Nietzsche: The Real Genealogy Of Morality

and for society.

The real genealogy of morality Nietzsche repudiates the above view, saying that it is obvious that “the judgment ‘good’ does not stem from those to whom ‘goodness’ is rendered” (Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, page 10). Instead, Nietzsche considers morality as ultimately derived from strength and superiority, saying that “it was ‘the good’ themselves, that is the noble, powerful, higher-ranking, and high-minded who felt and ranked themselves and their doings as good, which is to say, as of the first rank, in contrast to everything base, low-minded, common, and vulgar” (10). In other words, morality is the strong simply being strong, exercising their own strength over those who are weak. Even on an etymological level,

This happened when weak people wanted to become strong, but they were unable to do so by acquiring physical strength, riches, or status, so they gained power by reversing morality. For example, instead of valuing strength, they sought to contain the strong by condemning many uses of strength and instead praising the “virtue” of mercy - those who refrain from using their strength. Similarly, they turned the tables on those who gave orders by condemning pride and praising the “virtue” of obedience. Man naturally wants to get revenge for wrongs committed against him, but the weak people unable to exact revenge instead gained power over the strong by creating the “virtue” of forgiveness. When the weak, low-born people were tired of being subjugated but were unable to physically control the powerful people, the weak people instead controlled the powerful people through their new, twisted

On the one hand, Nietzsche sees the work of the priests as a grotesque dis-figuration of morality coughed up from the bowels of Jewish hatred. A radically diseased morality that paints weakness as virtue and strength as dangerous vice. The priests took the natural order of humanity and managed to make the strong guilty for exercising their strength. It is akin to criticizing an animal predator for chasing down its prey - would you really morally criticize the bird of prey for preying upon and eating the lamb or the lion for preying upon and devouring the gazelle? To do such a thing would be