Nietzsche's 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.

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).

Friedrich Nietzsche, a prominent German philosopher in the 19th century is one of the most well-read philosophers of the past two-centuries. His ideas regarding morality and nature continue to be discussed and debated to this day among scholars of all beliefs.

Morals are set standards of right and wrong for society as a whole. One ’s self image of morals are what the individual thinks is right and wrong according to what he or she learns; however, this “Internal compass” can be influenced because society controls most of what they learn. One’s self image of morals allows an individual to provide compelling arguments, provides emotional stability and allows for an individual to have predetermined views of right and wrong; on account of the fact that said individuals choose to follow the revolutionary figures who provide a strong base for the creation of one’s self image of morals. In most cases, religion plays a major role in the creation of this aspect of identity; made evident in Martin Luther

One of the nineteenth century’s greatest philosophers is Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was ideas regarding morality and nature continue to be debated today. Irish Murdoch another great philosopher writer of the 20th century wrote about philosophy regarding religion and nature. Both philosophers discuss the theme of morality in contrasting ways. Nietzsche believes in individual morality from the natural perspective and religion not from nature. Murdoch argues that morality comes from religion itself.

Because we are so keen on learning, we are disengaged from our experiences, and therefore are not in the right place to understand ourselves (3). The words that are used to define any given concept are not to be taken at face value since the judgment of our moral values depends on their respective time periods and cultural influences, which are subject to change as everything else does. In other words, they are products of the moral projections of people’s values, which often have a multitude of dimensions that surpass the shallow fields of initial interpretation. Consequently, we need to look beyond the surface interpretation of these words by re-interpreting their meanings many times to be able to judge what we believe. As we change with time, our interpretations are subject to change, and our value systems evolve, both preventing us from establishing absolute meaning regarding anything. As a result, we cannot truly understand concepts unless we remove several historical layers from them. Many times throughout his polemic, Nietzsche hints at the necessity of asking a question from “various perspectives” (41). “Understanding the demonstrated purpose or utility of a thing, its form, its organization” is not

In essay two of Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’, ‘Guilt’, ‘bad conscience’ and related matters, Nietzsche seeks to explore the origins and constructs of guilt and in doing so, presents us with an account where the concept of guilt has been misconstrued by the evolution of society. This very shift in our understanding of guilt has subsequently led to, what Nietzsche claims to be, “bad conscience”. To understand this evolution of guilt and the entity of “bad conscience” it is necessary to closely analyze Nietzsche’s account and in doing so, delve deeper into the mechanics of Nietzsche’s understanding of our morality.

Nietzsche states that morality is not composed by the everlasting word of God or by the incontrovertible rationality like most psychologists claim rather, morality is socially constructed invented by one group to distinguish and empower themselves at the expense of the weaker group. To be more specific, the powerful and rich define what is good, this was concluded when they saw the differences between them and the weak and poor people below them. This system was called Good and Bad Master Morality, with this system the rich and powerful gave certain words a specific meaning and associated them with people. If the nobles are considered

How then has society been led by a general moral sense congruent with save morality? Nietzsche asserts that the sheer number of individuals in the common class leads to the dominance of their moral outlook. As aristocratic societies fall the moral systems lack their initial utility. What then happens is described as herd morality. Since the former common class outnumbers the former noble class their moral outlook is the new standard. When slave morality has reached this point of societal acceptance deviation from its fundamental values is considered immoral. Though some deviance will occur those who drift too far are considered a threat and put down out of

In this essay, I will object to Thomas Nagel’s view “The fact that morality is socially inculcated and that there is radical disagreement about it across cultures, over time, and even within cultures at a time is a poor reason to conclude that values have no objective reality” (CP, p. 60; Thomas Nagel, “Value” (Lecture II of “The Limits of Objectivity”)). Nagel is claiming the argument: we learn morality from those in our society leading each person to have their own set of moral beliefs but there is not one right or wrong belief is not a good argument.

As such, his perspective shows that nothing is absolute, sacred or true given that the society’s morality are not responsibilities given by God but rather an evolving arbitral code set by humanity. The only constant thing is the struggle for power and a virtue of a powerful will, freedom from resentment, hatred and a bad conscience. This clearly indicates that in his genealogy Nietzsche’s main goal is to put society’s value for morality into question. For instance, he bases his argument on the society’s morality coming out of hatred and resentment towards anything healthy, strong or powerful. Therefore, Nietzsche perceives the society’s morality as being destructive to the health of the future and success of humanity

The purpose of Friedrich Nietzsche's On The Genealogy of Morals (1887) is to answer the following questions, which he clearly lays out in the preface: "under what conditions did man devise these value judgments good and evil? And what value do they themselves possess? Have they hitherto hindered or furthered human prosperity? Are they a sign of distress, of impoverishment, of the degeneration of life? Or is there revealed in them, on the contrary, a plenitude, force, and will of life, its courage, certainty, future?" (17). These questions come about from Nietzsche's rejection of the Darwinian-Spencerian-utilitarian explanation of morality, characterized by his portrayal of the

Nietzsche feels that we should see morality as something that has evolved and never free from error. When we can see our morality also as part of the human comedy we will truly have elevated

Nietzsche states that in contemporary society we can no longer rely on a religious system of morality. He argues that in order to exist in this world we must rely on ourselves to create a new system, one based on the recognition of humanity’s own freedom. The first step in achieving this new morality

Humans need the appearance of some sort of structure to live. They need rules to live by to tell them whether or not they are living “right”, in a good way or a bad way. We humans have come up with many different ways to tell whether we are living right “right” or not. We have come up with all of the different types of religions and the different sets of morals , all of which change throughout history and time depending on and reflecting it’s episteme. How can any religion or set of morals be considered the “right one” when there has been no consistency with either? Both Feuerbach and Nietzsche have the same belief, that religions and morals are only a crutch that humans grab on to in order to give some meaning to the random assortment of life on earth. Both think that religion was a crutch for humans because of our inability to be perfect. Religions especially Christianity (Jesus) have their own destruction built in to them because of the humanity aspect. Though Feuerbach and Nietzsche agreed upon this they had very different opinions on how it would come about.