Themes
Key
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.
Good and Evil
The Repression of Human Nature
Art, Beauty, and Emotions
Summary
Analysis
1. Nietzsche begins by saying we don’t really know ourselves. We are enamored with things we can learn intellectually, but we don’t pay much attention to our lived experiences. When humans have an experience, we usually notice it afterwards. Sometimes we’ll ask ourselves, what did I just experience? But in the moment, the nature of “being” is elusive.
Nietzsche introduces the idea that he will question many things about human nature that most people assume to be true. Here, he challenges the assumption that one’s intellectuality is more important that one’s more primal emotions, implying that it is detrimental to simply acquire knowledge while ignoring the more emotionally nuanced aspects of “being” human.
Themes
2. Nietzsche says that this “polemic” is about where our moral prejudices come from, and how they developed historically. He’s raised these questions a few times before, and they keep coming up in his mind, so he thinks it’s time to look at them more systematically and to understand their roots.
Nietzsche wants to show that moral values have shifted over time so that he can argue that modern conceptions of “good” and “evil” aren’t necessarily the right ones for a society to adopt. He notes that his view is a “polemic,” meaning it’s a bold, radical, and controversial departure from typical assumptions about morality.
Themes
3. Ever since Nietzsche was young, he’s been skeptical about morality. He wants to know where our understanding of “good and evil” come from. As a teenager, he would connect these ideas with God, but he gave up that idea. He now wants to know how it came to be that humans invented “judgements of value” like “Good and Evil.” More importantly, he wants to know if it’s worthwhile to have such concepts. Do they improve or harm human welfare? Are they a symptom of human distress or an expression of human flourishing?
Nietzsche implies that he wants the reader—like himself—to eventually question the connection between morality and Christianity. He thinks that Judeo-Christian notions of “good” and “evil” behavior are actually harmful to humankind, as he suggests that such a value system may actually lead to suffering rather than the ideal way of life that many associate with the Christian doctrine.
Themes
4. Nietzsche decided to write about morality after reading an 1877 book entitled The Origin of Moral Sentiments by Dr. Paul Ree and finding that he disagreed with everything Ree said. He’s going to offer what he thinks is a more probable explanation for morality here—even improving upon what he said about it in the past.
Ree and Nietzsche both think that morality is a human invention. However, in The Origin of Moral Sentiments, Ree assumes that being selfless and kind had evolutionary advantages that became entrenched in emerging ideas of morality. Nietzsche, however, disagrees with Ree—meaning that he likely believes there is some merit to selfishness and that there are more complex reasons for why selflessness has become the moral standard.
Themes
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5. Nietzsche’s main concern is with the value of morality. Schopenhauer also wrote about this. Schopenhauer prized pity, self-denial, and self-sacrifice. Nietzsche thinks the opposite: he believes these values are dangerous for humanity. In fact, Nietzsche thinks that pity is the most damaging thing about European culture. He finds it surprising that his contemporaries value pity so highly, because many philosophers—including Plato, Spinoza, La Rouchefoucald, and Kant—agree that pity is worthless despite disagreeing on many other things.
To Nietzsche, moral values that require people to hold back from living active lives (like self-denial and self-sacrifice) are highly limiting and are therefore problematic. The fact that Nietzsche, along with other renowned philosophers, believe that pity is damaging adds depth to Nietzsche’s disagreement with Schopenhauer about selfishness. Rather than blindly praising selflessness and pity as virtues in accordance with Judeo-Christian values, Nietzsche is concerned with how pity realistically functions within the cultural context of modern Europe.
Themes
6. When it becomes clear that there’s a problem with celebrating pity, it also becomes clear that there might be problems with other moral values, too. Nietzsche thinks we need a way to critique and question moral values, no matter what they are. People typically assume it’s better to be a “good man” than an “evil man,” but what if the opposite is true? What if there’s a hidden “regressive trait” in our notion of “good” that will damage humanity in the future?
Even though certain moral ideals circulate in a culture—such as the idea that it’s good to be pitiful—those ideals might not necessarily be good for the culture. Nietzsche sets out to show that many typical “good” behaviors cause more suffering than joy. He wants to motivate people to think counterintuitively about how their moral code might be negatively affecting their lives and their culture.
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