On the Genealogy of Morality: Friedrich Nietzsche's Polemic

Nietzsche is inherently polemic. This is a characterization that Nietzsche has applied to himself; the book that both informs, and is informed by every other book Nietzsche has written on the subject of revaluation of existing values, On the Genealogy of Morality, is subtitled simply A Polemic. It is clear that in this context, Nietzsche’s polemic is derived from the extent to which Nietzsche’s argument will invariably conflict with the existing system of valuation, to which the book is meant to serve as an arrow. However, absent is any indication that there exists an internal polemic derived from any form of logical incompleteness. The same may not be said for Thus Spoke Zarathustra, an introduction to which, written by one of its earliest modern translators, RJ Hollingdale, reads: “The book’s worst fault is excess.” Its excesses here, I will argue, derive from Nietzsche’s attempt at metaphysics, which constitutes Nietzsche’s true polemic, inasmuch as it in turn makes Zarathustra vulnerable to logical incompleteness. This vulnerability may be best observed when contrasted with his other works, such as the Genealogy of Morality; Hollingdale continues to write in his introduction: “As it happens, excess is the one fault no one could impute Nietzsche’s subsequent works: there concision, brevity, directness of statement are present to a degree not even approximated by any other German philosopher.” Such discipline may be said to characterize the Genealogy, and ultimately results in an overarching logical completeness to the book, which will here be defined as the ability for an argument to safely be brought to its logical conclusion through reason alone. In fact, this is likely the book’s greatest strength. To summarize, the first essay of the Genealogy introduces the dichotomous relationship between the master morality, which characterizes the strong-willed, also referred to those who create values, whereas the slave morality characterizes the weak-willed, and feel