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Nietzsche's On The Genealogy Of Morality

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1) Explain the origin of guilt or bad conscience as understood by Nietzsche in Essay 2 of "On The Genealogy of Morality."
In Friedrich Nietzsche’s book, On the Genealogy of Morality, he brings up the concept of guilt or bad conscience. He starts out talking about how we should remember things needed to survive and repress everything else and that being forgetful is an active thing people should be doing. This is because humans become sick with guilt when they cannot forget things. This can be seen in slave morality because they dwell on the past and become sickly. Master morality, on the other hand, is considered healthy because they forget things easily. However, memory can be also be seen in a positive light. Some see memory as a sickly inability …show more content…

In the book, he points out that there are two processes in creating an inferiority in a colonized subject. The first is that blacks are literally economically inferior. Their economic circumstance translates into the view that black skin is inferior. The second is an internalized notion of inferiority, they think there is something that makes them inferior, in this situation it is the color of their skin. However, an inferiority complex is not a problem of the individual, but a problem of society. He makes this clear when he points out that “a white man talking to a person of color behaves exactly like a grown-up with a kid, simpering, murmuring, fussing, and coddling” (Fanon, 2008, p.14). He’s showing that it is society that creates this in them. Fanon talks about how blacks feel economically and culturally inferior and so they internalize this inferiority. He reiterates his take on the topic by stating that “If he is overcome to such a degree by a desire to be white, it’s because he lives in a society that makes his inferiority complex possible, in a society that draws its strength by maintaining this complex, in a society that proclaims the superiority of one race over another; it is to the extent that society creates difficulties for him that he finds himself positioned in a neurotic situation” (Fanon, 2008, p.80). Again, rather than blaming the individual for the inferiority complex, he puts it on society, since it is society that ingrained this way of thinking. These inferiority complexes develop in children who are exposed to predominately white culture. So, from young ages these colonized subjects are trained to view themselves as inferior. Fanon eventually clearly states this by saying “let us have the courage to say it: It is the racist who creates the inferiorized” (Fanon, 2008,

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In his interaction with other black people, Fanon simply felt as one in the space and therefore, “belonging.” He states that "as long as the Black is with his own,

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The author of this book is telling the story of his experience in slavery and the dominance white people have over black people. Being African-American, the author, Solomon Northup, has a rare point of view that most of the audience can’t relate to. This quote is at the very beginning of the book, so the reader immediately knows that the point of view this story will be told with the rarity of someone who has actually experienced the worst forms of slavery. Tone-

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It was commonly conceived by white people that African culture is inferior to their own. Du Bois later claims, “the sense of identity thrust upon black Americans living in a world in which white political and economic leaders assumed that to be American was to be white.”

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The history of the blacks is neglected in African-Americans classrooms, resulting in the development of an inferior feeling among the blacks. In chapter two of the book, Woodson states that education in American schools drifted from the truth when it started conditioning the blacks to admire the Greeks, British, and Romans. Consequently, the African-Americans developed a belief that they have a lower intellectual ability. The mindset is still present in the contemporary United States. For instance, business started by the black people are not well received in the locality they intend to serve.

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They start to develop these ideas at the beginning of the book while the authors lay the foundations for the later chapters of the book. These two ideas (racism is deeply flawed at it’s core, anti racism is necessary) are also developed when the authors show their point of view on some of the old fashioned colonial views. The authors’ claim on racism is that racism is a horrific, and terrible force. The authors’ also think that all claims to excuse racism, and its intentions, are false. One example of this is on page #70, where the text states, “Time in”.

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In the essay, “A Genealogy of Modern Racism”, the author Dr. Cornel West discusses racism in depth, while conveying why whites feel this sense of superiority. We learn through his discussion that whites have been forced to treat black harshly due to the knowledge that was given to them about the aesthetics of beauty and civility. This knowledge that was bestowed on the whites in the modern West, taught them that they were superior to all races tat did not emulate the norms of whites. According to Dr. West the very idea that blacks were even human beings is a concept that was a “relatively new discovery of the modern West”, and that equality of beauty, culture, and intellect in blacks remains problematic and controversial in intellectual circles

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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

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