“Good and Evil, Good and Bad” from Genealogy of Morals

Lecture Notes

1) How does such an understanding of the term “good” relate to Plato’s story “The Euthyphro”?

2) Why are we talking about the Genealogy of Morals in this class at this time?
a) What does this have to do with existentialism?

3) Genealogy: The study or investigation of ancestry and family histories.

a) So, this is a study of the ancestry (or origin) of morals; or the origin of the moral concept
of good
4) Etymology: a history of a word; the study of the sources and development of words
a) Why would etymological study of the word good be necessary here?
5) Nietzsche begins by offering a common historical understanding of the origin of the word “good”.
a) These “historians of morality” as he calls them equate “good” with “unegoistic actions”.
i) Such actions were called “good” by the recipients of the “unegoistic actions”.
(1) Such “unegoistic actions” are considered to be altruistic acions
(a) Altruistic: Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.
(2) Altruistic actions became known as good through habitually calling such actions good.
b) Nietzsche disagrees with this conception: that the origin of the term “good” rests with
those to whom goodness was shown. (28)
i) Nietzsche thinks that the only real way to understand the genealogy of the word “good” is to take
an etymological approach.
ii) Instead, it was “the good” themselves who coined the term
(1) “the good” refers to the noble, the powerful, the haves (opposed to the have-nots), the pure,
(a) All of these terms referred to blond headed humans who were “of the superior race”
(2) And the antithesis of “good” or “noble” became “bad” or “plebeian”
(a) These terms referred to the dark, black-haired aboriginal inhabitants.
iii) So, the word “good”, according to Nietzsche, does not necessarily stem from altruistic actions. Nor
does it stem from the useful.
6) The “pure one”, from the beginning merely referred to a person who washed regularly, who forbids
himself certain foods that cause skin ailments, who does not sleep with dirty women of lower strata, who
has an aversion to blood – and no more.
a) The “pure one” was basically an anal-retentive individual.
b) The only “pure ones’ existed in the priestly aristocracy
c) And with such a priestly class, everything became more evil
7) How can, from Nietzsche’s perspective, a noble class consisting of priests and rulers become the source of
both good and evil when this class gave rise to the concepts of “good” and “bad”?
a) The priests and the rulers branched from one another.
i) The rulers valued physical power, abundance, and health; and they valued everything that
preserved these values namely war, hunting, etc.
ii) The priests had a different vision, one that did not value war and fighting.
(1) Why is this?
b) The priests became the most evil enemies of the rulers.
i) How could an impotent class become the most evil enemies of the rulers?
(1) Their impotence was what made them evil
(2) Their inabilities gave rise to hatred
 c) Who were the priests that Nietzsche refers to?
i) The Jews
ii) And the Jews have committed the most egregious act against “the noble”.
(1) The Jews committed spiritual revenge on the noble class.
(2) What was the nature of such revenge?
(a) They radically revalued their enemies’ values.
(b) They inverted the aristocratic value-equation
(c) From their perspective, “the good” were now the poor, the have-nots, the weak. And “the
bad” were now the powerful, the noble, the haves.
(d) With the Jews begins the slave revolt in morality
(i) And this morality is what we know today: the slave morality
8) Ressentiment: a spirit of revenge that festers in the weak, prompting them to seek vengeance against the
strong, the noble, and the talented.
a) This ressentiment is what fuels the slave morality.
b) What does ressentiment need in order to flourish?
i) It needs a hostile external world.
ii) Why is this?
c) Conversely, the noble method of valuation is based on self-affirmation.
i) The noble class did not establish its happiness or values artificially.
ii) What is meant by “artificial”?
(1) This means to deceive oneself, and to persuade oneself that she is happy
iii) The Noble lived in openness with himself
(1) They embraced their strengths
iv) The slaves lived in denial.
(1) The slave morality demands that strengths should not be expressed as a strength
9) Nietzsche thought that the slaves separated the inseparable.
a) He thought that the slaves were incorrectly claiming that strength can be separated from
acts of strength.
i) Is it possible to be strong without demonstrating strength?
b) To make such a claim is to artificially create a strength out of a weakness.
i) This is done artificially by merely changing what you call a strength.
ii) And if strength is separable from action, then all weaknesses have the potential to become
strengths.
iii) This is what Nietzsche calls sublime self-deception
c) Sublime self-deception is used to create the slave virtues.
i) Obedience becomes a virtue because the obedient one is forced to do as he is told.
ii) Patience becomes a virtues because the patient one is compelled to wait
iii) Forgiveness becomes a virtue because the forgiving one has no recourse
10) These virtues have now become part of our morality, a morality that originates with the slaves, the
priests…The Weak!