Nietzsche the genealogy of morals essay 2

LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in On the Genealogy of Morals, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. 1. Nietzsche thinks about what’s involved in making promises. First, he thinks that forgetfulness works against keeping promises.

Nietzsche remarks that making others suffer was considered a great joy--Nietzsche calls it a "festival"--that would balance out an unpaid debt. We find the origins of conscience, guilt, and duty in the festiveness of cruelty: their origins were "like the beginnings of everything great on earth, soaked in blood thoroughly and for a long time."

In Nietzsche's discussion of the origin of guilt and conscience, we find a sharp contrast with the other kind of "origin" that Foucault sees Nietzsche opposing. The concepts of guilt and conscience are so fundamental to our functioning as social beings that we have had a tendency to see their origins in a great instant of divine creation.

[This document, which has been prepared by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, is in the public domain and may be used by anyone, in whole or in part, without permission and without charge, provided the source is acknowledged.