ABSTRACT
In order to understand the development and scope of Nietzsche’s work, we need to examine his concepts of ‘genealogy’ and ‘genealogical critique’. Nietzsche developed what he described as a ‘genealogical’ mode of analysis in order to distinguish his approach from that of traditional historians of morality and culture. His genealogical critique of ‘morality’ and ‘history’ will be the focus of this and the following two chapters. As we have seen, Nietzsche’s reflection on metaphor explored the historical origin and constitution of our concept of ‘truth’. His work on ‘genealogy’ extends this project in order to consider how we should understand the historical development of our moral values. This project receives its most sustained expression in On the Genealogy of Morality. In this book, Nietzsche sets himself both a historical and a methodological problem. The historical question may be stated simply: by what path did we arrive at the ‘moral’ evaluation of humanity that assumes our highest and best values to be represented by belief in ‘Christianity’, ‘conscience’ and modern egalitarian politics? The methodological question poses the problem of how we determine the concept of ‘value’ in the first place. Is it not true, Nietzsche asks, that we determine our ideas of value on the basis of prior values? Does not the entire history of ‘morality’ presuppose both the value of morality and a sovereign individual with a natural capacity for moral responsibility?
