Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals

285 Pages·1994·1.1 MB·English

by  Richard Schacht

Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/salejeja/My%20Documents/st...
Preferred Citation: Schacht, Richard, editor. Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on
Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1994 1994.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft7q2nb58g/
Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality
Essays On Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals
Edited by
Richard Schacht
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford
© 1994 The Regents of the University of California
To NANS
Preferred Citation: Schacht, Richard, editor. Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on
Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1994 1994.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft7q2nb58g/
To NANS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
― vii ―
I am grateful to Amélie Oksenberg Rorty for her interest in the idea of this volume, and for her
encouragement to make this collection an ambitious one; to Scott Mahler and then Ed Dimendberg at
the University of California Press for their support and cooperation along the way; to David Blacker,
Kevin Hill, James Janowski, and Alexandra Bradner for their invaluable help as research assistants; to
Blacker, Annie Pritchard, Jessica George, Alban Urbanas, and Judith Rowan for their work on the
translations of the Blondel and Kofman essays; to Cheri Zander, Glenna Cilento, and Judy Short for
their secretarial assistance; to the many contributors of essays written expressly for this volume—and
for the patience of those who got their essays in long before the volume was ready to go into
production; and to the following for their permission to include other essays here that were originally
published elsewhere:
To the editors of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , for their permission to reprint
Richard White's "The Return of the Master: An Interpretation of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals ,"
from their volume 48 (1988), pp. 683-696.
To Kluwer Academic Publishers, for their permission to reprint David Couzens Hoy's "Nietzsche,
Hume, and the Genealogical Method," from their publication Nietzsche as Affirmative Thinker , ed.
Yirmiyahu Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986), pp. 20-38. Copyright 1986 by
Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht. Reprinted by permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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To the editors of International Studies in Philosophy , for their permission to reprint Arthur Danto's
"Some Remarks on The Genealogy of Morals, " from their volume 18/2 (1986), pp. 3-15.
To Philippa Foot and The New York Review of Books , for permission to reprint Philippa Foot's
"Nietzsche's Immoralism," from their 13 June 1991
― viIi ―
issue (volume 38, no. 11), pp. 18-22. Reprinted with permission from The New York Review of
Books . Copyright 1992 by Philippa Foot.
To James R. Langford, Director, University of Notre Dame Press, and to Alasdair MacIntyre, for
permission to reprint Alasdair MacIntyre's "Genealogies and Subversions" from Three Rival Versions of
Moral Enquiry (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 32-57. Copyright 1990 by
Alasdair MacIntyre.
To Françoise Laye, of Presses Universitaires de France, for permission to publish a translation of
Eric Blondel's "La question de la genealogie," from the PUF publication Encyclopedie Philosophique
Universelle (tome I).
To T. M. Farmiloe, of the Macmillan Press Ltd., and to St. Martin's Press, Incorporated, for their
permission to reprint Alexander Nehamas's "The Genealogy of Genealogy," from their publication On
Literary Theory and Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Encounter , eds. Richard Freadman and Lloyd
Rinehardt (London: Macmillan, and New York: St. Martin's, 1991). Copyright Macmillan Academic and
Professional Ltd. 1991.
To Schocken Publishing House Ltd., for permission to use Yirmiyahu Yovel's essay "Nietzsche, The
Jews, and Ressentiment, " from Yovel's book Hegel and Nietzsche on Judaism , which is to be
published by Schocken.
To Claire Giles, of Journals Rights & Permissions at Blackwell Publishers, for permission to use
Bernard Williams's essay "Nietzsche's Minimalist Moral Psychology," from volume 1, no. 1 (pp. 1-14) of
European Journal of Philosophy , a publication of Blackwell Publishers. Copyright 1993 by Basil
Blackwell.
― ix ―
INTRODUCTION
by Richard Schacht
Nietzsche was concerned with morality, value, humanity, knowledge, and the development of our ways
of thinking about these matters throughout his career. It was only in the second and final decade of
his productive life, however, and indeed only in the last half of it, that he came to a clear realization of
how problematic they all are and undertook to address them in the light of this realization. His
post-Zarathustra works (and notebooks) may be considered his final and most significant attempts to
come to terms with these matters. These writings show the lines along which he was thinking about
them, and how far he got.
Nietzsche's post-Zarathustra writings are as richly suggestive as they are provocative for
philosophers and others concerned with these issues today. Had he stopped with Zarathustra , that
extraordinary work together with his previous writings would have sufficed to earn him a prominent
place in the intellectual history of the late nineteenth century. What he went on to do in the few years
that remained to him has made him one of the most important figures in the history of modern
philosophy, and a looming presence in contemporary philosophical inquiry.
All the concerns mentioned at the outset came together in On the Genealogy of Morals (Zur
Genealogie der Moral) , written in the middle of this brief but remarkable final period, and published in
1887. It had been a dozen years since Nietzsche had written anything in an "essay" style, and this is
his only later work written in anything approaching that style (with the partial exception of The
Antichrist ). He had Zarathustra behind him, and had published Beyond Good and Evil (his "Prelude to
a Philosophy of the Future," as its subtitle proclaims) the year before. He also had just written the
"fifth book" added to the first four "books" or parts of Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science) in
the expanded edition of this work that appeared in the same year as the Genealogy . And he further
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had just com-
― x ―
pleted the series of reflective retrospective prefaces to many of his other pre-Zarathustra books
(which he had decided to reissue) in the stocktaking year of 1886.
It was at this point that Nietzsche went on to write the three "essays" and preface of which the
Genealogy consists. Ahead of him lay less than two more years of active life, in which he pursued (in
his notebooks) and then abandoned the project of a comprehensive work he planned to call The Will to
Power: Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values (as he tells us in the Third Essay of the Genealogy ), and
then in a final astonishing burst of productivity completed The Case of Wagner, Twilight of the Idols,
The Antichrist , and Ecce Homo . The Genealogy thus came at a crucial juncture, and is in many
respects the high point of this last period of his philosophical activity. To borrow some of his own
imagery, if the time of Zarathustra was his "great noon" (as he himself suggests), when the sun of his
intellectual life reached its zenith—following its ascent in the period of Daybreak —then the time of the
Genealogy might be thought of as his "golden afternoon," when that sun's light was no longer dazzling
but was still strong (perhaps the best time of day for seeing things clearly), before it cast its last rays
in the hours of Twilight , and soon thereafter gave way to night.
More prosaically, in the Genealogy , along with the virtually contemporaneous fifth book of The
Gay Science , we encounter the philosopher whom Nietzsche became at the height of his powers and
maturity. Here we find him attempting to do at least some of the things he had come to be convinced
needed doing in order to pursue the reinterpretive and revaluative tasks of the kind of "philosophy of
the future" he had called for and sought to inaugurate in Beyond Good and Evil . As he had recognized
in his retrospective prefaces of 1886, and as he observes in his preface to the Genealogy , his earlier
thinking had already been on the way to his thinking here, and is of no little relevance to it. There also
are significant connections between what we find him doing and saying here and what he went on to
undertake and maintain in his final reckonings with Wagner, Christianity, and the other "idols" he
considers in his next and final spate of books. The Genealogy may thus serve well as both a focal point
and a point of departure for the consideration of much of Nietzsche's thought.
But what is it that he attempts to do here? His announced topic is "die Moral "—not necessarily
"morality" as such and in general, but in any event several purportedly different and basic types of
moral schemes, and certain phenomena associated with them. His announced project in this book is
"genealogy"—and more specifically, the "genealogy" of these moral types and associated phenomena.
Yet his interest is not merely to understand them, but further and more importantly to use the
understanding of them as a springboard to the comprehension of a good deal more. But of what? and
how? And how is "genealogy" supposed to help? Indeed, how is it
― xi ―
supposed to work? How does it relate to the two basic tasks of Nietzsche's kind of
philosopher—(re)interpretation and (re)valuation? What light is shed by what Nietzsche does in the
three "essays" making up this book on these tasks themselves?
These are only some of the questions needing to be raised and considered with respect to
Nietzsche's efforts and concerns in this pivotal but strange and perplexing book. These questions also
lead well beyond the Genealogy itself, in many directions. Its importance to the understanding of the
"mature" Nietzsche's thinking is obvious; but its import is not. Making sense of it involves bringing a
sense of his larger enterprise to bear upon it as well.
Hence the present volume of essays. The idea of such a volume grew out of a symposium held in
1987 (to mark the centenary of the Genealogy's publication), under the auspices of the North
American Nietzsche Society, at the Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association,
at which earlier versions of some of these essays were presented. Other essays subsequently were
invited and selected, in an attempt to make the volume richly diverse in the perspectives and
interpretations brought to bear upon Nietzsche's thinking. Some of them have been published
elsewhere previously; but the majority of them were written specifically for this volume.
While Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals is the general focus of this volume, the essays written and
selected for inclusion here do not all focus directly upon it. Some do, while others bear upon it by way
of a consideration of features of Nietzsche's thought more generally. Similarly, while Nietzsche's title
suggests that his topic is the "genealogy" of "morals," he restricts himself neither to "genealogy" nor
to "morals." The following essays all relate to aspects of what he undertakes to do in the Genealogy ,
but the aspects selected differ, and they are sometimes considered in relation to what he does along
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these lines elsewhere.
The contributors also differ markedly in their own philosophical orientations, and in their
appreciation of what they find in Nietzsche. The volume thus exemplifies the point Nietzsche often
makes in terms of "different eyes" and differing "prospectives," both to reject the notion that there is
one and only one right way in which to view and interpret something, and to suggest how the
understanding of something can best be enhanced. Many different approaches to his thinking are
taken here with respect to the matters he discusses in the Genealogy , and many different
interpretations and assessments are offered. One cannot possibly simply agree with all of them. But
one can profit by availing oneself of all of them in order to transcend the confines of narrower
perspectives upon what he is doing, and to expand the interpretive resources at one's disposal in one's
own attempt to make sense of him and deal with him.
― xii ―
The essays in the first half of the volume deal in various ways with Nietzsche's thinking with
respect to the announced topic of his Genealogy : "morals"—morality, moralities, and associated
phenomena such as pity, cruelty, and ressentiment . These essays thus explore aspects of what could
quite appropriately be called his moral philosophy and psychology. The first several of them deal with
what he himself at times refers to as his "immoralism." Nietzsche's stance with respect to the sort of
thing that goes by the general name of "morality" is perhaps second in notoriety only to what he has
to say about God and Judeo-Christianity, and is even more disconcerting in the eyes of many moral
philosophers associated with the traditional and contemporary mainstream of the discipline. Philippa
Foot's essay is a case in point, and expresses deep reservations about Nietzsche's treatment of
morality even as it attempts to acknowledge the challenge he poses. It therefore sets the stage very
nicely for the rest of the volume, by prompting the question not only of whether Nietzsche does justice
to morality but also of whether Foot does justice to him. The essay that follows by Maudemarie Clark
pursues the "immoralism" issue, but with a rather different intent, and to different effect.
Arthur Danto's essay is one of several (David Hoy's and a previous essay of Frithjof Bergmann's
are others) that appeared some years ago and helped to stimulate further consideration of what
Nietzsche is up to in his Genealogy . Danto sees a kind of "moral terrorism" in Nietzsche, but discerns
something more positive as well. Kathleen Higgins likewise suggests both that "poisons" are at work in
Nietzsche's thinking here and that the upshot need not be as harmful as this might lead one to expect.
Richard White's essay goes further in the direction of seeking to discuss a fundamentally positive
intent in Nietzsche's juxtaposition of "master" and "slave" moralities, with a view to what might lie
beyond his critique. Frithjof Bergmann takes a different approach to the significance of the
"master/slave" discussion, using it as a starting point for a consideration of what he suggests to be a
basic and important difference between Nietzsche's approach to ethics and that of many philosophers
(like Foot) in the analytic tradition.
Robert Solomon offers a much more critical interpretation of Nietzsche's use of the "master/slave"
model and an assessment of the phenomenon of ressentiment very different from Nietzsche's. Like the
next several authors, Solomon tempers his appreciation of Nietzsche's thinking, considering it to be
deficient and in need of modification in important respects. Rüdiger Bittner also focuses upon
Nietzsche's account of ressentiment and argues for the need to modify it to render it more plausible
and satisfactory.
Martha Nussbaum directs her attention to Nietzsche's treatment of suffering and pity, and very
helpfully places it in a long ethical tradition going
― xiii ―
back to the early Stoics. While making good and reasonable sense of it, however, she also
expresses reservations about it even when properly understood. Ivan Soil in effect approaches the
same problem from the other end, taking Nietzsche's unsettling discussion of cruelty as his point of
departure. Spreading his compass to include Nietzsche's extension of this discussion to the
phenomenon of asceticism, Soll seeks to show how all of this is related to Nietzsche's psychological
concerns.
The next two essays follow Nietzsche into several of his most interesting case studies of the kind
of moral psychology he seeks to develop (in addition to that of "slave morality") in the Genealogy and
subsequently. Sarah Kofman examines asceticism as Nietzsche uses the case of Wagner to illuminate
it, and offers a fascinating illustration of the power of Nietzsche's moral psychology to shed light on
this complex and perplexing phenomenon. Yirmiyahu Yovel looks in a different direction, at
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anti-Semitism, attempting both to lay to rest the idea that Nietzsche himself exemplifies it and to show
that he actually provides an analysis of it that is as illuminating as it is severe. In the final essay of the
first part of the volume, using Nietzsche's treatment of the supposed phenomenon of willing as an
example, Bernard Williams makes a case for "following a distinctively Nietzschean route towards the
naturalization of moral psychology."
The essays in the second half of the volume deal with "genealogy" and its relation to philosophy,
as Nietzsche conceives of them and engages in them in the Genealogy and related works. David Hoy's
essay relates Nietzsche's "genealogical method" to its Humean cousin, and so contributes to the
understanding of the extent to which it does (and does not) depart from the classical modern tradition.
Alexander Nehamas examines the "genealogy" of the Genealogy in relation to Nietzsche's strategy in
his early On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life , and then considers what it means to
approach and construe morality "genealogically."
This is Alasdair MacIntyre's concern as well, in the next essay (the second of his 1988 Gifford
Lectures). MacIntyre goes on to discuss Michel Foucault after providing an interpretation of
Nietzschean genealogical analysis as a fundamentally "subversive" mode of thought—about which
MacIntyre has deep reservations. Eric Blondel takes a somewhat similar approach, but in a very
different idiom and spirit. He too regards genealogy as the key to Nietzsche's kind of philosophy, with
which Blondel is considerably more comfortable. Daniel Conway is in basic agreement with Blondel,
construing genealogy as a kind of "symptomatology"—with rather radical implications, which he
undertakes to draw out and emphasize. Brian Leiter provides an alternative interpretation centering on
a key passage in the Genealogy itself, leading to a fundamentally different view of Nietzsche's
philosophical aspirations.
The next several essays similarly move in the direction of a broader con-
― xiv ―
sideration of Nietzsche's philosophical enterprise, as it relates to the Genealogy and as the
Genealogy sheds light upon that enterprise. Gary Shapiro attempts to show that Nietzsche's central
discussion of Schuld (guilt/debt) is connected in a deep and important way with his thinking about a
problem that may be illuminated by a contrasting consideration of Heidegger on Anaximander and the
origin of Western philosophy. Bernd Magnus, Jean-Pierre Mileur, and Stanley Stewart take Nietzsche's
treatment of asceticism as their key to a reflection both upon the Genealogy itself and upon the kind of
thinking toward which they see him moving in it. In my own essay I select yet another of the
Genealogy's main themes—"the type Mensch "—as one of his chief interests here as in his other
writings before and after, intimately related to his other concerns with respect to both method and
content.
The final two essays have to do with points that may at first seem to be concerned more with form
than substance, but which turn out to be well worth considering in thinking about the Genealogy's
genealogy, and about Nietzsche's later writings more generally. Claus-Artur Scheier has noticed
something that seems to connect the form of the Genealogy with its substance in a surprising and
interesting way. The last word has been given to David Allison, because the stylistic device to which he
draws attention (and which Nietzsche came to employ so effectively) is highly appropriate to the
conclusion of this volume—which is most emphatically not intended to achieve closure. On such a work
as the Genealogy , and on the topics considered in it, as on the thinking of Nietzsche more generally,
there can be no real, definitive, and final last word.
During the past few decades Nietzsche has at last begun to receive the attention he deserves in
the English-speaking world, owing in part to larger developments in both American and French
philosophy. Several rather distinct styles of Nietzsche studies have emerged along the way, reflecting
the differing philosophical sensibilities of those coming out of the modern "analytical" tradition and its
earlier and more recent alternatives. It remains to be seen what will become of these differences.
While they are not what they used to be, the divergences remain real and substantial, as do the
differences of interpretation and appreciation among those whose basic philosophical orientations and
styles are rather similar. Yet these divergences are no more to be lamented than are the differences.
Both are only to be expected where Nietzsche's thought is concerned. Such divergences of perspective
and approach, moreover, contribute more to understanding Nietzsche than any one way of dealing
with him can. Indeed, it may well be that the opening up of philosophy itself to these different ways of
proceeding is far healthier and more fruitful than the enthronement of any "one way." That certainly
would be Nietzsche's view of the matter.
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― xv ―
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)
A Brief Life in a Prelude and Five Decades
Prelude: Early childhood (1844-1849)
Firstborn of a Lutheran minister and his wife, living in a small provincial town in what is now eastern
Germany.
The precocious youth (1849-1858)
Bright, serious boy of many talents (musical as well as scholastic), left fatherless at five, raised in an
adoring all-female household.
The brilliant student (1858-1869)
Classics student excelling in his studies, first at an elite boarding school and then at the universities at
Bonn and Leipzig; aspiring composer and fine pianist; discovers Schopenhauer and meets Wagner.
The rebellious professor (1869-1879)
Prodigy in classical philology, a professor at Basel at twenty-four; unconventional interests and
writings antagonize his colleagues; an avid Wagnerian (still composing himself); cultural critic
becoming a philosopher, while struggling with academic life and debilitating illnesses.
The nomad philosopher (1879-1888)
Pensioned retiree at thirty-four; plagued with recurring severe health problems; alienated from
academic life and nearly everything else; living alone in Swiss and Italian boardinghouses—and
proceeding from "free-spirited" reflections to Zarathustra , and on toward a "philosophy of the future"
and a "revaluation of all values."
The insane invalid (1889-1900)
Mere shell following a complete physical and mental collapse (probably of syphilitic origin) in early
1889—at the age of only forty-four; a decade of empty madness before the final curtain.
― xvi ―
Chronology
1844
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is born on October 15 in Röcken, in the Prussian province of Saxony.
1849
Father dies (at the age of thirty-six).
1858-1864
Attends the classics-oriented boarding school Schulpforta. (Plays the piano and composes on the side.)
1864
Enters Bonn University to study classical languages and literatures.
1869
Associate professor of classical philology (before even completing his Ph.D.) at the Swiss university at
Basel.
1870
Full professor at Basel. Enlists as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian War, contracting serious
illnesses.
1872
First book The Birth of Tragedy appears (and is met with scholarly derision)—his only major classical
studies publication.
1873-1874
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Publishes the first three Untimely Meditations , including the essays On the Uses and Disadvantages of
History for Life and Schopenhauer as Educator .
1876
Writes a fourth Meditation in homage to Wagner, but his enthusiasm for Wagner cools.
1878
The first volume of Human, All Too Human (638 aphorisms) appears. Wagner sends him Parsifal , and
their estrangement deepens.
1879
Resigns (with pension) from his position at Basel, incapacitated by his health problems. Begins
spending his summers in the Swiss Engadine region, and his winters in northern Italy, living in
boardinghouses.
1879-1880
Writes two sequels to Human, All Too Human , subsequently published as the two parts of its second
volume (another 758 aphorisms).
1881
Publishes Daybreak (575 more aphorisms). Alternative periods of depression and exhilaration. First
summer in Sils Maria, where the idea of "eternal recurrence" comes to him.
― xvii ―
1882
The year of his intense but short-lived relationship with Lou Salome, which ends badly. Publishes the
initial fourpart version of The Gay Science (342 aphorisms and reflections).
1883
The first two parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra are written and published. Wagner dies. Estrangement
from family and friends; depression. Resolves against living in Germany.
1884
Completes and publishes the third part of Zarathustra . Breaks with his sister, unable to endure her
anti-Semitic, pro-"Teutonic" fiancée Bernard Förster. (She marries him the next year, to Nietzsche's
disgust and distress, accompanying him to Paraguay where he sought to found a Teutonic colony.)
1885
The fourth part of Zarathustra is written, but is only privately printed and circulated. Condition
worsens.
1886
Beyond Good and Evil (296 aphorisms and reflections in nine parts, plus a poem "Aftersong") is
published. New editions of most pre-Zarathustra works are prepared and supplied with prefaces.
1886-1887
An expanded second edition of The Gay Science is prepared and published, with a new preface and
fifth part consisting of 41 additional reflections, and an appendix of poetry, "Songs of Prince Vogelfrei."
1887
On the Genealogy of Morals appears, consisting of a preface and three "essays" (of 17, 25 and 28
numbered sections, respectively). Completes orchestral score for Hymnus an das Leben . Begins
working on magnus opus , to be called The Will to Power .
1888
The Case of Wagner is published; and Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Nietzsche contra Wagner,
Dionysian Dithyrambs (a collection of poems), and Ecce Homo are all written. The Will to Power
project is dropped, in favor of a projected four-part Revaluation of All Values . Condition deteriorates.
1889
Collapses in early January in Turin, at the age of 44. (Nietzsche never recovers, living his final eleven
years in invalid insanity in the care of his mother and sister.) Twilight of the Idols is published in the
same month.
― xviii ―
1892
First public edition of the fourth part of Zarathustra appears.
1893
Sister returns from Paraguay, and—under the name Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche—assists their mother
in the management of her brother's affairs.
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1895
The Antichrist and Nietzsche contra Wagner are published.
1897
Mother dies, leaving complete control of Nietzsche's care—and of his literary estate—to his sister, who
exploits his growing fame and fosters the assimilation of his thought to right-extremist political
purposes during the next four decades.
1900
Nietzsche dies, on August 25, in Weimar.
1901
Sister publishes an arrangement of selections from his notebooks of 1883-1888 under the title The Will
to Power , and in his name.
1908
Ecce Homo is finally published (twenty years after it was written).
1910-1911
First edition of Nietzsche's collected works is published under the supervision of his sister—including a
greatly expanded edition of The Will to Power .
1935
Sister dies, triumphant in the knowledge that her brother had come to be regarded by Hitler and
Mussolini (and many others) as the philosopher of National Socialism and Fascism—a travesty that
would plague Nietzsche's reception for the next half-century.
1967-1984
Publication of the Kritische Gesamtausgabe of Nietzsche's works, Nachlass , and letters.
― xix ―
NOTE ON TEXTS, TRANSLATIONS, AND REFERENCES
The now-standard German edition of Nietzsche's writings is the recently completed Kritische
Gesamtausgabe edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1967-1984).
Zur Genealogie der Moral is to be found in part VI, volume 2 of this edition, along with Jenseits von
Gut und Böse . Now that a paperback "student edition" of this edition of Nietzsche's writings is readily
available, other German editions are seldom used.
The standard English translation of this work is that by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, On
the Genealogy of Morals , published together with Ecce Homo (New York: Vintage, 1967). Except
where contributors have preferred to use their own translations of the passages they cite, or were
working from translations into other languages (for example, French), this is the translation generally
used in citations in this volume. (Departures are indicated in the contributors' notes.)
Kaufmann and Hollingdale have translated most of Nietzsche's completed works—in some cases
together, in others one of them, in others each of them. They also have jointly translated the
collection of selections from Nietzsche's notebooks published in his name under the title Der Wille zur
Macht (The Will to Power ). For the most part these are the translations used by contributors in their
citations; again, see their notes.
Some contributors identify their citations by providing references to the Kritische Gesamtausgabe
(indicating volume, notebook, and entry numbers) as well as to the specific works. The primary
identification of cited passages is usually provided in the standard manner: in the body of the essays
themselves, using the customary acronyms derived from the most commonly used English-language
versions of their titles (see Reference Key below), followed either directly by Nietzsche's arabic section
numbers (where they run consecutively through the entire work) or first by roman numerals
― xx ―
indicating main parts and then by the numbers of the section within these parts. (The letter "P" is
used to signify "Preface" or other such preliminary portions of the works, which Nietzsche often
provided.) In most cases these numberings are supplied by Nietzsche himself, and so are the same in
all editions and languages; hence their standard use for this purpose (rather than page numbers,
which vary from edition to edition, or volume and page numbers in the Gesamtausgabe , which few
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readers possess). In some cases a bit of stretching is involved, employing roman numerals in place of
"First Essay," "Second Part," and so forth; but it usually will be obvious enough what is meant.
In a few cases, however, Nietzsche uses no numbers, and so they have had to be supplied. So, for
example, arabic numbers have been assigned (following Kaufmann's numbering) to the speeches or
sections in each of the parts of Zarathustra to facilitate references to it; and roman numerals have
been assigned to the various parts of Twilight of the Idols and Ecce Homo (as well as the Genealogy ),
within which his arabic numberings begin anew. This expedient is amply warranted by its transparency
and convenience, in terms of economy and also of movement between editions and translations.
(Many readers find it helpful to write such numberings into their copies of these texts, making it all the
easier to interpret and use such references.)
A fairly extensive bibliography of studies of Nietzsche available in English may be found at the
back of this volume. See also the bibliographies in my Nietzsche (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1983), Kaufmann's Nietzsche , 4th edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), and Eric
Blondel's Nietzsche , trans. Sean Hand (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).
― xxi ―
Reference Key
to Nietzsche's Writings
(See Bibliography for publication information)
A = The Antichrist (alternately: The Antichristian )
BGE = Beyond Good and Evil
BT = The Birth of Tragedy
CW = The Case of Wagner
D = Daybreak (alternately: Dawn )
EH = Ecce Homo
GM = On the Genealogy of Morals
GS = The Gay Science (alternately: Joyful Wisdom )
HH = Human, All Too Human (two volumes, I and II)
NCW = Nietzsche contra Wagner
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SE = Schopenhauer as Educator
TI = Twilight of the Idols
TL = On Truth and Lies in a Nònmoral Sense
UDH = On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life
(there are numerous alternate translations of this
essay)
UM = Untimely Meditations (alternately: Unmodern
Observations )
WP = The Will to Power
WS = The Wanderer and His Shadow (incorporated into HH
II)
Z = Thus Spoke Zarathustra
KGW = Kritische Gesamtausgabe: Werke
― 1 ―
PART ONE
MORALITY AND MORAL PSYCHOLOGY
― 3 ―
One
Nietzsche's Immoralism
Philippa Foot
In writing about Nietzsche's immoralism I am going to ask a simple question about him, something
that is difficult to do: it is hard to hold onto anything simple in the face of this determined joker, who
loved masks and hidden things, and whose protean style is sometimes of the most lapidary aphoristic
simplicity but often lush and rhetorical. It has been said that Thus Spoke Zarathustra should be read
as an opera, and it is surely a great shame that we never had a rendition by Anna Russell of those wild
journeys between mountain, marketplace, and cave.
Nietzsche thought he could discredit morality; and I want to ask, "Was he right?" I think the
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