique of values can only be conducted with values. The perspective from which Nietzsche draws the emergence of good-evil morality is inextricable from the moral values animating it, which it presupposes (which is why the genealogical history itself is always-already a revaluation, as long as the genealogist’s personal values are not identical to the values about which the genealogy is directly concerned). Simultaneously, Nietzsche’s values themselves already presuppose an evaluative standpoint, a way of seeing, a mode of living. Gilles Deleuze succinctly illustrates this circle: “On the one hand, values appear or are given as principles: and evaluation presupposes values on the basis of which phenomena are appraised. But, on the other hand and more profoundly, it is values which presuppose evaluations, ‘perspectives of appraisal’, from which their own value is derived. The problem of critique is that of the value of values, of the evaluation from which their value arises, thus the problem of their creation” (NP, p.1).

Therefore, the value of moral values is simply whatever a particular perspective affords them, and this affording is implicated deeply in these values’ (chaotic) origin / creation. The particular perspective of appraisal or mode of living in which Nietzsche discovers the emergence of good-evil morality is what he identifies as the “priestly type”, and the priest is motivated by a complex affect Nietzsche labels “ressentiment.” Priestly ressentiment is what first gives value to—and simultaneously gives birth to, via revaluation—Judeo-Christian values. However, because our philosopher himself occupies a perspective of appraisal or mode of living fiercely at odds with the priestly type, the value of these values is entirely different for Friedrich Nietzsche. And as the subtitle of the work reads, “A Polemic”, On the Genealogy of Morals will stress above all the disvalue of Judeo-Christian values (though Nietzsche is not blind to the genuine accomplishment that priestly revaluation represents, as well as certain advantages it confers) (GM, Title Page, p.13). Let us therefore proceed, keeping one thing in mind: there is no “disvalue-in-of-itself” to be found in Nietzsche’s argument, only “disvalue-according-to-Nietzsche”. Once again, Nietzsche himself is aware of this: his self-awareness is precisely what permits him and us both to call the work “genealogy”.


II: Revaluation One: The Weak Against the Strong
The bulk of Essay One concerns Judeo-Christian morality / “good-evil” morality / “slave” morality, but in order to carry out his genealogical critique Nietzsche first establishes its dramatic foil: Greco-Roman morality / “good-bad” morality / “master” morality. Making full use of his philological training, Nietzsche appears to find startling etymological connections among pertinent words within several languages—ancient Greek and Latin especially. Rather than the moralistic “good” of the Judeo-Christian idiom with which we are familiar, the “good” people of the ancient non-Judaic world often establish themselves as such on the basis of their “superiority in power (as ‘the powerful,’ ‘the masters,’ ‘the commanders’) or by the most clearly visible signs of this superiority, for example, as ‘the rich,’ ‘the possessors’. But they also do it by a typical character trait…they call themselves, for instance, ‘the truthful’; this is so above all of the Greek nobility” (GM, E1, p.29).

Already we can observe a conflict of ethical paradigms. The sense by which the “good” of this morality distinguish themselves from their opposites is entirely at odds with the way in which we “good people” of today (raised on good-evil morality) distinguish ourselves from our opposites. Essentially, the two paradigms are mutually unintelligible; in fact, the word “good” signifies entirely different things within each order. Though good-evil morality may, at first glance, seem to have absolutely nothing to do with good-bad morality, Nietzsche is adamant in his account that the latter paradigm emerges out of an extreme, immensely-influential act of creativity applied to and against the former. The priestly type is unable to posit and create values entirely of its own, unable to—like its “God”—build something new ex nihilo, but it is an incredible artist in its own right. A sculptor, it is able to use other, pre-existing values as clay. The artistic event that ensues is called revaluation.

A revaluation is a re-evaluation, a perspectival assessment once more. The priest is already familiar with an outside evaluative paradigm, a morality: certain other values sparkle with particular ascribed meanings, and they occupy a distinctive order of rank. We have seen that good-bad morality tends to prioritize truthfulness, martial / political power, strength, vitality, etc. The priest-as-artist must of necessity begin with others’ values—this is their personal mediocrity, their slothfulness, the weakness from which their ressentiment springs. But what follows proves that they are capable of something earth-shatteringly impressive, something of which only the chosen few are capable: the priests selectively overcode the old values, making them signify something else, and they re-hierarchize them, changing their order of rank, shifting their relations of dominance and submission. The former represents an artistic reinterpretation of the sense of another’s values, and the latter represents an artistic revaluation of the value of those values. Nietzsche is emphatic that “there is no ‘being’ behind doing, effecting, becoming; ‘the doer’ is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything”; the priests did not freely choose to revaluate these values in this particular way (GM, E1, p.45). Rather, the specific flavor of revaluation itself flowed from their very mode of living and its concomitant affect, ressentiment. Nietzsche states emphatically, “The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge” (GM, E1, p.36).

What are we left with after the priestly revaluation is complete? Good / evil morality and the sick ideal par excellence, the ascetic ideal. Illustrating the essential difference between the revaluated product and its pre-revaluative material, Nietzsche writes: “While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is ‘outside,’ what is ‘different,’ what is ‘not itself’; and this No is its creative deed. This inversion of the value-positing eye—this need to direct one’s view outward instead of back to oneself—is of the essence of ressentiment” (GM, E1, p.36-7). The “noble mode of valuation” consists in self-affirmation, active willing, spontaneity, and a Yes! issuing forth out of the excess of one’s own vigor. The “bad” are merely an afterthought: those who are not me, healthy me—people unlike people like me. Master morality begins with the self. Slave morality, on the other hand, begins with the other, defined primarily as the noble and strong. Now, “I” am “good” precisely because I am not them. My “good” qualities, my “goodness”, consists simply in negations of each of the old nobles’ qualities—of their goodness.

In Essay Three, Nietzsche explores the important concept of the ascetic ideal, which is bound up intimately with the slave revaluation just discussed. The ascetic ideal serves as a totalizing worldview, a metaphysical bleakness, that buttresses and is buttressed by slave morals. While slave morality could be considered to begin from a worm’s-eye view of the strong, the ascetic ideal judges life itself and the living world from above, from a transcendental viewpoint. Nietzsche writes, “The idea at issue here is the valuation the ascetic priest places on our life: he juxtaposes it...with a quite different mode of existence which it opposes and excludes, unless it turn against itself, deny itself: in that case, the case of the ascetic life, life counts as a bridge to that other mode of existence” (GM, E3, p.117). This transcendental judgment of the world begins as a personal passion of the priests, but quickly becomes a moral injunction to their social “herd”: “The ascetic treats life as a wrong road on which one must finally walk to the point where it begins, or as a mistake that is put right by deeds—that we ought to put right: for he demands that one go along with him; where he can he compels acceptance of his evaluation of existence” (GM, E3, p.117). This kind of ideal went on to achieve social dominance among broad swathes of the Earth’s population-in-time, constituting the victory of slave morals, the triumph of “Judea against Rome” (GM, E1, p.52).


III: Revaluation Two: Nietzsche Against the Victorious Weak
Now, what are the value of values according to Nietzsche—what perspective of appraisal does he occupy? The destructive side of Nietzsche is easily understood: values in general are ultimately groundless, there is no “value-in-itself”, etc. The constructive side is rife with pain and humor and paradox, a site of possible affirmation, perhaps a gay science: what values does one build upon this groundless ground in order to live? Interestingly, Nietzsche himself appears to be just as much a priestly revaluator as a novel-value-positor. Nietzsche is talented enough to possess that world-historical faculty, the ability to perpetrate a revaluation of values. Perhaps insofar as he possesses this power, he is already a priest. Yet the targets of Nietzsche’s own revaluation are precisely those priestly slave values that were themselves the product of their own revaluation. Nietzsche is different because he wields priestly powers from a body that has become free from priestly affect, from ressentiment. And his revaluation of already-revaluated-values does not amount to a mere regression into good-bad morality. Since Nietzsche lacks ressentiment, he therefore lacks also that sickly slothfulness that prohibits the novel positing of values. As a result, Nietzsche is able to revaluate not backwards but forwards, onto higher ground, onto something new. This is not the pseudo-newness of negation, but genuine novelty.

This novelty, the new value that Nietzsche became able to posit on his own and bestow his own distinct sense upon, is Life . Perhaps a diffuse prologue to his conception can be retrieved from within master morality, but it is at best germinal. In Nietzsche’s scheme Life is the value par excellence, the only value according to which all other values are allowed to be critiqued, the absolute summit of the order of rank and hierarchy of dominance. A hierarchy of dominance inhabited by values is called a morality, and Nietzsche’s distinctive morality is a vitalistic cult of Life. This is the perspective of appraisal from which all of his works from The Gay Science onward will be composed.

In Nietzsche Life is identified with joy and suffering (but never suffering in and for itself), with music, dance, intoxication, affirmation, recurrence, vitality, power, dauntless creativity, chance, active willing, and Dionysus. And if the Nietzschean conception of Life appears to us as something excessive, nonsensical, stupid, or silly, perhaps we are still all-too-beholden to the slave-morality that it attacks with ceaseless ferocity. Nietzschean ethics must attack anything that says No! to life, because this no-saying is the highest rejection and mockery of the very nucleus of that ethics—an unacceptable transgression upon what perhaps amounts to Nietzsche’s metaphysics, his “God”, his everything.



*[This essay was abridged due to GR's character limit. Alas.]

[Nurul Suhadah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saya habis membaca “buku kecil ide besar” ini setelah mula membaca sejak pagi tadi di dalam komuter menuju ke parlimen.

Ironinya, saya menghabiskan bacaan ini ketika berada dalam sidang Dewan Negara. Jujurnya, hanya jasad saya disitu, tetapi jiwa dan pemikiran saya telah jauh terbang melangkaui abad dan tempat yang tak terjangkau.

Ajaibnya, saya membaca Nietzsche yang tak pernah saya baca sebelum ini. “Thus Spoke Zarathusta” membawa saya kepada buku ini, “Ecce Homo” dalam bahasa asalnya.

Lebih menggila, saya membaca buku ini dalam versi terjemahan Bahasa Melayu, atau lebih tepat Bahasa Indonesia.

Saya kira saya semakin biasa membaca buku-buku bergenre sebegini dalam versi terjemahan. Otak saya semakin terlatih dengan istilah-istilah ‘falsafah’ yang dialih bahasa. Namun, perlu jujur saya akui, masih banyak yang saya teraba-raba mencari sebuah makna.

Tetapi buku ‘autobiografi’ sebegini, jika boleh dikatakan sebagai autobiografi yang ditulis pada tahun 1883 akan menjadi antara buku yang akan ‘melekat’ lama di fikiran dan jiwa saya. Perasaannya berat. Amat sedih, hiba, sayu, keliru, tercerah, bermakna. Segala rasa yang bercampur baur dengan pekat.

Nietzcshe telah berjaya memperkenalkan secebis dirinya kepada saya, walaupun dalam keadaan dia bertanya kepada diri dan kemudian menjawab sendiri persoalan-persoalan itu. Benarlah kata dia, “aku tidak membaca, aku dibaca”. Dia memuji dirinya dengan tajuk-tajuk yang begitu ketara seperti “Mengapa Aku Begitu Pandai”, “Mengapa Aku Menulis Buku-Buku Yang Begitu Bagus” tetapi dalam masa yang sama dalam banyak sekali ungkapannya mengkritik tajam dirinya sendiri.

Saya kira, saya jatuh cinta dengan banyak sekali aforisme-aforisme Nietzsche, kalimat-kalimat pendek yang nampak langsung tak terhubung. Malah, inilah antara gaya Nietzsche yang berbeza berbanding filsuf lain. Seorang yang sangat anti-sistem, untuk membaca Nietzsche seseorang perlu melepaskan diri dari rasional tradisi dan cuba untuk memahami semangat pemberontakan seorang Nietzsche yang hidupnya diuji dengan kesakitan yang sangat kuat.

Ada yang mengatakan membaca Nietzsche sangat berbahaya, kerana inilah filsuf yang melaungkan “Tuhan telah mati”. Tetapi saya jumpa banyak sekali sisi yang menjadikan saya sangat insaf dan syukur, menjumpai dan merasai Tuhan ada di sisi.

Buku yang akan saya ingati sepertimana saya membaca “Al Munqiz Minal Dhalal” Al-Ghazali, yang masih kekal menjadi buku terbaik autobiografi yang saya pernah baca.

Tidur malam ini nampaknya akan bertemankan Nietzsche, sang pembunuh Tuhan yang mencintai takdirnya.

#surimembaca

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 5 out of 5]

There isn't a proper defense of Nietzsche necessary or possible that isn't his work itself, but there are two reasons I love his work, aptly captured in two of his aphorisms included in this text (more applicable to the Genealogy admittedly):

Philosophers' error - The philosopher supposes that the value of his philosophy lies in the whole, in the structure; but posterity finds its value in the stone which he used for building, and which is used many more times after that for building-better. Thus it finds the value in the fact that the structure can be destroyed and nevertheless retains value as building material. (176)

Indeed, you can find anticipated here Freud's psychic undercurrents; Foucault's work on the production of new forms of consciousness in The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction and in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison; and David Graeber's tracing of the connection of guilt to monetary debt in Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

And second:

Value 0f honest books - Honest books make the reader honest, at least by luring into the open his hatred and aversion which his sly prudence otherwise knows how to conceal best. But against a book one lets oneself go, even if one is very reserved toward people. (175)