Cody Django Redmond

Towards a Genealogy of Morals [Nietzsche]

In Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 260, Nietzsche makes the claim that there are two basic types of traits which regularly reoccur in combination, linked to one another: master moralities and slave moralities.  While initially speaking historically about culture, Nietzsche also claims that these traits are found within individuals.

“In all higher and more complex cultures, there are also apparent attempts to mediate between the two moralities, and even more often a confusion of the two and a mutual misunderstanding, indeed sometimes even their violent juxtaposition—even in the same person, within one single breast.”[1]

The ‘master moralities’ are the  “proud exalted states of soul that are thought to distinguish and define the hierarchy.”[2]  Societal morals emerge from the power of individuals, for “the noble person feels himself as determining value” and “everything that he knows of himself he reveres.”[3]  Slave morality is treated with slightly less reverence, and Nietzsche first qualifies that a slave morality is the morality of a slave – someone who experiences oppression at the expense of another; someone for whom the master morality, as the presence of the other, is completely unattainable, and from whom his own stature is absolutely diminished.  It therefore only seems natural, like an animal born into captivity, that the slave, in the creation of his own morality, will carry a different standard of valuation.  The slave cannot measure values by the standards of his master, for it is by the masters valuation that he is a slave.  A different form for justifying a slave’s life, and for affirming a slave’s place in the human condition is necessary.

Nietzsche suggests that the chronically oppressed “probably express a pessimistic suspicion about the whole human condition, and might even “condemn the human being along with his condition.”  Further, they are “sceptical and distrustful… keenly distrustful of everything that the powerful revere as ‘good’” and would like to convince themselves that even the happiness of the masters is not genuine.[4]  For the slave, it is the qualities of life that relieve chronic which are affirmed and valued: pity, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness.  It is perhaps worthwhile to note that relief is a temporalizing attribute.  Nietzsche concludes “Slave morality is essentially a morality of utility” and that “it is upon this hearth that the famous opposition ‘good’ and ‘evil’ originates.”[5]

In Genealogy of Morals - the subsequent work to Beyond Good and Evil - Nietzsche takes up this theme for the basis of three essays.  To be more precise, the essays explain how ‘noble’ conceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are construed as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ by a new ‘priestly nature’ of man.[6]  In essay one, Nietzsche posits that a slave morality emerges from a slave class in order to devalue their masters.  Essay two explains how the slave morality is eventually brought against the slaves themselves, with a type of internalization that resolves with ‘bad conscious’ and ‘guilt’.[7]  The third essay concerns the ascetic values of Christianity and how they results in a devaluing of human nature.

It is by way of historical investigation that Nietzsche reveals and develops his ideas, establishing slave morality as the origin for the Christian climate of Europe.  From the origin, Nietzsche provides a historical ‘tracing’ of how a morality transforms from an instrument of the slave class, to a belief, to the ‘transcendent’ religious doctrine that is found in the institutionalizing church.  The ‘tracing’ is obviously not to be taken as a historical truth; history is always degrees of interpretation and selection.  It is telling that the book is subtitled “a polemic” - one is well cautioned that Nietzsche will not be playing by consensus in his historical analysis.

While one may wish to ignore this as a work of historical speculation, I believe that it’s importance rests not with historical investigation, but with the philosophy which makes use of historical description to render ways of thinking about man and his nature.   It is particularly telling that Nietzsche stated in preface that it is not his concern to engage in “hypothesis-mongering” - what’s at stake is the value of morality.[8]



SIGNIFICANCE OF A GENEALOGICAL FRAMEWORK

The ‘Genealogical framework’ is a way for Nietzsche to shift focus from the foreground of historical analysis to the background; to analyse societal currents and the conditions which give rise to moral significance.[9]  By drawing on history for significance, Nietzsche is able to present a much more detailed explication of his ideas and their importance.  Along the way, he challenges us to read history from the margins,

The work of Genealogy of Morals is decidedly non-metaphysical, and instead, attention is directed to naturalism – man is a natural being, found in an environment, conditioned by his environment,.  Further, Man develops “second natures” - over time, as perspectives are handed down generation by generation, they become internalized.  Nietzsche seems to urge his readers to understand that the standards and perspectives that are found within their fields of intellection are not universal, but have been shaped historically.  It is by way of this intuitive approach that we arrive at a more developed understanding of the certain commitments that Nietzsche himself holds to (biology, health, perspectivism, and ultimately will-to-power) while rejecting doctrines and ideology in general.

There are many ways to read Nietzsche (the skeptical, pragmatic, and existential bodies all have their interpretation), but I think, as an almost purely descriptive ‘historical genealogy’ , Genealogy of Morals, in particular, is a type of work that benefits from a phenomenological reading, for it seems to inquire into history from the perspective of subjectivity – the actions of individuals as found within a society, within conflict, and within history.

I think it’s interesting that Nietzsche prefaces Genealogy of Morals, which, among other things, reads as a critique of religious doctrine, with a quote from Matthew 6:21 (“Where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.”)  Nietzsche develops this quote to reveal a truth of human nature: man cares singularly about “bringing something home.”[10]  It is from this truth – a natural truth – that we can understand that men are driven to action when they are unable to “bring something home.”  In the case of the slaves, it is their ressentiment from which the slave morality is birthed.

Further, I find an interesting play in the passage.  “Men of knowledge” do not care to analyse the “so-called ‘experiences’.”  Man is too busy, to concerned with his own life, and when he does shift focus to the reflective, is continually met with the ‘eternal’ question of “who we are.”  Acknowledging the limitations of our intuitive perceptual experiences[11], and acknowledging the human being as a being without Knowledge with respect to himself, and futher, acknowledging the human drive to “bring something home” Nietzsche, conversely, engages with a Genealogy, in order to clarify an understanding of “how we come to be.”

Nietzsche seems to be saying that there is a genealogy at work in our present – we are what we have come to be.  This truth cannot be explained by our ‘science’ or any departmentalized, categorical, positivistic knowledge.  Further, it seems a bastardization to accept our present (in this case, morality, as it is found as Christian morality in the society in which Nietzsche lives) as absolute Truth.  Through an analysis of historical developments, genealogy seems to be about one thing: bringing historical experience home.

I wonder if there isn’t some correlation between Nietzsches critique of doctrine and his apparent commitment to the importance of experience: perhaps doctrine impedes a receptiveness to experience, which seems to be the only real value for the curious.

Genealogy enables Nietzsche to affirm his commitment to perspectivism while rendering a new historical approach to value; values emerge out of struggle and conflict - not from a transcendental realm.  Philosophically, it’s a response to Kant; culturally, it’s a slight against God.


IMPLICIT STANDARDS OF VALUATION

A typical criticism against Nietzsche is that one can’t criticize standards without imposing one’s own standards.  Fair enough, for Nietzsche’s genealogical method is not value-neutral.  Value-neutral would imply “objective,” one of the values deriving from Nietzsche’s positivist culture, and one of the values he abhors as a monstrous falsification.  Objectivity pertains to scientific data; not to value.  Instrumentally, beliefs can be pragmatic, such as the ‘objectivity’ of science.  But, in the case of absolute claims on reality, time, truth, the human condition, this, to Nietzsche, and to the doctrine of perspectivism, is blasphemous.  If moral value has been shown to be a phenomena of cultural conflict and not dependent on divine absolutes, it must be resolutely perspectival – relative to the perspective of the culture from which it emerged.  Shared faith and shared beliefs are held by communities of individuals who share the same genealogy.

The genealogical method indeed invokes an implicit standard of valuation.  Nietzsche does not come out and prescribe a new system of values; he does not wish to indulge in ‘systematic thought’.  Instead, I like to think of Nietzsche commitments as ‘meta-ontological’ commitments: natural, intuitive ways which help to discern and create new modes of valuation based on experience.

The implicit standard is an “enhancement of life”, or what Nietzsche later develops as the “will to power”.  Although many have enjoyed construing Nietzsche’s articulation of will to power for political or “immoral” “unethical” purposes, closer detail reveals something nuanced, interesting, and violent; violent for it forces one to recognize one’s natural position.  Nietzsche finds a slave morality life-denying; to acknowledge such a commitment would surely be painful.

I don’t believe that ‘enhancement of life’ as a mode of evaluation should come as a shock: there seems to be certain naturally intuited values that are common to all human beings: health is preferable to illness, safety is preferable to danger, food is preferable to hunger, control is preferable to being controlled, power is preferable to subjugation.

Nietzsche presents the Greeks as exemplars of those who chose to “enhance life”.  Values were determined by the Noble and upheld by the social: valued attributes were fame, reputation, strength, wealth, health, power.  Further, self-affirmation was present in the culture as a whole — they kept their distance to foreigners, the ambassadors of foreign culture.  This had nothing to do with a Christian morality which might equate ‘us’ with ‘good’ and ‘them’ with ‘evil’.  It was purely self-affirmation in sense of cultivating and preserving a strong culture.

“Freedom” was the slavish conception of will.  To be “free” was to no longer be a slave, free to receive one’s proper due.  But Christianity seems to have missed out on a crucial element of Freedom: free action is nothing without value, with the degree of value is the context which gives rise to the individual free action.  It is not enough to cry for “freedom.”  To be free is only to signify that one takes part in one’s own field of intellection – one creates one’s own values out of reverence and affirmation for ones’ self – this does not seem to bode well with ascetic practice.


CONCLUSION

The value of a genealogical framework is that it provides a way to discern value, and modes of valuation as they are found in history, and further, it is a way to explain the present condition, to understand that historical values are still at work.  Genealogy does not participate in the traditional Christian binary standards of moral/immoral valuations, but rather works to provide a mode of analysis grounded in naturalism and perspectivism, both of which are arguably compatible with the skeptic, nihilist, and pragmatic readings of Nietzsche, if one wanted to start that argument.

Genealogy of Morals is an elaboration of thought, not a prescription.  It is not to be taken in the sense that one ought to affirm a master morality over a slave morality (as is often misconstrued by quick readings of the doctrine of will-to-power) but, as an argument against the “faith in opposite values.”[12]

As Walter Kaufman states in the ‘Editor’s Introduction’, Nietzsche is dealing with the origins of moral phenomena.[13]  It is this unique approach to morals and culture as a whole (as phenomena: with a history, a structure, and a future) which seems to separate Nietzsche from his peers and his society as a whole.  The over-all purpose, from my perspective, seems to be that Nietzsche wishes his readers to reflect on what it means to awaken to new phenomena, to open new perspectives, and “as the will to truth thus gains self-consciousness” to let doctrine perish.[14]


[1]    BGE 260, p 153.
[2]    ibid.
[3]    ibid. p. 154
[4]    ibid, p. 155
[5]    ibid. p. 156
[6]    Genealogy of Morals 1.6, p. 33.
[7]    “All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward” ibid, 2.16, p.84
[8]    ibid. preface 5, p. 19
[9]    It brings to mind the German movement of the “Gestalt” psychologists
[10]  Genealogy of Morals, Preface 1, p. 15
[11]  “..count the twelve  trembling bell-stokes of our experience, our life, our being – and alas! miscount them.”  ibid.
[12]  Ibid, p. 11.
[13]  Genealogy of Morals, Editors Introduction 4, p. 10.
[14]  Genealogy of Morals 3.28, p. 163