Nietzsche Genealogy Of Morals

Nietzsche was a revolutionary author and philosopher who has had a tremendous impact on German culture up through the twentieth century and even today. Nietzsche's views were very unlike the popular and conventional beliefs and practices of his time and nearly all of his published works were, and still are, rather controversial, especially in On the Genealogy of Morals. His philosophies are more than just controversial and unconventional viewpoints, however; they are absolutely extreme and dangerous if taken out of context or misinterpreted. After Nietzsche's death it took very little for his sister to make some slight alterations to his works to go along with Nazi ideology.

Admittedly, the philosophy of the late nineteenth century German Friederich Nietzsche had a profound impact on my world view. I concur with his belief that humans should occupy themselves with living in the reality that is, and not to be preoccupied with fantastic illusions of working towards a great afterlife. Granted, I am still very young, but from what I can see, humans have no universal nature nor do any set of underlying human morals dictate what is right and wrong. And as much as people would like to believe, unfortunately, we do not have free will. Every action carries the weight of a punishment or reward, so in essence, people do things either in fear or in

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who wrote a book called On the Genealogy of Morals. This book is comprised of three different essays, and the first essay is titled “’Good and Evil,’ ‘Good and Bad.’” Rather than going straight into what Nietzsche talks about in his first essay, it would be better to start off by breaking down the title of his book. The Oxford English Dictionary defines genealogy as “an account of one’s descent from an ancestor or ancestors, by enumeration of the intermediate persons.” From this definition, we can see that genealogy and history are closely related, and that history is going to play a big part in Nietzsche’s writings. In his first essay, Nietzsche discusses his theory of the origin of morality.

Nietzsche is widely known as a critic of religion. In fact, he talks in depth about morality in regards to religion in his essays about the genealogy of morals. But the problem is not within religion itself or within morals. The problem is involved in the combination of the two to create society’s understanding of morality through a very religious lens. In fact, Nietzsche has criticism for almost any set of morals constructed by a group of individuals and meant to be applied to society as a whole. True morality, according to Nietzsche, requires a separation from these group dynamic views of morality- or at least a sincere look into where they originated and why they persist- and a movement towards a more introverted, and intrinsically personalized understanding of what morals mean in spite of the fact that “the normative force to which every member of society is exposed, in the form of obligations, codes of behavior, and other moral rules and guidelines, is disproportionally high” (Korfmacher 6).

Nietzsche is primary criticism of morality is not one of morality itself but of how people people think of morality, and of the dominant morality of the time. He dislikes the idea of supplying a “rational foundation for morality,” (Nietzsche 80) because it assumes morality itself to be one fixed entity. Instead, he recommends the preparation of a typology of morals for different contexts, because the same actions can be more or less virtuous depending on one’s situation. Nietzsche, then, would call justice a relative phenomenon that arose from the most prominent morality. Hence, any rational justification of any one morality is just an expression of the faith in the morality one follows.

In this Commentary of sections 1-7 of essay two in Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, I will give a brief overview of the text, to help with showing the content that the comment covers, the go deeper into the individual sections and relate them to Nietzsche’s way of thinking and also look into any problems or solutions offered by those arguments.

Section 14 in Essay 2 of Nietzsche’s “Genealogy of Morals”, contains rich insight, mainly about punishment. Punishment is suppose to be the way to awaken the feeling of guilt in someone that has done some wrong. However, punishment does not succeed in instilling bad conscience, or the sense of guilt, on the guilty person. When someone is punished, they do not receive a feeling of guilt. It can lead to two opposite things; either they are are able to become stronger and tougher and take the punishment, or they have their vitality destroyed and become dehumanized. Nietzsche suggests that when the person who is guilty sees the person that he wronged cast these acts of punishment on him out of pleasure, he is blinded by the awful things that

Friedrich Nietzsche’s book “On the Genealogy of Morals” critiques and examines the origin of human morals. Nietzsche presents numerous strong arguments in this book against society 's moral implications, however, it is his concepts of slave and master morality which are seen repeatedly. These two concepts of master and slave morality are particularly evident in the movie Fight Club. Although Fight Club is a modern-day movie, its storyline and subject matter reveals that it was heavily influence by Nietzsche’s concept of slave and master morality.

In Nietzsche’s aphorisms 90-95 and 146-162 he attacks what he believes to be the fundamental basis of the “slave” morality prevalent in the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as other religions and societies. From the beginning, he distinguishes the two different types of moralities he believes to exist: the “master morality”, created by rulers of societies, and the “slave” morality, created by the lowest people in societies. The former stresses virtues of the strong and noble while looking down upon the weak and cowardly. This type of morality, however, is not as widespread as the “slave morality” that has been adopted by so many religions. Nietzsche looks through the psychology and logic of

Nietzsche points out that morals were not given to humans by God, nor was knowledge or instinct instilled in us by God: we have created morality just as we have decided standards for "truth" and explanations for our "human nature," and so there is no transcendent external standard. If God is dead, there are no objective values and we are free to create our own values. Nietzsche says that although the death of God liberates us, leaving us free to rule ourselves, this results in a cage-like freedom: while no value is objectively "right" or "true", if we can not choose then we are not free. Nietzsche supports the individual who, despite a lack of objective correctness or "truth", makes a decision anyway, accepting responsibility for her self-created values and actions, knowing she is these actions.

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

Humanity’s natural aggression means that civilization is “constantly threatened with disintegration” and it must make every effort to ensure these urges are curbed, in order for its continued existence. He continues in this vein, by stating that, in order for people to “forgo the satisfaction of their tendency to aggression” civilization encourages us to form into groups, however for this to work their must continue to be “outsiders,” that the aggression can be turned towards. This is in accordance with On the Genealogy of Morals, where it is the Slaves ascetic nature that forces them to also control their instincts. Likewise, both Freud and Nietzsche assert that these restrictions cause people to internalise their aggressions, turning inward.

    "I trust I shall be forgiven the discovery that all moral philosophy hitherto was boring and belonged among the soporifics" (Nietzsche 561).  Maybe so, but the issue of moral philosophy has been discussed though out time and provides a significant element in Conrad's story Heart of Darkness.  In general, the timeless discussion traces back to the first philosophical writings of Plato and transcends from general religious grounds to general applications and codes of behavior espoused by Kant and Mills.  These individuals and lines of thought try to establish a 'good' code of behavior based on something: a benevolent god, extensible codes similar to The Golden Rule, or even relativistic

In Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche’s appeal to

To rely on the idea that a common morality exists and is enough to give meaning to our life, thus, would be committing the same mistake. Furthermore, it is doubtful that morality can ensure our happiness (in the sense that we find our lives meaningful) in the first place. For Nietzsche, “all these moralities that address themselves to the individual, for the sake of his ’happiness,’ [are none] but which the individual lives with himself; recipes against his passions, his good and bad inclinations insofar as they have the will to power and want to play the master.” In other words, morality is, in reality, a system of rules that is only relevant when we are dealing with matters of ethics. Granted it can give meaning to our actions when they deal in the realm of moral judgements, but otherwise it becomes utterly unhelpful. In fact, most of the menial decisions we make in our daily lives have little to do with being moral. Hence, morality is practically inconsequential in our journey to uncover what makes us happy and gives meaning to our