Nietzsche opens by expressing dissatisfaction with the English psychologists who have tried to explain the origin or morality. They claim to be historians of morality, but they completely lack a historical spirit. Their theories suggest that, originally, people benefiting from the unegoistic actions of others would applaud those actions and call them "good." That is, initially, what was good and what was useful were considered one and the same. Over time, these genealogists suggest, we forgot this original association, and the habit of calling unegoistic actions "good" led us to conclude that they were somehow good in and of themselves.
Nietzsche disagrees with this account, suggesting that those to whom "goodness" was shown did not define "good." Rather, it was the "good" themselves - the noble and the powerful - who defined the term. They came to see themselves as good when they came to see the contrast between themselves and those who were below them: the common people, the poor......
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Approximate Word Count: 6259
Approximate Pages: 25 (260 words per double-spaced page) |