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A Review of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
By: daniel ohalloran

1. First Treatise: The Distinction Between Good/Evil and Good/Bad

In his ‘Genealogy’ Nietzsche attempts, to reverse previous conceptions of value which he feels underpin and consequently undermine mankind’s development. As a consequence of this arrested development human beings continue to fail to reach their potential and will continue to do so until they accept that it is necessary to, as Nietzsche claims he does, place valuation in its correct context and as such overcome that which they were in order to become all that they can be. To highlight this position Nietzsche endeavours to elucidate a true genealogy of moralities development and in doing so draw out previously conceived doctrines which are decadent and cause decline within the human species so as to illuminate the path to the overcoming of man and place value into its correct context, for the first time since the tragic age of Greek poets such as Homer. Prior to the emergence of Socrates and the philosophical schools Nietzsche will attempt to show that the natural, healthy manner of valuation was esoteric in nature and as such a manner of interpretation intimately tied to the energetic dynamics of power struggles. Whereas with the emergence of the dialectical method through Socrates and Plato, value for the first time is misappropriated and remains as such for more than 2000 years. This is the first time that value is considered as existing exoterically, which is to say existing outside, an objective value which is universally independent comparable with a seed of truth at the heart of all things, which if known enlightens one to all further knowledge that has grown out of it.

Nietzsche begins the ‘First Treatise’ of his genealogy with a critique of the English school of thought which places good actions and consequently ‘The Good’ as being derivative through its usefulness. For Nietzsche this suffers the same inherent problems of the Platonic notion of ‘The Good’ or the Christian notion of an all powerful God, it is ‘ahistorical’ [1998:10] , that is to say objective, taken out of context. This context being its socio-historical motivation, the very reason for its emergence and to give context to it once it has been removed from its history is impossible. This is due to the fact that, for Nietzsche, its history is its context and therefore its meaning is intimately related to its history. One cannot merely abstract an idea from history and view it objectively and expect to derive meaning from the abstraction. Notions are not given and named ahistorically, for instance ‘Good and Bad’ or ‘Good and Evil’, but historically and as such as history develops and evolves so should these notions of ‘Good, Bad and Evil’ it will be Nietzsche’s claim that there should exist no fixed principles [1998:11]. This is to say that it he is going to claim that utility exists within the immediacy of the individual as opposed to the eternity of the species. This mistaken placement of ‘The Good’ by the ‘English psychologists’ [1998:9] Nietzsche will later claim, in his work ‘Twilight of the Idols’, as the first of ‘The Four Great Errors’ [2005:176-177], which is the error of confusing cause with effect. Whereas it is claimed by thinkers such as Hume that things are deemed good due to being viewed of as useful, it is Nietzsche’s counter-claim that good things are not good due to a utility, if it so happens that at a future point they are found to have useful effects, all the better, but this is not a necessity of their being, merely an effect of it. An effect that the ignoble, less bold and dangerous, reactive beings will take as a reason to follow the same course of action. Through their ressentiment, caused by their powerlessness, they mistakenly posit cause as effect. This is the point at which their ressentiment becomes creative and reactive values are created [1998:19]. In the proceeding three sections Nietzsche conducts an etymological dissection of certain terminologies used within the ethical domain by varying cultures [1998:12-14] so as to highlight his point, that if taken historically ethical terminologies lead back to a ‘pathos of distance’ [1998:10] first established by the noble, aristocracies. Nietzsche then attempts to show how the priestly caste wrestles power from the lords [1998:14-19] by means of an inversion of values which is to say they take the language of the masters [the only language] and invert it so as to wield it against its creators, they move from the claim ‘good = noble’ [1998:16] to as Nietzsche states:

‘...the Jews [the priestly caste] who in opposition to the aristocratic value equation...dared its inversion, with fear inspiring consistency, and held it fast with teeth of the most unfathomable hate [the hate of powerlessness], namely: the miserable alone are the good’ [1998:16]

From here he suggests that even though in the modern era the power of the church is waning mankind is still rather fond of ‘its poison’ [1998:18] which again is a way of saying that the species fails to separate itself from a notion of objective and eternal truths, for instance in the moral domain, a Platonised notion of an immutable ‘Good and Evil’. The democrat, of whom Nietzsche speaks [1998:18] declares not that democracy is appropriate at this time, but rather for all time and as such places value and meaning as fixed and unchanging, as if man’s goals and desires had already been fixed yesterday and fixed eternally.

From here the first distinction and misappropriation of values which Nietzsche attempts to revaluate with his genealogical method is the emergence in Western culture of the distinction between ‘good and evil’ in opposition to the distinction between ‘good and bad’. This distinction Deleuze will later try to show, whilst comparing Spinoza and Nietzsche, is the distinction between ethics and morality, which is to say that the spontaneous is analogous to the ethical whereas morality always refers itself to a transcendent moral order which is immutable and eternal [1988:22-25]. In this way original sin can be interpreted as a misunderstanding of value, Adam ‘thinks that God morally forbids him something whereas God only reveals the natural consequences’ [1988:22]. The Judaic-Christian interpretation of the transcendent and morally forbidden is then replaced by a far earlier naturalistic concept in which the bad is merely that which decreases the dynamic energy of the organism. Nietzsche will attempt to show that the species must if it is to overcome the static manner of being which has been created through this morality, supplant it with that conception which was previously held, which is to say it must reinstate the ethical distinction between good and bad in place of the moral distinction between good and evil. This reformulation arises out of the previous reversal of value achieved firstly by the Socratic Greek method of dialectic and upheld through the Christian belief structure and modern objective science which sees the ethical position of the good replaced by the moral position of the good which in turn causes the rise of slave morality over the original moral order of nobility, through a creative resentment [1998:19]. There is for Nietzsche a reversal from the value judgement’s of the aristocratic, lordly good that distinguish themselves as ‘The Good’ through their own enigmatic existences. To the value judgement’s of the lower plebeian caste, which had previously only been recognised as bad in relation to the aristocratic caste that had named it so, and as such was merely named through a ‘pathos of distance’ [1998:10]. This is to say that the lower echelons of society were merely named ‘the bad’ through the disinterested recognition of the difference that they were, to the lordly who declared themselves as ‘the good’ [1998:11]. Therefore in the course of recognising their own lordly natures, it resulted as a societal by-product that these lords recognised a ‘below’ [1998:11] which they consequently named bad, meaning that these ‘others’ were of an opposite nature to the value creating lords. It is Nietzsche’s contention that this occurs at three notable instances within human history when, for him, slave morality prevails over mans natural disposition. A way of being that accepts life rather than blames it regardless of the chance tragedies that occur. Tragedy here in the Nietzschean sense is being used to describe life, not an alien element that invades life but, rather a chief component of life which if denied, denies life. As Heracles declares to Theseus in the aftermath of slaying his family ‘could I but stay here changed to a rock that feels no sorrow’ [1963:197], which along with his wish for suicide he is talked from by Theseus who proclaims ‘I cannot commend your wish to die, but rather counsel you to live and suffer. No man lives unscathed by chance’ [1963:195]. Through these two attitudes highlighted within this Euripidean play it is possible to greater understand the reversal of valuation that Nietzsche feels occurs within human history and the role this plays in the emergence of a slave morality. As Heracles declares his wish to no longer suffer his only contemplations are of an end to his active existence, whether by the ending of his life through suicide or the creation of an unfeeling stasis by way of metamorphosis, his wish for an end to his tragedy ultimately contains within it a wish which seeks to deny life. Nietzsche would argue that one could never truly contemplate the removal of tragic chance which occurs within existence without ultimately seeking to remove existence itself. This chance is that which Theseus challenges Heracles to embrace, to [as Nietzsche understands it] seek an immediate excitation for the life denying reaction [1998:21] which has been produced within him through the tragedy that has unfolded. The being denied this activity of an immediate reaction is forced into a completely reactive existence, an existence of passivity, wherein this being merely waits to react to the spontaneous actions of its active counterpart. This is clearly illustrated in Nietzsche’s notion of ‘the value establishing glance’ [1998:19] which for each caste is the antithesis of the others manner of valuation and for the lower caste this reversal is the ‘creative deed’ [1998:19] that lies at the heart of ‘ressentiment’ [1998:19]. This lower caste take the cause of their action to be utility whereas it is the cause of their reaction and thus completely different. The causation itself comes from the interest of the aristocrats, the lower caste merely live within the effect and take this effect as cause. Strangely this point is highlighted within the opening exchanges of Plato’s ‘Republic’, if one considers it through a Nietzschean interpretation. The point in question occurs in an exchange between Socrates and his antagonist Thrasymachus in which Thrasymachus claims that ‘justice is simply the interest of the stronger’ [1997:15/338c] to which Socrates dismisses by way of the argument that the strong do not always no their own interest [1997:16/339d]. At this point both thinkers fail to see what Nietzsche sees, which is the interest of the stronger is not an interest in results or consequences, but that which interests them. This is to say that the utility of an actions consequence is not reflected upon prior to action in the nature of his aristocratic, ‘Good Ones’ this would be a misinterpretation of the historical development of this type of action by this type of character. This would make them static, the interests of the lords are not their interests due to reflection upon the consequences of pursuing them, but are so through an instinctual spontaneity which causes them to act regardless of chance consequences. This highlights the important Nietzschean notion of chance which develops within the opening sections of the ‘Second Treatise’ in which it is shown that the noble spirit of the high natured, ripe individual promises regardless of fate and is the essential beginning in Nietzsche’s attempt to show the role religion plays in the process of moralization.

2. Second Treatise: The Role of Religion in the Process of ‘Moralization

Nietzsche’s ‘Second Treatise’ begins with the establishment of his vision of mans harmonious psyche which allows for the emergence in the species of ‘an animal that is permitted to promise’ [1998:35]. The key elements of this vision are his positing of a memory and capacity for forgetting which are active and thus function as the chief components of a person’s capacity to promise. The active forgetfulness of this system, in a manner similar to that of Freudian psycho-analysis, constantly frees space in active consciousness for new impressions. Whereas the active memory of this system, the Nietzschean unconscious as it were, is entirely different as he describes it:

‘...it [a memory] is thus by no means simply a passive no-longer-being-able-to-get-rid-of the impression once it has been inscribed...but rather an active no-longer-wanting-to-get-rid-of, a willing on and on of something one has once willed’ [1998:35-36]

It is this ‘memory of the will’ [1998:36] which is essential to Nietzsche’s vision of mankind’s eventual realisation of the true ‘sovereign individual’ [1998:36]. This individual acts beyond the realms of morality, an individual with a long and instinctive memory. This individual has no need for social constraints to bind it to its promises, but rather is instinctively moral regardless of how the chance consequences of an action affect it. He fulfils his promises, carries out his responsibilities regardless of the chaos of the universe which deals him chance obstacles at every turn. This radical morality functions beyond rules, that is to say it is instinctual and furthermore it functions regardless of consequences. That is to say it functions beyond the two scopes of reflection it needs neither to reflect upon its motivation nor its intention, although it should be noted at this point that the sovereign individual is not an instinctual animal in the sense that it is savage pursuing the interests of its base appetitive drives. Dialectic reasoning and immature instinctual desire i.e. base drives the sexual and appetitive desires are both the same in that their creativity is motivated by a lack, a negative the dialectic lacks instinct and the appetitive desires lack reason it is through mans generating a natural and instinctual reason that Nietzsche feels he may overcome himself in such a way that he, as Nietzsche sees it, cures himself of his long sickness. This is highlighted within ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ in which he states:

‘the greater part of conscious thinking must still be counted among the instinctive activities, and this is so even in the case of philosophical thinking’ [2003:35]

To get to this point in which the animal man is both instinctual and noble it must move through two key evolutions which Nietzsche uses much of the ‘Second Treatise’ to explain. The first of these evolutions will see at its culmination the rise of the ascetic priest as a force of religion through whom mans moralization occurs, man moves from the lower immediacy of his base instincts and becomes a rationalised and reflective creature which is to say a predictable creature able to promise and be held accountable for that which he promises. This is the beginning of a genealogy of conscience that results in Nietzsche’s positing of a bad conscience which will eventually evolve into the good conscience of the sovereign individual. This stems from his claim that cultural understandings of justice are tied to concepts of a relationship between creditors and debtors. This is to suggest that when something was deemed as owed to a being whose power was greater than that of the debtor some act of cruelty was brought against this debtor so as to ensure this being remembered to keep its promises in future [1998:41]. Here Nietzsche feels can be found the seeds of modern penal law, an individual promises to live by the codes of a society and that society punishes breeches of these promises with cruelties [1998:39]. The powers do this so as to create a memory for the transgressor which reminds that individual of the superior power of the state, this is Nietzsche’s theory of punishment as a venting of a stronger will [1998:46-47]. He then suggests that as the state becomes evermore powerful it views transgressions of its established laws as mere inconveniences that do not threaten its superiority and as such penal laws become more lenient the greater the lower caste of a society becomes dependent on the superior power of its rulers [1998:47-48]. At this point it is necessary to highlight that this debtor, creditor relationship is not one in which ressentiment informs an act of revenge [1998:48-52]. This is due to penal law being established by the highest powers, the lords; they do so, so as to be able to vent their greater power upon the lower reactive caste. This is an activity of the lords which is used to control the weak and their reactions, whereas revenge is reactive, justice is established in an anticipatory manner penal law anticipates reactions and so in a manner of seeking is a promise that vouches for itself. This is to say that it is an action on the part of the creditor which shows his superiority prior to the debtor’s reaction and as such if justice does flow from this source it is therefore the establishment of the interest of a higher will. It is from this establishment of guilt which is a debt that the priestly caste eventually creates mankind’s bad conscience and therefore moralize the species. Initially deities emerge from debt felt towards ones ancestors ‘the founders of the clan’ [1998:60] are worshipped more as the power of the clan increases, until the point at which they are revered as Gods. At this point in history the priest is able to take this debt which finds its excitation in sacrifices and festivals and denies it, its proper immediate reaction and forces it to be internalised thus creating bad conscience [1998:63]. This reaches its peak with the emergence of Christianity in which the debt is no longer redeemable as he states:

‘God as the only one who can redeem from man what has become irredeemable for man himself-the creditor sacrificing himself for his debtor’ [1998:63]

This state of affairs in which man is denied the immediacy of his reaction as this reaction can never repay the debt of his guilt causes man to vent his power upon himself. Therefore, he is placed in a position of insurmountable indebtedness from the outset of his very being and as such must always have a bad conscience about his natural inclinations. He thus becomes overly rationalised mistrusting his immediate reactions and falling into the trap of a disabling type of reflection. He believes that he must always follow the rules laid down by the priests of God as the very least he can sacrifice to the eternal debt which is owed. This making of the animal man into the moral being man through the mechanism of an internalised bad conscience does not end though with the decline of the church, as was stated above man seemingly loves the poison. This emergence of the ascetic priest through whom mankind’s natural propensity to evaluate and act instinctively is dulled, is for Nietzsche, necessary to the realisation of his sovereign individual that is permitted to promise for itself and that exists beyond the realms of its own base desires and the societal constraints epitomised within religious commandments. This is his point of departure in the ‘Third Treatise’ discussion of the ascetic priest, although the priestly caste damage man through their creation of bad conscience it is only through the overcoming of this bad conscience that a good conscience will be created and man will finally learn to overcome himself. That is to say that he does not feel that it is a tenable hypothesis to suggest that man would be able to leap from its instinctive first nature to an instinctive good conscience without moving through the intermediate stage in which a conscience, albeit a bad one, is created. As Deleuze notes Nietzsche doesn’t like the notion of leaps [2004:12] they lack a necessary historical continuity. So as Nietzsche enters his last Treatise he encounters two factors which he must evaluate; the purpose of the ascetic priest and how with the emergence of modern science as the destroyer of Christianity mankind fails to evolve its bad conscience into a good one.

3. Third Treatise: The Ascetic Priest

Nietzsche begins the ‘Third Treatise’ in the same manner as the previous one by stating his conclusions which are that humans ‘would rather will nothingness than not will’ [1998:67] before illuminating his genealogy of how this phenomenon occurs. He begins with a discussion of ascetic ideals and what they mean for differing characters and concludes firstly that artists do not lead us to an understanding of ascetic ideals as ‘In all ages they have been valets of a morality or philosophy or religion’ [1998:71]. Artists either portray the unreal [1998:70] or if they attempt to portray the real they do so through the philosophies of others as in the case of Wagner and Schopenhauer. They, as will be later seen with scientists, cannot work disinterestedly as Kant claims [1998:72], but must work from a point of view, an interpretation, out of an interest and ‘a promise of happiness’ [1998:73]. This is the happiness of one seeking to break from a torture [1998:74]. This for the philosopher is a ‘freedom from compulsion’ [1998:76] a nihilistic urge to control the base drives of greed, pride and sexual libido. His ascetic ideal is the same as that of the ascetic priest it merely appears in a disguised form as the artist wears the guise of the philosopher the philosopher wears at first the mask of the priest [1998:82]. This he must do to be feared as the priests are and as such highlights the emergence and necessity of the ascetic priest as the being through whose overcoming man would be cured of its long sickness. This priestly caste although dangerous [1998:15] for the human animal due to their nihilistic urges are ultimately necessary in an historical sense for mankind’s motion away from base animality [1998:16] this stage is necessary as it exists to be overcome. This is the answer to Zarathustra’s question ‘how shall man be overcome’? [2003:297]. The priest’s interest which is his will to power is intrinsic with the ascetic ideal. This ideal which blames life [1998:91], seeks to control life and to remove chance and tragedy. These mistakes of believing that one can put a valuation upon life as if its significance were estimable [2005:162], Nietzsche claims, can and will eventually be turned against itself and as such lead to its own destruction creating ‘a bridge for that other existence’ [1998:83]. This he argues is a necessary consequence of the ascetic nature which at first emerges as a life preserving mechanism, when mans instincts become weak and sick, as he states:

‘The fanaticism with which all of Greek thought threw itself on rationality shows that there was a crisis: people were in danger, they had only one option: be destroyed or – be absurdly rational’ [2005:165]

This pivotal moment in history when Athenian aristocracy devolves into democracy is central to the Nietzschean conception of a weakening of mankind’s natural propensity to be instinctively moral. Thus through the disintegration of the moral instinct the stronger caste become infected with the ressentiment of the lower caste, which if left unchecked would have eventually resulted in the destruction of the species through its nihilistic excitations. This was avoided by the first incarnation of the ascetic priest, namely Socrates, whose reversal of the value establishing glance will later be refined by Christianity and its priests. With the higher moral instincts infected by the base lower instincts Socrates encourages man to tyrannise over his instincts with reason, to be reflective rather reflexive. Through reason man is saved from his own immediate excitations but, ironically the cure is to make the patient sicker. Like prescribing hypothermia for a fever Socrates makes the animal man so ill that it does not even possess the power to destroy itself. He does not remove the problem which is the infection of the nobility with the weakness of the plebeian caste; he leaves it festering and like an illusionist merely averts the gaze. Then with the emergence in Western Europe of Christianity the priestly caste are able to exploit the situation created by this reflective creature that is in search of a mystical and exoteric ‘good-in-itself’. They make this good unattainable and name it God, though the consequences of this manoeuvre are massive as the miserable and sick herd unable to attain goodness they search for something to blame for their misery. This ressentiment of life is taken by the priest and turned upon its owners he declares that all are to blame for their own misery. The major difference between this and the Socratic reversal is that the internalisation made by Socrates is not unattainable, although an eternal good is posited it is still locatable, whereas the ascetic priest of Christianity removes all hope of salvation in this life. The question still remains how this character becomes a bridge to its own overcoming if it has removed all possibility of discovery within life? The reason this is possible Nietzsche claims is due to the fact that the ideal does not exist as a meaning but as a symptom. The priest has as its ideal the key to its discovery; it parades its very illness as its ideal. His sickness is that he has established his values backwards which is to say exoterically as opposed to the true value establishing glance of the healthy animal which is always esoteric. It destroys itself because it searches for truth and eventually this truth must come to light, as man chips away at every obstacle put in front of him in his quest for this truth all the lies begin to crumble. This is the logical consequence of a two thousand year search for truth ‘which in the end forbids itself the lie’ [1998:116]. It creates its own overcoming as Nietzsche concludes:

‘All great things perish through themselves, through an act of self-cancellation: thus the law of life wills it, the law of necessary “self-overcoming” in the essence of life – in the end the call always goes forth to the lawgiver himself: “patere legem, quam ipse tulisti [submit to the law you yourself proposed]”. [1998:117]

This overcoming of the ascetic manner of existence, forNietzsche, will see man emerge as the rationally instinctual creature who’s interpretations of the world hold all the value that they could ever require as they are the only values acquirable, which is to say they are purely esoteric the value creating creature is no longer denied his deed, his act, his creation.

Bibliography

Deleuze,G, 2004, ‘Difference and Repetition’, Continuum

Deleuze,G, 1988, ‘Spinoza and Practical Philosophy’, City Lights Books

Euripides, 1963, ‘Medea and Other Plays’, Penguin

Nietzsche,F, 2003, ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, Penguin

Nietzsche,F, 1998, ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’, Hackett

Nietzsche,F, 2005, ‘The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo,Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings’, Cambridge University Press

Nietzsche,F, 2003, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, Penguin

Plato, 1997, 'Republic', Wordsworth Classics

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