On the Genealogy of Morality — Nietzsche

Not 'what is good?' but 'where did our sense of good come from, and does it still serve life?'

Tracing it back to its historical birth — the conditions and needs it grew from — so it can be judged, not just obeyed.

Life-affirming values make people stronger and more alive; life-denying ones shrink people with shame and fear of their own drives.

Does it affirm life (make us stronger) or deny it (make us smaller)?

A lowly origin doesn't by itself make a value false; seeing it was made just lets us reopen whether it still serves us.

Values feel eternal only because we forgot they were made; give them a birthday and you can weigh them.

Ordinary ethics judges actions inside morality; genealogy steps outside and asks where morality itself came from.

Trace the value's origin → see it was made, so reopen it → weigh it: does it affirm or deny life?

The strong's code: 'good' = noble, strong, proud; 'bad' is just a mild afterthought for the weak.

The weak's code: brand the strong 'evil' first, then call one's own meekness and patience 'good' by contrast.

Master morality opposes good to 'bad' (an afterthought); slave morality opposes good to 'evil' (named first, out of resentment).

'Good' comes first (a proud yes to self); 'bad' is only an afterthought for whatever is unlike the noble.

'Evil' comes first (a no to the strong); 'good' is defined as simply not being like them.

Slave morality re-labels weakness as virtue — being unable to take revenge becomes 'forgiveness'; timidity becomes 'humility'.

Nietzsche's central claim: the weak WON — slave morality (meekness as good) became mainstream morality.

It starts from a proud yes to one's own strength, not from bitterness at others.

The powerless taking imaginary revenge by re-labelling the strong 'evil' and themselves 'good' — blocked revenge turned into values.

The weak defeating the strong not by force but by inventing a morality that condemns them.

It needs an enemy to exist, so you define yourself by what you hate instead of living your own life.

The noble says 'I am good' first; ressentiment needs an enemy first — 'I am good because I'm not THEM'.

Ask whether the value needs an enemy to survive — ressentiment collapses without one; real care survives when no one's watching.

Ressentiment is the engine: it's the feeling that secretly invented slave morality's 'good vs evil'.

Inward and imaginary — they can't strike back in the world, so they strike back in values.

No — he makes a testable claim: a value driven by ressentiment always needs an enemy; remove it and the value collapses.

From debt — wrongdoing seen as a debt to be paid off in suffering (the words for 'guilt' and 'debt' share a root).

If a debt went unpaid, the creditor could take payment in the debtor's pain — so wrongdoing became a debt settled in suffering.

The pain of aggression turned back against yourself when your instincts can no longer be discharged outward.

Society's rules block them from going outward, so with no other target the aggression attacks the self.

'All instincts that do not discharge themselves outwardly turn inward' — the source of bad conscience.

It's an 'illness', but a creative one — turning inward gave humans an inner world, self-awareness and depth.

Guilt grows from debt (wrongdoing owed in suffering); bad conscience is blocked aggression biting inward.

It shows conscience isn't a pure inner voice but was built from debt and cruelty turned inward — a made thing with a history.

The ideal that self-denial, poverty and giving up pleasure is the highest good.

It gave suffering a meaning (your guilt, cured by self-denial) — and people can't bear meaningless suffering.

The will would rather aim at 'nothing' (self-denial, another world) than have nothing at all to aim at.

Re-examining our inherited values to ask whether they still serve life, instead of obeying them blindly.

Nietzsche says even ruthless honesty ('I won't deceive myself') is the ascetic ideal's last disguise — so critique can't fully escape it.

1: master vs slave morality (ressentiment). 2: guilt from debt, bad conscience. 3: the ascetic ideal → re-evaluate values.

Open-book, 1 hour: (a) Explain a concept [10] + (b) Evaluate a claim [15] on your prescribed text.

Arguing both sides of the claim, using Nietzsche's own life-test, and reaching a reasoned conclusion tied to the text — not describing.