Bio:
Friedrich Nietzsche was an incendiary and provocative thinker. Originally trained as a philologist (studier of language), he specialized in examining ancient texts, especially ones originating in ancient Greece.1 Of poor constitution, Nietzsche struggled to perform daily tasks such as eating and sleeping. He felt most at home while walking in mountains, the movement and brisk air temporarily alleviating his maladies.
Focus:
This post will focus on Nietzsche’s conception and usage of genealogy. Most frequently used to describe family trees and genetic resemblances, Nietzsche is instead interested in attempting to trace the lineages of ideas and norms2.
Nietzsche most clearly and systematically articulates his ideas in the text Genealogy of Morals, an expansion on themes he discusses in Beyond Good and Evil. This post will focus on Nietzsche’s explanation regarding the origin of popular morality.
From “Good and Bad” to “Good and Evil”:
Nietzsche believed that notions of moral good and evil are inventions of humans. To him, before we were around there were simply good and bad occurrences for particular beings. For example, a deer being killed and eaten by a wolf would be good for the wolf and bad for the deer. This is simply an example of the rules of nature, and no ill will or moral considerations are present. Nietzsche essentially argues that ideas of good and evil come about from human culture and norms, which are constantly internalized by members of the population, and are pushed via social institutions such as church and state.
Will To Power:
A perpetually misunderstood and misarticulated concept, Nietzsche’s idea of will to power is not simply some kind of bludgeonous conclusion of might makes right. While his articulation of this idea varies across his texts, there are some core points to it. For Nietzsche, will to power is the idea that life is in itself oriented toward applying strength and capacity for changing things3. This application can be directed either internally or externally, and for him it foundationally explains what life itself is4.
A Genealogical Account of Morality:
Nietzsche’s account of morality begins within historical societal stratification. He argues that societies such as ancient Greece broadly divided social power between the groups of warrior and priest5. In narratives of ancient Greece, the warriors were conquerors. They went to battle, and the victors partied with the spoils of war. Critically, Nietzsche argues that this warrior ideal wasn’t hedonistic. While they were to enjoy good food and drink, to participate in sex and other fun behaviors, a good warrior wouldn’t be caught up in only those things. In The Odyssey, Odysseus ties himself to the mast of his ship when passing by the sirens, because he knows they are too hot to handle6.
Nietzsche argues that the will to power of the warrior class is centered on external conquest. While surely narratives of warrior-priests exist, they tend to not be the heads of religious institutions, and their piety is often based around battle.
The heads of temples typically were not the ones leading world conquest. Often portrayed as more frail and passive, they tended not to conquer with their sword. Nietzsche believes that every being imparts their will to power somehow, and thus he argues the priest trains their focus inward, imparting their will to power on self-reflection and self-restriction. Warriors aren’t typically known for their understanding of geopolitics or advanced mathematics, whereas the priests were often the heads of intellectual understanding.
Nietzsche says that the ideal of the warrior was the social norm at first. Nietzsche saw the warrior ideal as tied to life affirmation, which included creating the conditions for oneself to live an enjoyable life. As mentioned, the ideal warrior ate and drank their fill, but didn’t do so to the point of greed or slovenliness. Meanwhile, the ideal priest lived an ascetic life of self restriction. While this had benefits of self-cultivation, it also resulted in denial of the body, as ideals of temperance and chastity took from potential ability to live well7.
The Transvaluation of Values:
As the warriors conquered the world, the priests conquered themselves. Over time, this resulted in the priest class gaining sociopolitical power. The power of the church’s narrative over ordinary folk’s lives grew, especially as Christianity began to flourish. As the priests wrested more control over society and ideals, they began to spread their own ascetic values. Thus the life affirming idea of the warrior began to be flipped around, resulting in a transvaluation of values. When before the strapping warrior who ate and drank their fill was the social ideal, the church’s growth allowed it to start to push itself as the new ideal. Drinking gave way to temperance, sex gave way to chastity. Self-restriction became more and more the normative end goal.
Exploring ideas of self-restriction in Nietzsche’s work will take longer than I have for this post. However, a teaser for my next planned post: Nietzsche believed that the ascetic lifestyle pushed by the priest class resulted in the Christianity of his time period rotting. As abstract values took precedence over tangible living, Nietzsche claimed that there was a crisis of authenticity, that church had become for many simply a thing to do on Sunday, disconnected from practical concerns.
This inspired one of his earlier sets of ideas, that of Apollonian and Dionysian impulses.
This went on to inspire Michel Foucault’s genealogical examinations of human sexuality, biopolitics, and social control measures.
“Physiologists should think twice before positioning the drive for self-preservation as the cardinal drive of an organic being. Above all, a living thing wants to discharge its strength – life itself is will to power –: self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of this” (Beyond Good and Evil 15).
It also bears some comparisons to notions of Vitalism, which were common in his day.
One can draw out this kind of distinction in many historical societies, including within ancient Norse and Aztec culture. One can also complicate this idea via discussions of martial monks, who play an important role in Indian religious and military history.
This is an example of self restriction for the sake of facilitating constructive aims, which is a key concept in Nietzsche’s writing. Stay tuned for a post on this subject!
Additionally, once ideas of heaven became widespread, living for the sake of a non-Earthly plane was seen by Nietzsche as a denial of our world. I plan to expand on this in another post as well!