Book: On the Genealogy of Morals

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

* 2: The subject of this polemic: "the *origin* of moral prejudices". The ideas here grew from a common root, from a *fundamental will* of knowledge. "We have no right to any *isolated* act whatsoever: to make isolated errors and to discover isolated truths are equally forbidden to us. Rather, our thoughts, our values, our yeses and noes and ifs and whethers grow out of us with the same necessity with which a tree bears its fruits (...). And as to whether these fruits of ours are to *your* taste?---But what is that to the trees!"
* 3: His reservation concerning morality was with him from childhood, asking 'what is the real *origin* of our notions of good and evil?'. He calls this reservation his 'A priori'. Since then, he cased to look for the origin of evil *behind* the world (instead *in* the world?), transforming his problem into another one: "**under what conditions did man invent the value-judgements good and evil? And what value (use?) do they themselves possess?**"
* 4: His first impetus to give expression to his ideas came when reading 'The Origin of Moral Sensations' by Paul Ree (1877), which Nietzsche rejected thoroughly, "proposition by proposition, conclusion by conclusion". [FROM WIKIPEDIA, IT SEEMS THAT REE DRAWS ON DARWIN AND LAMARCK AND SEEKS THE ORIGIN OF MORAL PHENOMENA IN NATURAL CAUSES, REJECTING METAPHYSICAL EXPLANATIONS. UPON READING, IT IS NOT CLEAR YET HOW NIETZSCHE DISAGREES WITH THIS. IS IT THAT NIETZSCHE SEES IT AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT THAT IS NOT NECESSARILY 'NATURAL' IN THE SENSE THAT REE/DARWIN/LAMARCK WOULD ARGUE?]
* 5: Back when he wrote *Human, All Too Human**,*** his interest in the origin of morality was subordinate to the real concern of that text, which was the *value* of morality. An increasingly fundamental suspicion within him spoke out against instincts such as compassion becoming 'values in themselves' (morals?). Here, he saw the great danger for mankind, the will turning *against* life. This development of *the morality of compassion* (e.a.), was a recent development in philosophy, where formerly many agreed on the *worthlessness* of compassion (Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld, Kant).
* 6: This problem of the value of, and the morality of compassion may seem an isolated problem, but whoever pauses and asks questions here will experience a huge new prospect opening up, as every kind of mistrust, suspicion, and fear leaps forward, and the belief in all of morality falters. Finally, a new demand arises: we stand in need of a "*critique* of moral values, *the value of these values itself should first of all be called into question*". The *value* of these 'values' was accepted as given/fact/beyond all question: previously, no one had expressed even the slightest hesitation in assuming the 'good man' to be of greater worth than the 'evil man' in "his usefulness in promoting the progress of human *existence*". What if the opposite were the case?
* 7: This demands a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances of the growth, development, and displacement of values. What is involved is a journey across the wide expanse of morality, morality which has actually existed, which has actually been lived. Does this not amount practically to *discovering* this territory, the real *history of morality*, for the first time? For a genealogist of morals, not to hypothesize into the blue, but to explore what has been documented, what has really existed, to decipher humanity's moral past. "*This* remained unknown to Dr Ree."
* 8: [last part about being able to read his writings: requires remination?]

### 11-38: First Essay [FIRST READ, NOT GOOD SUMMARY]

* 1: What are the 'English psychologists' after? "always found at the same task---pushing to the forefront the shameful side/aspect of our inner world, seeking the real directing force of human development, the real decisive influence upon it, in the very place where the intellectual pride of man would least *wish* to find it" (namely, in inertiae, habit, forgetfulness, or some arbitrary mechanistic chain of ideas). Why drives them always in this direction? vulgarity, gloom, a little itch and need for spice?
* 2:
* 17

### 77-136: Third Essay

1. ↑ In this case, would the good man' no longer be 'good'? If the 'fact' that the g 'good man' is of greater worth for the well-being of society is essential in the judgement as 'good', the morality betrays its transcendence and reveals its wordly groundings in public concern and its society.