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Nietzsche's On The Genealogy Of Morality

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As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Nietzsche’s sets out his project in On the Genealogy of Morals because of culture’s negligence in investigating its own values. In this respect, the application of genealogy to some moral is not moved by pure curiosity. In turn, just like irony genealogy is motivated by a critical interest toward morality. Accordingly, at the outset of GM we find Nietzsche framing its work’s Leitfragen as ‘[…] under what conditions did man devise these value judgements good and evil? And what value do they themselves possess? Have they hitherto hindered or furthered human prosperity?’ (GM 3). Along the same lines, a bit later he adds that ‘[…] we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values themselves …show more content…

Accordingly, Nietzsche portrays the genealogist-philosopher as a physician. This, worrying herself about the health of her patients, will find out the roots of his values, in order to address the measure in which they are conducive to and the product of either bad or good health. As according to Nietzsche our values are always the product of some expressions of the will to power, and some values are preferable to other, it follows that not all expressions of the will to power foster human existence. In this sense, the question seems to be which among them support “healthy” form of life and which do not. Of course, the problem is how to differentiate between the former and the latter. In fact even slave-morality is the result of the will to power successfully affirming itself in the shape of a particular life-form. Hence, it is not immediately clear why, if we follow Nietzsche, we should not accept …show more content…

This necessity of always reiterating genealogy has also to do with the nature of the will to power itself. As Klossowsky notices about Nietzsche’s understanding of power, this '[…] resists everything, except that it cannot resist itself. It must act [...] it must provoke in order not to be provoked. This is why there is 'will' to power: power wills itself as power, and cannot not will itself'. Hence, the will to power disrupts by its very nature any '[…] conservation of an attained level, since by necessity it will always exceed this level through its own increase […]'. Hence, even if we live by values which promote self-overcoming, this only leads to new forms of life with their normative codes. These too must be examined, in order to determine their freedom from regressive

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