Comparing Nietzsche's Views On The Origin Of Good And Evil

Nietzsche begins in his preface with an observation saying that philosophers lack self-knowledge. They seek out knowledge, which takes them outside of themselves. They only rarely pay adequate attention to present experience, or to themselves. He then talks about his inquiry: "the origin of our moral prejudices."

Nietzsche talks about how he has been interested in about the origins of good and evil for some time. His attempt at philosophy as a youngster brought him to conclude with God as the originator of evil. He began to ask how humans could come up the concepts of good and evil, and wondered if these concepts had helped or stalled our development. Nietzsche's question on the origin of morality is one where he wants to understand the true

People who were seen to perform these actions would continue to be seen in this light, and that over time people who experienced unegoistic actions towards them would decide that these actions were what constituted a good person. He believes that it was actually those that performed the “good” actions that defined the term. These “good” people say themselves in this light, above those who the performed actions upon. These “good” people happened to be in power by preforming these actions and could dictate what was “good” and “bad”. Nietzsche states that the German words for bad and plain are very similar, while in most of the languages good comes from the words powerful or masters. He makes another association between with dark and black, stating that dark haired Europeans were seen as lower beings by the majority who were blonde

This morality opposes what oppresses it. The master morality does not think much about the “bad” and is only used to show the superiority of what is good, mainly those that see themselves as noble.He says that most ancient Greek works about those in lower society are associated with the words unhappy. Higher society saw them as being happy or “good”, whereas the men of lower society, or resentment, look upon those in higher society as “bad”. Those in higher society do not experience the pitfalls of those in lower society, so the man of resentment becomes smarter than those higher up, relying on schemes and secrets. The obsession with the enemy, in this case higher society, gains the attribute of evil to those in lower society. Just like how “bad” becomes an afterthought to describe oneself to the noble higher ups, “good” has the same effect to those in lower society. Nietzsche also sees a difference between “evil” and “bad”, stating that a nobles “good” can be seen as “evil” by a man of