Philosophy › The 19th century › Friedrich Nietzsche
On the Genealogy of Morals
1887· Book or text· Ethics & how to live
Well documentedSolid records, texts or physical evidence.
Nietzsche's three essays tracing how Christian and modern moral values arose historically, from resentment, guilt and self-denial.
See it on the Philosophy map →The idea
Idea: our moral values have a history, and not a flattering one. Essay one: ancient nobles called themselves 'good' and the lowly 'bad'; the oppressed, out of ressentiment (resentment), flipped this, calling the strong 'evil' and meekness 'good', a 'slave revolt in morality'. Essay two: guilt grew out of debt (German Schuld means both). Essay three: the ascetic ideal of self-denial. Main objection: the history is speculative, and where a value came from does not show it is wrong (the 'genetic fallacy').
Why it matters
It taught later thinkers, notably Michel Foucault, to ask where ideas and values come from and whose interests they serve.
Where it comes from
Published in 1887 as 'a polemic' supplementing Beyond Good and Evil. Its historical claims rest mostly on word origins and psychology, not documented history.
Still debated
Whether Nietzsche condemned slave morality or only described it, and how literally his history should be read, are still argued.
Connections (2)
▸Friedrich Nietzsche wrote On the Genealogy of MoralsWell documented
The connection
Feeling Beyond Good and Evil had been misunderstood, Nietzsche wrote this sharper follow-up. It turns his historical method on morality, asking not whether values are true but where they came from and what needs they served. It gives his fullest account of 'slave morality', guilt and the self-denying ideal of priests.
When and how
Written in Sils Maria, Switzerland, in July 1887 and published that November in Leipzig at his own expense.
How we know
The title page calls it 'a polemic' meant to supplement and clarify Beyond Good and Evil; his letters record its writing.
Debates and open questions
Scholars disagree whether it is meant as real history, a psychological thought experiment, or rhetoric to shake readers out of moral complacency.
▸On the Genealogy of Morals inspired the genealogies of Postmodernism and post-structuralism (Foucault, Derrida)Well documented
The connection
Nietzsche argued that moral values have a history of power struggles behind their claims to timeless truth. Foucault took the method, and its name, to trace how prisons, madness and sexuality came to be defined, arguing that knowledge and power are entangled. Derrida and Gilles Deleuze also drew heavily on Nietzsche.
When and how
Foucault's essay 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History' (1971), then Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976); Deleuze's Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962).
How we know
Foucault named his method genealogy after Nietzsche and wrote the 1971 essay on it; in a 1984 interview he called himself 'simply Nietzschean'.
Debates and open questions
Whether the French thinkers read Nietzsche accurately, or built a 'French Nietzsche' of their own, is debated among Nietzsche scholars.