Where do our values come from?
Follow the three inquiries of On the Genealogy of Morality: how history, affects and relations of power enter into our evaluations.
An original introduction. This guide accompanies the work; it is neither the complete text nor a translation.
Shift the moral question
The preface asks that the value of values be called into question. The inquiry therefore seeks more than a date of origin. It examines the conditions making an evaluation possible and its effects on life. Distinguish historical claims, some of them disputed, from psychological hypotheses and philosophical criticism: their strength cannot all be assessed in the same way.
Read ressentiment without rushing to accuse
The first essay analyses a way of creating values through reaction against an adversary. Ressentiment does not simply name every instance of anger or every protest against injustice. Do not turn the concept into a weapon for dismissing an injured person. Ask instead how opposition can come to determine everything someone desires and admires.
Understand the need to give meaning
The later essays address guilt, bad conscience and the ascetic ideal. Nietzsche examines how suffering becomes interpretable and sometimes valued. Abandoning a belief does not automatically free someone from the need it answered. Ask both what an interpretation helps a person endure and which possibilities of life it may close off through the meaning it supplies.
A value deserves examination through its history, motivations and consequences.
Your turn to think.
- Is a value you defend defined mainly against someone or something?
- How can you distinguish a critique of morality from a justification of injustice?
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