The Genealogy of Morals

Three linked essays, written fast in 1887, that trace our morality of good and evil to a slave revolt driven by the weak's resentment of the strong.

by Friedrich Nietzsche675 passages held

German, the original language
English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Zur Genealogie Der Moral
Original language: German
Form: Polemic

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Overview

Paul Rée, once Nietzsche's close friend, had argued that morality grew up out of forgotten calculations of usefulness. Nietzsche found the explanation shallow, and in 1887 answered it with three linked essays he called a polemic and offered, in the subtitle, as a clarification and supplement to the previous year's Beyond Good and Evil. The first essay tells the decisive story: the values "good" and "evil" were not always ours. A warrior aristocracy had called itself good simply as the strong, the healthy, the noble; then the weak, unable to strike back in deed, took their revenge in imagination, inverting the scale so that meekness became good and strength became evil. Nietzsche names the motor of that inversion ressentiment, and the event the slave revolt in morality. The second essay derives conscience and guilt from the brutal old history of debt and punishment; the third turns on the ascetic ideal — the worship of self-denial — and tracks it from the priest into philosophy and, most provocatively, into modern science, which still believes, ascetically, in the unconditional value of truth. Of all his books this is the most sustained and the most argued, and it became the one most read and taught. The suspicion first floated in The Dawn of Day here hardens into a genealogy that will not let a reader assume their own values are the natural ones.

Key concepts

What is ressentiment?

Ressentiment is Nietzsche's French term for a poisoned, impotent resentment that turns creative. Those too weak to strike back in deed take revenge in imagination instead: they reinterpret their oppressors as evil and their own weakness as chosen goodness. Unlike an honest grudge that discharges and passes, ressentiment festers, turns inward, and eventually invents a whole morality. It is the motor of the slave revolt in morals.

What was the slave revolt in morality?

The slave revolt is the event the first essay narrates. A warrior aristocracy had simply called itself good — strong, healthy, noble — and the wretched bad. The powerless, driven by ressentiment, then inverted that scale: strength became evil, and meekness, humility and pity became good. This imaginative revenge, Nietzsche argues, is the origin of the very moral values Europe still lives by.

Where does Nietzsche say bad conscience came from?

From the ancient, brutal relationship of debtor and creditor. The second essay derives guilt, in German Schuld, from debt, Schulden: early societies made pain the payment for broken obligations, and when the human animal was caged by society and could no longer discharge its aggression outward, that cruelty turned inward against the self. Bad conscience is that self-inflicted suffering — the instinct for cruelty internalised.

What is the ascetic ideal?

The ascetic ideal is the worship of self-denial — the conviction that renouncing the body, the senses and worldly life is holy. The third essay tracks it from the priest, who uses it to give suffering a meaning, into philosophy and even modern science, which still serves it through an unconditional faith in truth. Nietzsche sees it as life turning against itself, yet also the only meaning suffering has so far been given.

What does genealogy mean as a method here?

A genealogy is a history of descent, and Nietzsche uses it to trace moral values back to their real, often ugly origins rather than assume they are timeless. Instead of asking whether good and evil are true, he asks how they came to be, and under what conditions and interests. The method's force is that it makes it impossible to keep taking your inherited values as simply natural.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Slave Revolt in Morality

The values good and evil were not always ours. A warrior aristocracy called itself good as the strong and noble; the weak, unable to strike back in deed, took their revenge in imagination and inverted the scale, the event Nietzsche names the slave revolt in morality.

The first essay tells the decisive story. Nietzsche separates the noble good-and-bad, spoken from strength, from the later good-and-evil minted by ressentiment, the impotent hatred of those who can avenge themselves only by revaluing their oppressors as wicked. Meekness becomes virtue, power becomes sin, and the reversal succeeds so completely that its origin is forgotten. Answering Paul Ree's account of morality as forgotten utility, the polemic refuses to let a reader assume their own values are the natural ones, and hardens the suspicion first floated in The Dawn of Day into a history.

morality
resentment
values
social hierarchy
human nature
justice
religion

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Guilt, Conscience and the Ascetic Ideal

Where do the bad conscience and the worship of self-denial come from? The second and third essays derive guilt from the old bargaining of debt and punishment, and track the ascetic ideal from the priest into philosophy and even into modern science.

Conscience, Nietzsche argues, is cruelty turned inward once the instincts could no longer discharge outward, guilt born from the brutal arithmetic of debtor and creditor. The third essay confronts the ascetic ideal, the reverence for self-denial that gave suffering a meaning and so held nihilism off; he traces it from the priest into the philosopher and, most provocatively, into science, which still believes ascetically in the unconditional value of truth. Of all his books this is the most sustained and the most argued, and it became the one most read and taught.

guilt
conscience
asceticism
punishment
suffering
nihilism
meaning
psychology

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Within this work

passages held: 675
distinct concepts: 624
by passages held, corpus-wide: #35

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: morality with psychology.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 521 shared passages in all. 79 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
morality	psychology	67
morality	resentment	60
psychology	resentment	52
morality	power dynamics	49
power dynamics	resentment	40
guilt	psychology	37
human nature	morality	34
justice	morality	28
human nature	psychology	25
guilt	morality	22
asceticism	psychology	20
guilt	human nature	18
power dynamics	psychology	16
justice	resentment	14
asceticism	human nature	11
justice	psychology	7
justice	power dynamics	5
asceticism	morality	4
asceticism	power dynamics	4
asceticism	resentment	4
guilt	resentment	4

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1873 Aufsätze und Vorreden aus dem Nachlaß
Not a book he wrote but a volume his editors gathered from his early papers — prefaces to books he never actually wrote among them.
DE
1873 On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne)
An essay he left in manuscript in 1873; its picture of truth as forgotten metaphor did its real work a century later.
DE
1881 The Dawn of Day (Morgenröte)
The book Nietzsche later marked as the start of his campaign against morality — the least read of the mature works, and the seed of the Genealogy.
DE
1882 The Joyful Wisdom (La Gaya Scienza)
Aphorism 125 gives us the madman and "God is dead"; aphorism 341, the eternal return — the most personal of the mature books.
DEEN
1883 Thus Spake Zarathustra (Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen)
His one work of fiction and his most famous, written across 1883–85; the fourth part he withheld from the public entirely.
DEEN
1889 Twilight of the Idols (Götzendämmerung)
A short, savage précis of his whole philosophy, written in a week in 1888 as his last lucid year ran out.
DE
Beyond Good and Evil (Jenseits Von Gut Und Böse)
The 1886 prelude to his late assault on morality, arguing in the open what Zarathustra had delivered in parable.
DE
Ecce Homo (Ecce Homo: Wie Man Wird Was Man Ist)
His last book, a self-portrait written weeks before the collapse and kept from print by his sister until 1908.
DE
Homer and Classical Philology (Homer Und Die Klassische Philologie)
His inaugural lecture at Basel, given at twenty-four — the philologist's public debut, and already the argument that would raise art above scholarship.
DE
Human, All Too Human (Menschliches Allzumenschliches Ein Buch Fuer Freie Geister)
The turn from Wagnerian metaphysics to the cool aphorist — the book in which the "free spirit" first speaks in his own voice.
DE
Nietzsche contra Wagner (Nietzsche Kontra Wagner)
A montage of passages taken from his own earlier books, put together at the very end to show he had judged Wagner rightly all along.
DE
The Antichrist (Der Antichrist)
Intended as the first book of the "revaluation of all values" he did not live to finish — his fiercest word on Christianity, held back until 1895.
DE
The Birth of Tragedy or Hellenism and Pessimism (Die Geburt Der Tragödie)
His first book, and the one that cost him his standing among classicists; its discursive prophecy he would spend the next decade outgrowing.
DEEN
The Case of Wagner (Der Fall Wagner)
His settling of accounts with the composer he had idolised, written in the same 1888 burst as Twilight of the Idols.
DE
The Genealogy of Morals (Zur Genealogie Der Moral) you are here DEEN
The Will to Power (Der Wille Zur Macht)
The most notorious book under his name, and one he never assembled: his sister and Peter Gast made it from his notebooks after his collapse.
DE
We Philologists (Wir Philologen)
The scholar's turn against his own discipline: notes for an "untimely meditation" on philology that he abandoned around 1875.
DE

— or open another of their works