Summary Of Genealogy Of Morality By Nietzsche

In Nietzsche’s First Essay in “Genealogy of Morals,” he analyzes the history and evolution behind the meanings of “good” and “bad” and, later, “good” and “evil.” He begins by recognizing that, originally, goodness was determined by the “noble, powerful [and] high-stationed” elites, as opposed to who was “bad”—the commoners, the “low-minded…plebeian(s)” (113). This split between both classes creates a “pathos of distance,” where the upper-class seizes the opportunity to “create values and to coin names for values” (113). In other words, what was “good” meant what was characteristic of the higher class, meaning that only the actions the Aristocratic classes qualified as good behavior. Of course, one can see the inherit issues with such moral
Downtrodden for so long, the commoners and the plebeians take part in “the slave revolt of morality” that Nietzsche says begins with “ressentiment,” a jealously fueled manifestation of morality that consists of an “outward” resentment of the “external world… [such that] its action is fundamentally reaction” (124). In other words, the “slaves” or the commoners described in the first moral dynamic now use their place as the “pure” ones in society to outwardly label others as “evil.” And, who are the evil “enemies?” Nietzsche very directly states that the “good man of the other morality, precisely the noble, powerful” are, in fact, the “evil” (128). Here, one can see that the elites who once dictated and defined “good and bad” behavior are now viewed as enemies of the commoners. This dynamic then creates an extra layer to being “good”—it is not enough that that the pure are now pure, they now must actively resent and vehemently despise the “evil” elites, creating the new “good and evil”