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Origin Of Morality Vs Nietzsche

Good Essays

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who wrote a book called On the Genealogy of Morals. This book is comprised of three different essays, and the first essay is titled “’Good and Evil,’ ‘Good and Bad.’” Rather than going straight into what Nietzsche talks about in his first essay, it would be better to start off by breaking down the title of his book. The Oxford English Dictionary defines genealogy as “an account of one’s descent from an ancestor or ancestors, by enumeration of the intermediate persons.” From this definition, we can see that genealogy and history are closely related, and that history is going to play a big part in Nietzsche’s writings. In his first essay, Nietzsche discusses his theory of the origin of morality. …show more content…

Rather it was ‘the good’ themselves...who felt and established themselves and their actions as good.” According to Nietzsche, it is the noble people who are the good people. People are noble if they are in the upper-class and have high status and power. Those who are not good are the common people or the ones in the lower-class. Nietzsche claims that the relation between the ruling people and the common people “is the origin of the antithesis ‘good’ and ‘bad.’” He tells us that the word ‘good’ did not originate from selfless acts, as people like Dr. Rée suggest. Nietzsche also rejects a theory offered by Herbert Spencer who said that ‘good’ is identical to ‘useful.” Nietzsche tried several times to find the right path that would lead him to the origin of the word good. He found “that everywhere ‘noble,’ ‘aristocratic’ in the social sense, is the basic concept from which ‘good,’…developed: a development which always runs parallel with that other in which ‘common,’ plebeian,’ low’ are finally transformed into the concept ‘bad.’” Nietzsche uses the German word “schlect” to support this claim. The word “schlect” is similar to the word “schilict,” which means plain or simple. This word contrasts with people belonging from the noble class. Those who are in the upper-class are good because of the amount of power they have. Compared to other persons, especially those in the lowest social class, they are good. The noble people not only consider themselves to be good

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