Genealogy Of Morality

In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, a boy named Elie explains his experiences throughout the Holocaust. His family and other Jews were expelled from Sighet and ended up in a concentration camp in Auschwitz. During this time, the only thing the Germans couldn’t deprive the Jews was their hope and humanity. Within the memoir, the theme presented is, “We must never forget, never forget...Human hope & faith must never die…”.

Every major occurrence in history displays a new characteristic in human beings that future generations can interpret as positive or negative. The Holocaust demonstrates to future generations a trait that exists in humans. The discovery that came with the Holocaust is the idea that humans’ main concern is themselves when they are in challenging situations. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, presents this quality in his novel, Night. Wiesel establishes through Night that the people’s primary concern is over their own protection and wellness to prove that, in times of chaos, humans protect themselves first through instinct.

In this 1999 speech, Elie Wiesel tells the story of his involvement as a prisoner in World War II. When he was freed from the war, he reported that it was if he had died. He was no longer able to enjoy the things he liked before the war, and he lived in a constant state of worry that disasters such as the Holocaust would occur again (Wiesel, 1999). Wiesel, therefore, urges the audience to avoid indifference because this is the trait that leads people to be able to accept events like the Holocaust. He claims that when people believe the world’s events are not related to them, it is easier for them to rationalize their occurrence. Thus, Wiesel uses his emotion to demonstrate the problems of indifference and urges the audience to avoid experiencing this trait.

Morality, in ancient China, India and early American have set the foundation for our world today. Their influences in family, religion and their own societies have inspired modern day societies to be more interconnected with each other. Each civilization has similarities and differences, but all have affected us in small and monumental ways to become the thriving and successful society that we are today.

"Today Hiroshima has been revived," the prime minister said, "and has become a city of culture and prosperity. Seventy years on I want to re-emphasize the necessity of world peace."

During the late 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche examined the history of morals in his Genealogy of Morals. In his work, Nietzsche reveals the origin of morality, and he goes further to tear down the basis of Christianity and Kant’s Moral Law to show that there is a plurality of conflicting morals in society. Max Weber, who was a philosopher greatly influenced by Nietzsche, writes further on the plurality declaring that there is a polytheism that is the result of many conflicting values. Weber concludes that there is no science of ethics after Nietzsche, so there is no way to determine the “correct” value system. There is currently polytheism and a plurality of values that will not be resolved because all values are valid despite them conflicting

Indeed, the early twentieth century started with an innumerable amount of excitement for progress from the scientific and moral advancements of human society. Many thinkers coming into the new century had abandoned the concept of an external moral law which governed their behavior. The abandonment of the moral law originated from the intellectual questioning of its exists and it claim on one’s behavior (Glover, 2012, p. 1). As the authority of religion and belief in God began to diminish (Glover, 2012, p. 1), many individuals began to embrace reason-based morality influenced by the Enlightenment period. However, the Enlightenment idea of human reasoning to guide morality became obsolete as cruelty, barbarism, and death remained prominent throughout the century (Glover, 2012, p. 7).

The Genealogy of Morals is a polemic view of morality written by the idiosyncratic German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The first book develops on 3 fundamental concepts. The concept of the Slave Morality, Ressitement, and the Aristocratic Morality. In the First book Nietzsche attempts to show the distinction of Good vs. Evil through genealogy. A genealogy could be comparable to an intricate etymology. A genealogy would be a historical approach to any philosophical question by first determining the origin or source of a word. “What first put me on the right track was this question: what is the true etymological meaning of the various terms for the idea ‘Good” which have been coined in various languages?” (Page 17) Nietzsche does this with

When reflecting on the diversity of the world and the people that surround us it’s difficult to understand how we all compromise with one another. Everyone desires different things in life, for some its happiness and shiny objects, for others its Gods approval and moral intuition. Those that aim towards happiness are said to be a part of theories of the good, were as those that are more in tuned to the subject of God or gods and morality are regarded as theories of morality. With this in mind, we will be shifting our focus on theories of morality, specifically relating to the divine command theory. In concerns to this theory there is a division that one must choose between deep moral convictions and Gods absolute moral authority. Throughout, this intellectual argument concerning the divine command theory; I will be arguing that this is in fact a plausible moral theory, based off an answer that many religious individuals take on and that is God’s role inbeing superior over all.

From the inception of society, man has always had to cope with instinctive acts that ultimately lead to the decisions they make. In Friedrich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, the discussion of guilt and the theory of a bad conscience are portrayed in a noteworthy manner. In this chapter of The Betrothed, multiple characters morality is challenged by the idea of acting on their instincts. One of the main protagonists of the novel, Lucia, is challenged with the decision of listening to Gertrude or potentially lying to Father Cristoforo. Another character called The Unnamed, the man entrusted by Don Rodrigo to kidnap Lucia, faces the decision of acting on impulse in completing his promise he made Don Rodrigo or acting on his morals and letting

The client is an inheritor of the moral model of alcohol and drug abuse; the individual is

In the Genealogy of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche took on a cardinal role in challenging traditional morality: a bid to provide a “critique of moral values” and an examination of “the value of these values”. Setting up his project as a ‘crusade’ against morality, Nietzsche set out simultaneous attacks on numerous targets such as Christian morality, utilitarianism, and the ethics of ‘compassion’, that make up much of our understanding of morality. This essay seeks to evaluate Nietzsche’s take on traditional morality in four parts. The first part lays out the groundwork of his challenge, as the nature of morality that Nietzsche objected needs to be clearly identified. This will be followed by an explanation of how his challenge is supposed to

The moral philosophy that we know and recognize today in the Western world is slave morality, a morality which puts forward ideals of fairness, equality, and democracy. However, many centuries ago during the medieval times, master morality was the norm; a morality that favors those superior in strength, beauty, intelligence, and status. Master morality preceded slave morality.

In a longitudinal study of synchrony and the development of morality, Feldman (2007) found that mother-infant synchrony measured in the first year of life (3 and 9 months) was directly associated with empathy level in childhood and adolescence (6 and 13 years). Specifically, the more mothers and infants matched and influenced each other’s behaviors during face-to-face play in infancy, the more empathy was expressed by the child during mother-child conversations that occurred during middle childhood and adolescence. In general, maternal warmth has been found to be an important factor in promoting empathy development. Toddlers and children who had parents who were observed to display more warmth toward them during a variety of interactions in

‘It is from society and not from the individual that morality derives’ (Durkheim 1974: 61). According to Emile Durkheim ‘morality begins with the membership and life of a group…and that society creates all moral codes, not individuals’ (Durkheim 1974: 37). He stated that an individual cannot exist without society or deny it, without denying himself. Zygmunt Bauman however disagrees and believes morality is a pre-social impulse and therefore does not originate in society. In this essay I will first explore Durkheim’s theory of morality. I will then interrogate Durkheim’s claim that moral values come from society and are solely directed towards society by examining Bauman’s critique of his theory exemplified in ‘Modernity and the