Nietzsche: 'On the Genealogy of Morality' and Other Writings: Revised Student Edition (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) | 
 enlarge | Author: Friedrich Nietzsche
Creators: Keith Ansell-pearson, Carol Diethe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Category: Book
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Format: Student Edition
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
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Pages: 242
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6
ISBN: 052169163X
Dewey Decimal Number: 170
EAN: 9780521691635
ASIN: 052169163X
Publication Date: October 30, 2006
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Product Description
Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential thinkers of the past 150 years and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is his most important work on ethics and politics. A polemical contribution to moral and political theory, it offers a critique of moral values and traces the historical evolution of concepts such as guilt, conscience, responsibility, law and justice. This is a revised and updated edition of one of the most successful volumes to appear in Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Keith Ansell-Pearson has modified his introduction to Nietzsche's classic text, and Carol Diethe has incorporated a number of changes to the translation itself, reflecting the considerable advances in our understanding of Nietzsche in the twelve years since this edition first appeared. In this new guise the Cambridge Texts edition of Nietzsche's Genealogy should continue to enjoy widespread adoption, at both undergraduate and graduate level.
Book Description
This revised and updated edition of Nietzsche's classic text reflects the considerable advances in our understanding of Nietzsche in the twelve years since this edition first appeared. Keith Ansell-Pearson has modified his introduction and Carol Diethe has incorporated a number of changes to the translation itself.
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 Before Good and Evil November 11, 2006
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
"We are unknown to ourselves" (3) writes Friedrich Nietzsche, beginning his work On the Genealogy of Morality with a sweeping statement not just about the human condition, but about the state of Europe at the end of the 19th century. "We have never looked for ourselves" he continues, "so how are we ever supposed to find ourselves?" (ibid.) Nietzsche's famous - or, infamous - belief that Judaism, through Christianity, has bequeathed to the world a "slave morality" that has held the West captive is what this book is about.
"[A]ll religions are, at their most fundamental, systems of cruelty" (41) - and they are ultimately perpetuated by priests whose own state of inferiority once upon a time led to a great revolt in the world such that the priests came out on top and the powerful were castigated. One can, in many ways, see the old Protestant polemic against Catholicism now turned against not just Protestantisms, but against all religion in general. In many ways Nietzsche's attack on asceticism is like Martin Luther's, only without any positing of salvation from Christ. Instead, salvation comes from the anti-Christ, who is also an anti-nihilist, that frees people to enact their own "will to power" - an aesthetic creating that pays no attention to distictions between good and evil.
Nietzsche seeks what he terms "the revaluation of all values", particularly in the realm of moral judgment; the aesthetic will to power exists to return us "to the innocent conscience of the wild beast" (25) for "no cruelty, no feast" (46). By claiming that our current conceptions of "good" are ultimately due to the ressentiment of religious persons thousands of years ago, he is able to claim that our current understanding of "good" is really actually the opposite of what it purports to be. Aesthetics of the Nietzschean sort is "beyond good and evil" and therefore far closer to the old morality of nobility that once reigned supreme in the West before the revolt of the priests. In short, "what if God himself turned out to be our oldest lie?" (119)
This is not just an attack on religion, however, for Nietzsche sees the "ascetic ideals" of religion as being identical to those of philosophers: "the unconditional will to truth is faith in the ascetic ideal itself, evin if, as an unconscious imperative, - make no mistake about it, - it is the faith in a metaphysical value, a value as such of truth as vouched for and confirmed by that ideal alone" (119). Even our faith in science is based upon the old idea that truth really exists - that it is "out there" to be discovered - which means, ironically, that in their claims of the existence of truth religion and science are actually far closer together than they often like to think of themselves as being.
What Nietzsche lacks in clear argument and justified evidence he attempts to make up in rhetorically rich polemics, delivering a text that will sway many, even if they don't know why. Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that, as the back of the book states, he "is one of the most influential thinkers of the past 150 years". Regardless of what one makes of him - and intellectual historians such as Steven Aschheim have noted that there have been a bewildering number of interpretations of Nietzsche since he went insane in 1890 - he is, because of his influence (whether on the Nazis or on radical French intellectual in the 1960s or the doyens of intellectual posers) worth reading. This is not his most literary work by any stretch of the imagination - one should read Thus Spoke Zarathustra for an example of Nietzsche's literary genius - or his most pointed and polemical - Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, which often come together in a single volume, are Nietzsche short, fast, and hard. Genealogy of Morality, however, represents an important step in the development of his own thought, and therefore in much intellectual history since. If that is one's interest, then Nietzsche's Genealogy is worth reading.
 Hard work but worth it. December 12, 2004
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Firstly I am going to say i am no expert in philosophy or Nietzsche, so if you are it's time to scroll up to the above review (far more detailed). What I will try and do is tell you why you should read this book if you are new to the subject. Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the finest minds to have considered the problems of philosophy and this text gives an insight into his thought. Far more importantly it causes one to reconsider their attitudes and justify many assumptions that were unthinkingly held. The real beauty of this book is that the aphoristic structure and polemical, quasi metaphorical style provide huge space for individual response to the text, you will learn a lot about yourself reading this text as well as a lot about politics, morality and even epistemology and metaphysics. In short read and enjoy although it might be a good idea to get a commentary or introduction to Nietzsches' thought otherwise you may get a little lost.
Nietzsche's most sustained philosophical discussion August 22, 2004
7 out of 16 found this review helpful
This translation of Nietzsche's ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALITY by Carol Diethe, edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson for Cambridge texts in the History of Political Thought, includes some supplementary material, as is now customary for English translations of this book published by Nietzsche in 1887. Section 4 of Nietzsche's Preface calls attention to ten sections in his other books. Walter Kaufmann's translation has an Appendix of Seventy-five Aphorisms from Five Volumes, 28 of which are three lines or less long, showing Walter Kaufmann's preference for discreet little thoughts. Not all ten sections mentioned by Nietzsche were included in Kaufmann's Appendix, but a footnote in this book promises to include "All the passages Nietzsche mentioned" (p. 6, n. 7). Twenty-nine sections are included in the supplementary material in this book, none of which are less than ten lines long, showing more of an appreciation for sustained thought. Titles of these sections are not given in Nietzsche's preface, except for HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN volume II, section 89, which is called `Morality of Custom' on page 6, `Custom and its sacrifices' on page 135, and `Mores and their victim' in the Mixed Opinions and Maxims (1879) section 89 of Kaufmann's Appendix.
I believe ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALITY is Nietzsche's most philosophically sophisticated work, and found that my knowledge of Latin was helpful in reading Walter Kaufmann's translation of the long Tertullian (circa 197 A.D.) quote in section 15 of the first essay, because Nietzsche's comments, such as "in better voice, yet worse screamers" were located in parentheses within the Latin text, while the English translation in the footnote contained additional information in brackets, such as `[Quaestuaria means prostitute, not carpenter: see Nietzsche's parenthesis above.]' This book also has Nietzsche's comments in parentheses in the Latin text, "(in better voice, screaming even louder)" (p. 33), but the brackets in the footnote also contain Nietzsche's comments "[i.e. screaming even louder] in their own tragedy" (p. 34, n. 42) so it is much easier to follow reading only the English, which tries to encompass every possible translation with its "`This is he', I will say, `that son of a carpenter or prostitute . . .'" (p. 34, n. 42). I am leaving out a few insults after Nietzsche refers to `this well-known description of the mother of Jesus from the Talmud' (p. 34, n. 42), but they are just before Nietzsche adds some Latin of his own, "(Per fidem: that is what is written.)" (p. 33).
This translation adds a footnote at this point quoting Tacitus at ANNALS XV. 44, which suggests why the supplementary material includes sections 195-203 of BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL. Kaufmann's translation mentioned section 200 in a footnote at this point, but it is interesting that section 195 started with "The Jews -- a people `born for slavery', as Tacitus and the whole ancient world says," (p. 155 and n.1: Tacitus, HISTORIES V. 8.). Kaufmann's Appendix did not include BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, but he certainly assumed that readers would have access to an English translation of that work, having done one himself.
My interest in ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALITY is mainly in combining Nietzsche's ideas about will to truth, listed in the index for pages xix-xx, 119-20, 126-7, 169, which includes the idea that will to truth is not so much a remnant of the ascetic ideal `as its kernel' (p. 126) with comedy, listed in the index for 9, 81. Nietzsche links "the Dionysian drama of the `fate of the soul'" with "the grand old eternal writer of the comedy of our existence!" (p. 9), leading up to "you almost need to be a cow for this one thing and certainly not a `modern man': it is rumination" (p. 10). Nietzsche seems less interested in comedy itself than in philosophers. "A married philosopher belongs to comedy, that is my proposition: and the exception, Socrates, the mischievous Socrates, . . . Every philosopher would say what Buddha said when he was told of the birth of a son: `Rahula is born to me, a fetter is forged for me' (Rahula means here `a little demon'); . . `freedom is leaving the house': so thinking, he left the house." (p. 81). Nietzsche goes into Latin again to say `Let the world perish, but let philosophy exist, let the philosopher exist, let me exist' (p. 82, n. 76). Thoughts about throwing `the human soul out of joint' (p. 110) hardly seem like the way to comedy or even music, but "The main contrivance which the ascetic priest allowed himself to use in order to make the human soul resound with every kind of heart-rending and ecstatic music was -- as everyone knows -- his utilization of the feeling of guilt." (p. 110). The order of Assassins can be found in the Index of Names for the discussion on page 118, with its "inkling of that symbol and watchword which was reserved for the highest ranks alone as their secretum: `nothing is true, everything is permitted' " that challenges the belief in truth.
Nietzsche mentioned THE WILL TO POWER as `a work I am writing' at the beginning of section 27 for serious consideration of the History of European Nihilism, but wanted to draw this book to a conclusion "that the ascetic ideal has, for the present, even in the most spiritual sphere, only one type of real enemy and injurer: these are the comedians of this ideal -- because they arouse mistrust." (pp. 125-6). This leads right into the will to truth being the kernel of the ascetic ideal, as mentioned above.
The early Prefaces for `The Greek State' and `Homer on Competition' found on pages 176-194 are interesting for comparing the noble ideals of antiquity with the possibility `that we will be destroyed because we fail to keep slaves' (p. 180). Concluding with `it then only takes a panicky fright to make it fall and smash it. . . . they betray the Hellenic . . ." (p. 194).
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