On the Genealogy of Morality provides an obvious point of entry into Nietzscheâs thought. The text is commonly assigned in university courses designed to introduce students to the subjects of philosophy, or political theory, or ethics. In that context, the Genealogy offers a number of concepts, formulas, or doctrines for the student to digest: the contrast between âmaster moralityâ and âslave moralityâ; the problem of âressentimentâ; the notion of âperspectivismâ; the method of âgenealogy,â and so forth. All these theories can be summarized and memorized by a student, and then compared with the theories of other philosophers. At more advanced levels of scholarship, the theories can be analyzed with greater precision, refined or modified in certain respects, and applied to a variety of puzzles that occupy the scholarâs interest.1
The Genealogy is, therefore, Nietzscheâs most user-friendly book: it is accessible to the student, while offering grist for the scholarly mill. And Nietzsche would surely have approved of his book being put to use for diverse purposes, given that the work was conceived as part of a broader effort to make his thought more accessible to the public. It is part of a sequence of writings that he characterized as âfish-hooksâ designed to draw readers to his thought, and he advertised the Genealogy in particular as â[a] sequel to my last book, Beyond Good and Evil, which it is meant to supplement and clarify.â2 The Genealogyâs comparatively straightforward, easily digestible appearance is no accident, but it is also, in its way, as partial and misleading as the bait offered on a hook proves to be to a fish. For the Genealogy does something more than present the reader with Nietzscheâs thoughts on morality (for example, the contrast between âmaster moralityâ and âslave moralityâ); it also provokes the reader to reflect on the conditions that produced those thoughts, and which play an important role in shaping all philosophic reflection. This self-reflexive aspect of the Genealogy will be my focus in what follows.
On the reading that I propose, the Genealogy presents what has been aptly characterized as an âautobiography of philosophyâ:3 it commences with a preface stressing personal, seemingly idiosyncratic details about the process through which Nietzsche came to write the book, and uses those details to point toward generalizable features of the activity of philosophy as such. It thereby exemplifies a movement from the âparticularâ to the âuniversal,â only the universal features of philosophy that Nietzsche stresses here are not those to be found in the bookâs famous theories, but in the process that produced them. It is this âtheoryâ of philosophyâa theory of how philosophy attempts, and often fails, to ground itselfâwhose importance is impressed on the reader by the preface to the work. And the preface also shows the reader how to interpret the Genealogy (along with the rest of Nietzscheâs oeuvre) within the context of that problemâthe point here being not that the inquiry into morality is replaced by autobiography, but that the autobiographical turn, the turn to self-knowledge, is necessary to complete any inquiry into morality.
Nietzscheâs preface to the Genealogy is, then, something much more significant than simply an introduction to the three essays that make up the main part of the text. The preface also clarifies how Nietzsche understood the development of his thought over the course of his career, and it ties that development to a series of broader (universal) claims about the nature of (and the obstacles to) philosophic inquiry. For all these reasons, the preface to the Genealogy serves as an introduction to the whole of Nietzscheâs thought.
THE GENEALOGYâS BEGINNING: THE PROBLEM OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE
Nietzsche broaches the problem of the ability of philosophy to adequately ground itself (to show that it is not an arbitrary or perverse activity) with the very first words of the Genealogy: âWe are unknown to ourselves, we knowers.â The last words of section 1 of the preface reiterate the point: âwith respect to ourselves we are not âknowers.ââ The category of âwe knowersâ is a broad one, but surely includes potential philosophers.4 Indeed, these remarks echo and extend a theme that is emphasized in Beyond Good and Evil (especially in its preface and its first chapter, âOn the Prejudices of the Philosophersâ): namely, that the quest for knowledge (and a life dedicated to it) will appear discreditable if it is not accompanied by self-knowledge. Thus, at the outset of both the Genealogy of Morality and Beyond Good and Evil, the reader is presented with the possibility that philosophy is basically pretentious: a sophisticated gloss distracting from the philosopherâs fundamental state of self-confusion.5
But at the conclusion of section 1 of the preface of the Genealogy, Nietzsche indicates that he holds a key to this problem: âWe remain strange to ourselves out of necessity, we do not understand ourselves, we must mistake ourselves, for us the maxim reads for all eternity, âeveryone is furthest from himselfââwith respect to ourselves we are not âknowers.ââ This stress on ânecessityââon the fact that âweâ (that is, all would-be knowers) must, now and forever, begin by failing to know what is closest to us, namely, ourselvesâsuggests that there is a structure or logic inherent to the lack of self-knowledge that can be observed in so many would-be knowers. In that case, a would-be knowerâs self-misunderstanding might not reflect the futility and vanity of the quest for knowledge, but could, instead, represent a stage within that quest, which Nietzsche will help the reader to comprehend, and thereby to move beyond.
The phrasing of the first sentence of the preface supports that thought: âWe are unknown to ourselves, we knowers, we ourselves to ourselves: and with good ground [or âgood reason,â guten Grund].â By proclaiming that would-be knowers lack self-knowledge, but adding that this is a matter of ânecessity,â of âeternity,â of mistakes that we âmustâ make, and for which there exists âgood groundâ or âgood reason,â Nietzsche entices the reader with the prospect of learning what those grounds areâthe reasons why would-be knowers necessarily fail to know themselves.
In this way, the opening of the Genealogy directs the reader to consider what the permanent, unavoidable, natural obstacles to philosophy are, particularly with regard to the challenge of acquiring self-knowledge.
THE GENEALOGYâS SECOND BEGINNING: THE PROBLEM OF MORALITY
Having opened his preface to the Genealogy with a strong statement on the problem of self-knowledge, Nietzsche abruptly, and without any explanation, shifts course in section 2 of the preface, which begins this way:
My thoughts on the origins of our moral prejudicesâfor that is what this polemic is aboutâfound their first, economical, and preliminary expression in the collection of aphorisms that bears the title Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits.
The remainder of the preface elaborates on this remark, explaining how Nietzscheâs thoughts on morality were developed in the earlier tome.6
Nietzscheâs âgenealogy of the Genealogyâ7 runs through many details: he dates the composition of the Genealogyâs predecessor (Human All Too Human) to âthe winter of 1876â7â (that is, ten years before the present volume, as Nietzsche makes plain for the reader by dating the end of the preface âJuly, 1887â); he lists a series of passages from that earlier text for the reader to compare with the present volume; he notes that the earlier text was developed in response to a book by his friend Paul RĂŠe (which he notes had been published in 1877); he gives a brief account of his first essay on morality written âas a thirteen-year-old boyâ; and he stresses a major turning point of his adult years, when he âconfrontedâ his âgreat teacherâ Schopenhauer with regard to the morality of compassion. With each anecdote Nietzsche adds a few self-critical remarks about these earlier stages in the development of his thought.
At first glance, then, the opening section of the preface could easily seem to be disconnected from everything that follows, with section 2 serving as a proper introduction, outlining the question of morality as the subject of the text without any further reference to the problem of self-knowledge.8 But section 2 of the preface implicitly bears on the problem of self-knowledge, because it maps out the path of Nietzscheâs own evolving self-awarenessâpinpointing names, dates, texts, and epiphanies that stand out as landmarks along that path. Nietzsche thereby leaves one to wonder if the problem of why âwe must mistake ourselvesâ and the question of âthe origins of our moral prejudicesâ are somehow meant to be connected. Although Nietzsche will not explicitly connect the problems of self-knowledge and moral knowledge, I believe that a nexus between them lies at the heart of the preface.9 Let us see how that works.
THE GENEALOGY OF THE GENEALOGY: ITS ORIGINS IN HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN
Although the preface to the Genealogy does not explicitly connect the problem of self-knowledge to the problem of moral knowledge, Nietzsche does embed within the preface clues about the nature of the connection.
I have already quoted the first of those clues: namely, Nietzscheâs statement that with the Genealogy he is returning to thoughts that were initially expressed a decade prior, in Human, All Too Human. But in the context Nietzsche makes clear that this is not only a return, but also a reconsideration: first, by characterizing his earlier effort as âpreliminary,â and then by adding the âhopeâ that his thoughts will have improved in the meantime (âlet us hope that the long period in between has done them good, that they have become more mature, brighter, stronger, more perfect!â). Next he indicates that his thoughts on morality have improved, and in a specific respect.
Regarding the evolution of his thoughts on morality between Human, All Too Human and the Genealogy, Nietzsche has this to say: âin the meantimeâ (that is, in the decade between the two publications) he has acquired a âcheerful confidenceâ that his thoughts âcame about not singly, not arbitrarily, not sporadically, but rather from the beginning arose from a common root, out of a basic will of knowledge from deep within, speaking ever more precisely, demanding something ever more precise.â Nietzscheâs language here is revealing. He does not say that the basic content of his thoughts on morality has changed (he possesses the same âdata,â so to speak). Rather, he suggests that he has come to understand the ground of those thoughts more clearlyâtheir necessary, and necessarily interconnected, nature (how âfrom the beginningâ they arose ânot singly, not arbitrarily,â but âfrom a common rootâ). And it was this feature of his thought that at first was not so clear to him. In this way, Nietzsche indicates that his initial investigation of morality was lacking in some measure of self-knowledge.10
Section 3 of the preface drives home the point that Nietzscheâs thought has evolved in crucial ways. Here Nietzsche states what âI almost have the right to call my a prioriâ: namely, a characteristic skepticism directed at morality, and which inspired his first philosophic exercise, an essay about the origin of good and evil written as a young boy. But he stresses that his youthful essay made a basic mistake: it âsought the origin of evil behind the world.â Nietzsche says that he now knows better. But when did he learn better, exactly? The argument of the Genealogy as a whole will suggest that the answer is much later than one might think: it was not until after Human, All Too Human that his thought fully matured in this respect. In other words, it took him until well into his adult career to fully understand the desires that could lead one to look beyond the world (since Free Spirits will turn out to be subject to a kind of crypto-otherworldly asceticism born of a lack of self-knowledge).
Nietzsche extends his self-criticism in section 4 of the preface, where he observes that his early efforts at treating morality in Human, All Too Human (efforts that he here describes as âclumsyâ) were accompanied by âbacksliding and waveringââa characterization that contrasts with the âever more preciseâ standard that he says (in section 2) he has arrived at more recently.
To tie all these points together: Nietzscheâs thoughts on morality have gone from âbacksliding and waveringâ (around the period of Human, All Too Human) to âever more precisionâ (culminating in the Genealogy), and that precision has involved discovering their âcommon rootâ (their grounds, their necessity, their interrelationship), and thereby enhancing his self-knowledge.
That said, in section 4 of the preface Nietzsche makes his self-criticism in a manner simultaneously emphatic and elliptical: after declaring his efforts in Human, All Too Human to have been âclumsyâ and full of âbacksliding and wavering,â rather than elaborate the point any further, he suddenly presents a series of references to the earlier writing, which the reader is invited to compare with the present treatise.
The sequence of references that Nietzsche presents runs as follows: HH 45, 136, 96, 99; AOM 8...