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Nietzsche's 'Genealogy Of Morals'

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The Genealogy of Morals is one of Nietzsche’s more mature works, written in 1887 this book has a much more aphoristic style of writing. Nietzsche is very critical and wants the reader to be critical in our approach with our attitudes to the main arguments in this book. In a general sense with the roots and origins of morality and more specifically with the morality of Christianity and the culture that has grown out of Christianity, because even though our modern society is moving away from religion we still support values that have Christian roots. Nietzsche ultimately thought that these values were being taken too much for granted, and should be questioned properly. And they ought to be because in some ways these values are unhealthy; they …show more content…

Genealogy means a line of descent traced continuously from an ancestor, which is an analogy that Nietzsche is trying to create, by getting us to look back at an almost family lineage of our morality. The idea of the book is more to get us to ask ourselves, how did we come by the values that we currently possess. The book resembles a history text of sorts as Nietzsche goes back into the past to try and decipher where we get our assumptions about value from and to show us, the reader, that the system of values we now possess have not always been the prominent set of values in place. He pays particular attention to the Homeric culture of Ancient Greece, the warrior nobility and the slaves, who adhered to a completely different set of values: honour, shame, revenge, courage and prowess in battle and being heroic. Fundamental within this is their disregard for human suffering, its lack of importance stands in stark contrast to one of the central tenets of our morality which is not to harm people. So Nietzsche shines a light on this disparity and begs us to ask ourselves, how did we get from that set of values to the ones we possess

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