Genealogy Of Morals Research Articles

Nietzsche on Socrates, Jesus, and the slave revolt in morality

ABSTRACT This article shows how the triumph of Socratic optimism in Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy, is due to a slave revolt in morality that promulgates a religious faith in the value of scientific truth. This early argument parallels his critique of the ascetic ideal that infects science in The Genealogy of Morality. I draw out the resemblance between Socrates’s martyrdom in The Birth and Jesus’s crucifixion in the Genealogy in order to illuminate how ritual human sacrifice mythically immortalizes both figures, together inaugurating the ascetic ideals that Christianity will eventually unite. I discuss Nietzsche’s understanding of religious martyrdom and his explanation for the success of Christian Platonism, whose ascetic ideals ground the European value system that he is known for attacking.

The Importance of Being Honest: Free Spirits and Idiosyncrasy in Nietzsche

The main argument of this paper is that the debate on whether Nietzsche is communitarian or individualist is wrongheaded, failing to distinguish the conception of community and individual Nietzsche critiques, the 'mob' and the 'Higher Man', from the conceptions Nietzsche envisions and hopes for, his 'free spirits' and – what I call, based on the critique of indivisible subjects in the Genealogy of Morality – the idiosyncrasy. I propose a reading of Nietzsche which elaborates his novel conception of a non-ascetic will to truth, based in courageous honesty and self-overcoming, rather than self-preservation, in order to conceive these individuals and communities. The coupling of Dionysus and Apollo has to be replaced with Dionysus and Ariadne because, using key terms from Deleuze's Nietzsche, the sense and value of critique is generated from a labyrinthine, Dionysian meaning as will to power and Ariadne's thread as evaluation based on the eternal recurrence, constituting the idiosyncrasy and the free spirits, respectively.

Blood on the Leaves / Blood on the Roots

This paper sets out to investigate the Nietzschean connection between Sylvia Wynter and Reiner Schürmann through a reading of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche’s account of ‘bad conscience’ is read through the Wynterian and Fanonian concept of ‘sociogeny’ to demonstrate its necessity to Nietzsche’s project of the Great Redeemer. This paper, then, demonstrates a previously undiagnosed influence of Nietzsche on Wynter and the role that anarchy plays in her construction of the ‘human being as praxis’. The essay concludes with an amelioration of Schürmann’s epochal genealogy to account for a racialized lacunae present in his Western genealogy of thought. It is by bringing all three together that we understand anarchy as being firmly committed to anti-racist and anti-anti-Black enactments. It concludes by highlighting the possibility of metaphysics after the withering of epochal archē in what this paper calls ‘the multitude of metaphysics’.

Nietzsche’s Genealogical Perfectionism

ABSTRACT I argue that Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality can be productively read as perfectionist in Emerson’s sense. After reconstructing the debate on Nietzsche’s perfectionism, I problematize the literature’s almost exclusive focus on Schopenhauer as Educator at the expense of the Genealogy, which has caused scholars to construe Nietzsche’s perfectionism in merely individualistic terms. By contrast, I show that the Genealogy can be interpreted as a perfectionist endeavor, at the heart of which lies the first-person plural: the “we.” I thereby emphasize the relevance of “we-making” for a novel reading of Nietzsche’s perfectionism—what I call his genealogical perfectionism. I conclude that the analysis of the genealogical dimension of Nietzsche’s perfectionism provides us with much-needed resources to construe it in nonindividualistic terms.

“Platon contre Homère” : l’antagonisme des mensonges selon Nietzsche

Nietzsche's obsession with Plato has little parallel in the history of philosophy other than Plato's obsession with Homer. In both cases, admiration is matched by exasperation and, if we are to believe Nietzsche, even by “aversion” (KSA 11, 25 [103]). From his earliest works in Basel, Nietzsche seems to have sided with Homer, with “the whole Olympus of appearances” (GS, Preface for the Second Edition, § 4) and superficiality “out of profundity”, against Plato, “a man of many back caves and foregrounds” (KSA 11, 34 [66]). “Plato versus Homer: that is the complete, the genuine antagonism”, On the Genealogy of Morals solemnly sums up (GM, III, § 25). It sounds like a declaration of war. On the one hand, the will to truth and belief in morals ; on the other, the will to deception and beautiful, misleading images: two “natural antagonists”, two competing ideals. But how does the anti-dualist thinker of Beyond Good and Evil, who rejects any idea of real opposition, understand this antagonism? Is it really a question of pitting art against science? According to Nietzsche, the school of lies is where these formidable educators clash, their battle of models shaping European culture. “But education for what?” (KSA 12, 5 [50]). It is by learning from Homeric transfiguration and Socratic ruses that Nietzsche develops his understanding of the oppositional logic of the will to power, and raises the question of the future task of the authentic philosopher.

From Consciousness to Conscience: Cognitive Aspects in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Conscience

Abstract This article examines a subject that has received relatively little attention in the literature on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality: the pivotal role played by the emergence of consciousness (Bewusstsein) as an epistemic faculty in the development of conscience (Gewissen) as a moral faculty. To achieve this objective, I will (1) introduce the inquiry, (2) elucidate Nietzsche’s hypothesis regarding the emergence of consciousness, (3) establish a connection between consciousness and the genesis of conscience, and (4) expound upon the cognitive capacities involved in the formation of conscience as a moral faculty.

“Everyone is Furthest from Himself”: An Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Recovery and Inversion of Terence’s Formula “I Am the Closest to Myself”

Abstract This essay examines Nietzsche’s inversion of Terence’s formula “I am the closest to myself” into “Everyone is furthest from himself [Jeder ist sich selbst der Fernste]” (GM, Preface 1). In a contextual reading, I am going to ask how Nietzsche relates this formula to the difficulty of acquiring self-knowledge, as emphasized at the beginning of On the Genealogy of Morality. First, I argue that Nietzsche does not prohibit self-knowledge, but instead invites us to think about it differently; and second, I will show that the formula according to which “everyone is furthest from himself” can also be understood as an injunction to keep the self always at a distance. I will link these two aspects by arguing that Nietzsche replaces self-knowledge in the classical sense by an interpretation of the self, and that this interpretation must never be thought of as an undertaking that seeks to reify their self. Nietzsche urges us to make ourselves into creative projects, even this will entail fiction and illusion.

Conscience and Bad Conscience

AbstractThis paper attempts to clarify the relationship between conscience and bad conscience in the Second Essay of the Genealogy of Morality (GM II). Conscience, which Nietzsche calls the “will's memory” (GM II, 1), is a faculty that enables agents to generate and sustain the motivation necessary to honor commitments, while bad conscience is that “other gloomy thing” (GM II, 4), gloomy because it is a self‐punishing faculty that produces feelings of guilt. In addition to having different functions, conscience and bad conscience have distinct causal origins. Conscience originated as a memory of “I will nots” inculcated by punishment (GM II, 3), whereas bad conscience is produced by the process of “internalization” (GM II, 16)—not punishment (GM II, 14–15). It would seem to be possible, then, that an agent could have a conscience without having a bad conscience. The sovereign individual is sometimes interpreted in such terms. I argue that this separation is impossible, however. An agent would be incapable of generating and sustaining the motivation to honor commitments, thus having a conscience, without having undergone the process of internalization, necessitating the presence of bad conscience as well.

Passing By: Zarathustra’s Other Response to Revenge

Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality warns that revenge’s reactiveness can jeopardize salutary change in shared values. I identify an overlooked revenge-mitigating praxis in the spatial movements of Nietzsche’s fictional prophet Zarathustra, who seeks collaborators to overcome Christian morality and create new world-affirming values. Zarathustra’s well-known response to revenge, specifically the revenge against time undergirding interpersonal revenge, is willing the eternal return of the same. But he also exemplifies a more available response. “Passing by” is a coming close to, followed by a veering away from, the most insistent embodiments of reigning values. Although Nietzsche inspires agonistic political theory, Zarathustra avoids direct contest in the usual late modern milieux, which he finds constitutively vulnerable to revenge. When revenge floods the communal passional reservoir, it forestalls recovery—essential to new-values creation—of passions effaced by reigning values. Zarathustra still approaches the usual milieux to know the present-past as the raw material of the future. But by then veering away he practices relaxing his value-creative will and not raging against the present-past. Repeated passing by helps him accept and thus better take up the raw material of the future and accept value change’s slow temporality. Since passing by’s concern is the value horizon, not the political sphere, and since it minimizes direct resistance, it may be less reactive to the political sphere than directly contestatory versions of “refusal.” Analysis of Gandhi’s value-praxis confirms passing by as a tactic for less reactive value-creation and as a lens on the reactiveness of different value-praxes.

Seeking Ourselves in the Strange: Self-Knowledge in the Nietzsche’s Genealogy

In the nuanced tapestry of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality, the exploration of self-knowledge emerges as a central, yet subtly presented, theme. This paper delves into the profound depths of this theme, uncovering the intricacies and challenges inherent in Nietzsche’s portrayal of the self’s quest. Nietzsche’s work not only critically deconstructs the fallacies entrenched in conventional self-awareness but also charts an unorthodox path toward a more authentic understanding of the self. Embarking on this intellectual journey, the paper scrutinizes the notable juxtaposition found between the first and second sections of the Genealogy’s preface, shedding light on the intricate relationship between moral constructs and self-realization. It then interprets the profound ramifications of Nietzsche’s assertion, particularly in the preface’s first section, that true self-knowledge is perennially shrouded in unfamiliarity. This study meticulously examines key terminologies such as ‘sought’, contextualized within Nietzsche’s broader philosophical oeuvre, to trace the implicit, yet profound, pathway to self-knowledge that Nietzsche advocates. Ultimately, this exploration asserts that Nietzsche’s Genealogy extends beyond merely exposing the inadequacies of conventional moral doctrines. It emphatically champions a perpetual pursuit of openness and an exploratory spirit in the odyssey towards self-discovery. This process involves embracing the unfamiliar and courageously engaging with the ebb and flow of one’s existential reality, as part of the continual quest to understand and define the self.

Голубь Курчатова: фигурации (пост)советского ядерного миролюбия

The article discusses the rhetorical, political and ethical entanglements of the atomic age, embodied into a new understanding of the world, as well as into new fragilities and responsibilities. The author notes the episte-mological challenges of exploring the discursive production of the peace in the USSR, which is identified as one of the most indoctrinated practices of late socialism. Through the lens of a single slogan, the author analyzes the indirect transitions between ethics and propaganda. The statement “Let the atom be a worker, not a soldier”, which appeared on the banners of demonstrators in the late 1950s and early 1960s and was attributed to the atomic supervisor Igor Kurchatov, became a Soviet atomic imperative and a key figure in the discourse of (post)Soviet atomic peacefulness. The author describes the figuration of the slogan in the context of the confron-tation between two systems, nuclear diplomacy and the establishment of a global agenda for the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The USSR participated in this struggle by promoting the significance of the peace-ful atom and defending its moral priority in the propaganda of this brand. The author focuses on the authorship of the statement and reveals its entanglement with the genealogy of morality and the development of an ethical position for a Soviet nuclear scientist between nuclear war and the peaceful atom. The article pays attention to the contribution of the science journalist Vladimir Gubarev to the retrospective restoration of the authorship of the Soviet atomic imperative. By creating this discursive fiction, one of the main chroniclers of the Sredmash project simultaneously engaged in both propaganda and ethical work.

For an understanding of “hope” in the emergence of “man of the future” at the end of the Second Treatise on the Genealogy of Morals

Resumo O pensamento do eterno retorno do mesmo, embora esteja no cerne da filosofia tardia de Nietzsche, não é abordado diretamente na Genealogia da moral. Isso não significa que ele esteja ausente desta obra, e nem o poderia, pois o filósofo via na possibilidade cosmológica do retorno a nova medida de valor para uma tentativa de superação do niilismo. Realizar o exame genealógico sem levar em conta o pensamento do eterno retorno é, por conseguinte, não prestar atenção ao fato de que tal exame não se reduz ao diagnóstico e à crítica da moralidade, mas é realizado em vistas de sua superação. A questão que se coloca desde o início é, portanto, dupla: de que modo o pensamento do eterno retorno está presente na obra? E por que Nietzsche não o explorou conceitualmente? A resposta encontra-se na compreensão da “esperança” no surgimento do “homem do futuro” - mencionado no final do Segundo Tratado da Genealogia da moral.

The Affirmation of Life: A Moral Genealogy Perspective on Life and Its Implications

The Affirmation of Life: A Moral Genealogy Perspective on Life and Its Implications

Crime and punishment; drama and meaning: lessons from On the Genealogy of Morals II

ABSTRACT This paper takes up Nietzsche’s contrast between a relatively enduring ‘drama’ of punishment, which consists in sequences of procedures, and a congeries of often discrepant meanings and purposes of the drama and contrasts it favorably with the distinction between a definition of punishment and a justification for it which received a good deal of attention in the middle of the twentieth century in anglophone philosophical circles. My chief thesis is that the philosophical lesson to be drawn from the widely acknowledge failure of efforts to further the philosophical understanding of punishment by the latter route is Nietzsche’s: that the concept in question and the practices that fall under it are fundamentally insusceptible to ahistorical methods. I argue for the thesis proper in the first section of the paper, and explore consequences of it for our understanding of the connection between punishment and justice in the second.

Translating Nietzsche's Atheism(s)

The paper will examine Kaufmann’s translation of Genealogy of Morals (GM), specifically a section of GM III §27, where the translator’s choice of a single word skews an important insight of Nietzsche’s on the question of modern atheism. Kaufmann’s influential translation, highly regarded for its stylistic refinement, has served as the starting point for most English translations that followed, and so his rendering of this section continues to impact the current Anglo-American reception of Nietzsche’s work. By challenging Kaufmann’s rendering of an important section of GM III §27, the paper will extrapolate a more nuanced understanding of atheism from Nietzsche’s position. This awareness problematizes current attempts to equate Nietzsche with a scientific naturalist program.

Moral Genealogy of Michel Foucault in the Ad Hominem Argument in the Terminology of 'Cicak' and 'Buaya'

The feud that occurred between government agencies, in this case involving the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), and government agencies, in this case the National Police, became an ongoing problem that could be considered as a whole. The terminology regarding the KPK and Polri cases, which are synonymous with the term lizard and crocodile, is a separate understanding that needs attention. Public perception of the case varies. There is support for the KPK, but there are also those who justify the treatment of the Police themselves in looking at this case. Foucault's moral genealogy uses ad hominem arguments as the basis for forming his genealogy, used to expose the understanding of lizards and crocodiles. An understanding that society takes for granted as truth and morality. In the genealogy, Foucault sees that in the context of the lizard and the crocodile, there is a kind of power that is to be played and used for a certain interest. There is a purpose to be sought from such a political situation and condition. So, looking at the context of lizards and crocodiles in ad hominem studies is one of the studies of message communication. Political communication that wants to open up new understandings of the logic of human thinking as a whole.

Morality and feeling powerful: Nietzsche’s power-based sentimental pragmatism

ABSTRACT In recent work, Bernard Reginster argues for an interpretation of the relationship between morality and the affects in Nietzsche which he calls ‘sentimental pragmatism’. According to this view, the values, value judgments, and moral practices agents develop and adopt function to serve specific affective needs. Reginster deploys this interpretation to argue for a functional interpretation of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, according to which all three essays of the Genealogy comprise psychological studies designed to uncover Christian morality’s function to serve the affect of ressentiment. In this paper, I first develop Reginster’s sentimental pragmatism by specifying a need to feel powerful as the one affective need which all moral developments aim to serve on Nietzsche’s view. Then, I argue that while Reginster’s functional interpretation of the Genealogy makes sense of key moral phenomena discussed in the first and third essays, it works less well to explain key developments in the second essay. I then suggest that my power-based sentimental pragmatism does better in this regard, allowing us to identify one basic function of morality that Nietzsche intends to uncover in all three essays of the Genealogy, one basic affective need it aims to serve: the need to feel powerful.

Nietzsche and “we knowers”: Comments on Reginster's The Will to Nothingness

AbstractNietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality is strikingly book‐ended by the theme of knowledge‐seeking: the Preface opens with the ominous claim that “[w]e are unknown to ourselves, we knowers”, and the Third Essay's climax is the assertion that scientific, scholarly activity does not stand in opposition to the ascetic ideal but is instead only that ideal's most recent and insidious instantiation. This feature of the text is absent from Reginster's The Will to Nothingness. Nonetheless, the interpretive machinery that Reginster develops in his reading of the Genealogy as a genealogy and critique of morality can also go a long way towards helping us to make sense of the text as, at the same time, a genealogy and critique of knowledge‐seeking. Making use of Reginster's account in this way serves to illuminate both the interpretive power and some of the limitations of his reading.

On the self‐undermining functionality critique of morality

AbstractNietzsche's injunction to examine “the value of values” can be heard in a pragmatic key, as inviting us to consider not whether certain values aretrue, but what theydofor us. This oddly neglected pragmatic approach to Nietzsche now receives authoritative support from Bernard Reginster's new book, which offers a compelling and notably cohesive interpretation of Nietzsche'sOn the Genealogy of Morality. In this essay, I reconstruct Reginster's account of Nietzsche's critique of morality as a “self‐undermining functionality critique” and raise three problems for it: (i) Is there room within an etiological conception of function for the notion of self‐undermining functionality? (ii) If Nietzsche's critique is internal and based solely on the function it ascribes to morality, where does that critique derive its normative significance from? (iii) Does Reginster's account not make out ascetic morality to be more universally dysfunctional than it is, given that some priestly types have done remarkably well out of morality?

Replies to Wallace, Queloz, and Kirwin

AbstractIn this article, I reply to the comments offered by R. Jay Wallace, Matthieu Queloz, and Claire Kirwin on my book, The Will to Nothingness. An Essay on Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality (OUP, 2021). These comments and my replies cover central features of the book, including my analysis of ressentiment as an expression of the will to power; the concept of self‐undermining functionality I introduce to make sense of Nietzsche's critique of the ascetic ideal; and my reasons for omitting to examine the “unconditional will to truth,” which he presents as the latest embodiment of this ideal.