Genealogy of Morality (APA Citation) The Genealogy of Morality

"the Genealogy of Morality"

In the modern world the term "genealogy" has taken on the connotation of the study of a family history, or a list of ancestors and offspring of a particular family. While this definition is the most common, there is another definition of the term "genealogy" which involves an account of the origin and historical development of something. It is easy to see how the study of a family's history has evolved from this term, since it too is the origin and development of a series of relatives. But it is the more general definition of genealogy, studying the origin and historical development of something, that Friedrich Nietzsche used for the title of his book On The Genealogy of Morality. The book contains three individual essays involving a discussion of morals within modern society and the evolution of those morals over time. In other words, in the book Nietzsche traces the origin and historical development of our modern sense of morality.

In discussing the historical development of something, one must describe the thing at the beginning of a period of time, and then trace it as it is transformed over a period of...

The first essay is a discussion of the idea of morality and "what origin our terms good and evil actually have." (Nietzsche, 2007, p.4) Nietzsche is beginning his discussion of the development of morality at the beginning, by exploring the origins of the terms "good" and "evil." He proposes that early in the development of human civilization, when people were organized in a rudimentary manner based on strength and weakness, good and evil were defined by one's place within society. "Master morality" and "slave morality" originated from the point-of-view of the person making the moral judgment.
From the earliest form of human society, master and slave, Nietzsche traces the development of morality into the concept of guilt and conscience. What began as a form of debt, guilt then evolved into a moral judgment through its assimilation into the slave morality. In an attempt to study this genealogically, the evolution of debt into the realm of morality is traced by Nietzsche from the earliest civilizations, through the Egyptians and on to the Romans. (Nietzsche, 2007, pp.40-41) The concept of punishment is also explored in this manner, beginning with the origin of punishment as compensation and into the idea that punishment…