In 1887, with the view of amplifying and completing certain new doctrines which he had merely sketched in Beyond Good and Evil (see especially aphorism 260), Nietzsche published The Genealogy of Moral...

We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves: this has its own good reason. We have never searched for ourselves⁠—how should it then come to pass, that we should ever find ourselves? Rightly has...

We are unknown, we knowers, ourselves to ourselves: this has its own good reason. We have never searched for ourselves⁠—how should it then come to pass, that we should ever find ourselves? Rightly has...

My thoughts concerning the genealogy of our moral prejudices⁠—for they constitute the issue in this polemic⁠—have their first, bald, and provisional expression in that collection of aphorisms entitled...

Owing to a scrupulosity peculiar to myself, which I confess reluctantly⁠—it concerns indeed morality⁠—a scrupulosity, which manifests itself in my life at such an early period, with so much spontaneit...

My first impulse to publish some of my hypotheses concerning the origin of morality I owe to a clear, well-written, and even precocious little book, in which a perverse and vicious kind of moral philo...

In reality I had set my heart at that time on something much more important than the nature of the theories of myself or others concerning the origin of morality (or, more precisely, the real function...

This problem of the value of pity and of the pity-morality (I am an opponent of the modern infamous emasculation of our emotions) seems at the first blush a mere isolated problem, a note of interrogat...

Enough, that after this vista had disclosed itself to me, I myself had reason to search for learned, bold, and industrious colleagues (I am doing it even to this very day). It means traversing with ne...

If this writing be obscure to any individual, and jar on his ears, I do not think that it is necessarily I who am to blame. It is clear enough, on the hypothesis which I presuppose, namely, that the r...

Those English psychologists, who up to the present are the only philosophers who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far as a history of the origin of morality⁠—these men, I say, offer us in...

Those English psychologists, who up to the present are the only philosophers who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far as a history of the origin of morality⁠—these men, I say, offer us in...

All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would fain dominate these historians of morality. But it is certainly a pity that they lack the historical sense itself, that they themselves are quite deser...

In the second place, quite apart from the fact that this hypothesis as to the genesis of the value “good” cannot be historically upheld, it suffers from an inherent psychological contradiction. The ut...

The guidepost which first put me on the right track was this question⁠—what is the true etymological significance of the various symbols for the idea “good” which have been coined in the various langu...

With regard to our problem, which can justly be called an intimate problem, and which elects to appeal to only a limited number of ears: it is of no small interest to ascertain that in those words and...

Above all, there is no exception (though there are opportunities for exceptions) to this rule, that the idea of political superiority always resolves itself into the idea of psychological superiority,...

The reader will have already surmised with what ease the priestly mode of valuation can branch off from the knightly aristocratic mode, and then develop into the very antithesis of the latter: special...

But you understand this not? You have no eyes for a force which has taken two thousand years to achieve victory?⁠—There is nothing wonderful in this: all lengthy processes are hard to see and to reali...

“But why do you talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit to the facts; that the people have triumphed⁠—or the slaves, or the populace, or the herd, or whatever name you care to give them⁠—if this has happ...

The revolt of the slaves in morals begins in the very principle of resentment becoming creative and giving birth to values⁠—a resentment experienced by creatures who, deprived as they are of the prope...

The method of this man is quite contrary to that of the aristocratic man, who conceives the root idea “good” spontaneously and straight away, that is to say, out of himself, and from that material the...

I cannot refrain at this juncture from uttering a sigh and one last hope. What is it precisely which I find intolerable? That which I alone cannot get rid of, which makes me choke and faint? Bad air! ...

But let us come back to it; the problem of another origin of the good⁠—of the good, as the resentful man has thought it out⁠—demands its solution. It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a gru...

Will anyone look a little into⁠—right into⁠—the mystery of how ideals are manufactured in this world? Who has the courage to do it? Come! Here we have a vista opened into these grimy workshops. Wait j...

In the faith in what? In the love for what? In the hope of what? These weaklings!⁠—they also, forsooth, wish to be the strong some time; there is no doubt about it, some time their kingdom also must c...

Let us come to a conclusion. The two opposing values, “good and bad,” “good and evil,” have fought a dreadful, thousand-year fight in the world, and though indubitably the second value has been for a ...

Was it therewith over? Was that greatest of all antitheses of ideals thereby relegated ad acta for all time? Or only postponed, postponed for a long time? May there not take place at some time or othe...

The breeding of an animal that can promise⁠—is not this just that very paradox of a task which nature has set itself in regard to man? Is not this the very problem of man? The fact that this problem h...

The breeding of an animal that can promise⁠—is not this just that very paradox of a task which nature has set itself in regard to man? Is not this the very problem of man? The fact that this problem h...

This is simply the long history of the origin of responsibility. That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the mo...

His conscience?⁠—One apprehends at once that the idea “conscience,” which is here seen in its supreme manifestation, supreme in fact to almost the point of strangeness, should already have behind it a...

But how is it that that other melancholy object, the consciousness of sin, the whole “bad conscience,” came into the world? And it is here that we turn back to our genealogists of morals. For the seco...

The realisation of these contractual relations excites, of course (as would be already expected from our previous observations), a great deal of suspicion and opposition towards the primitive society ...

It is then in this sphere of the law of contract that we find the cradle of the whole moral world of the ideas of “guilt,” “conscience,” “duty,” the “sacredness of duty,”⁠—their commencement, like the...

Entertaining, as I do, these thoughts, I am, let me say in parenthesis, fundamentally opposed to helping our pessimists to new water for the discordant and groaning mills of their disgust with life; o...

The feeling of “ought,” of personal obligation (to take up again the train of our inquiry), has had, as we saw, its origin in the oldest and most original personal relationship that there is, the rela...

Measured always by the standard of antiquity (this antiquity, moreover, is present or again possible at all periods), the community stands to its members in that important and radical relationship of ...

As it grows more powerful, the community tends to take the offences of the individual less seriously, because they are now regarded as being much less revolutionary and dangerous to the corporate exis...

A deprecatory word here against the attempts, that have lately been made, to find the origin of justice on quite another basis⁠—namely, on that of resentment. Let me whisper a word in the ear of the p...

A word more on the origin and end of punishment⁠—two problems which are or ought to be kept distinct, but which unfortunately are usually lumped into one. And what tactics have our moral genealogists ...

To return to our subject, namely punishment, we must make consequently a double distinction: first, the relatively permanent element, the custom, the act, the “drama,” a certain rigid sequence of meth...

This list is certainly not complete; it is obvious that punishment is overloaded with utilities of all kinds. This makes it all the more permissible to eliminate one supposed utility, which passes, at...

This truth came insidiously enough to the consciousness of Spinoza (to the disgust of his commentators, who (like Kuno Fischer, for instance) give themselves no end of trouble to misunderstand him on ...

At this juncture I cannot avoid trying to give a tentative and provisional expression to my own hypothesis concerning the origin of the bad conscience: it is difficult to make it fully appreciated, an...

It is primarily involved in this hypothesis of the origin of the bad conscience, that that alteration was no gradual and no voluntary alteration, and that it did not manifest itself as an organic adap...

Beware of thinking lightly of this phenomenon, by reason of its initial painful ugliness. At bottom it is the same active force which is at work on a more grandiose scale in those potent artists and o...

Undoubtedly the bad conscience is an illness, but an illness like pregnancy is an illness. If we search out the conditions under which this illness reaches its most terrible and sublime zenith, we sha...

According to the teaching of history, the consciousness of owing debts to the deity by no means came to an end with the decay of the clan organisation of society; just as mankind has inherited the ide...

So much for my rough and preliminary sketch of the interrelation of the ideas “ought” (owe) and “duty” with the postulates of religion. I have intentionally shelved up to the present the actual morali...

The reader will already have conjectured what took place on the stage and behind the scenes of this drama. That will for self-torture, that inverted cruelty of the animal man, who, turned subjective a...

Let this suffice once for all concerning the origin of the “holy God.” The fact that in itself the conception of gods is not bound to lead necessarily to this degradation of the imagination (a tempora...

I conclude with three queries, as you will see. “Is an ideal actually set up here, or is one pulled down?” I am perhaps asked.⁠ ⁠… But have ye sufficiently asked yourselves how dear a payment has the ...

But what am I talking of? Enough! Enough! At this juncture I have only one proper course, silence: otherwise tresspass on a domain open alone to one who is younger than I, one stronger, more “future” ...

What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In artists, nothing, or too much; in philosophers and scholars, a kind of “flair” and instinct for the conditions most favourable to advanced intellectualism; in...

What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In artists, nothing, or too much; in philosophers and scholars, a kind of “flair” and instinct for the conditions most favourable to advanced intellectualism; in...

What is the meaning of ascetic ideals? Or, to take an individual case in regard to which I have often been consulted, what is the meaning, for example, of an artist like Richard Wagner paying homage t...

At this point it is impossible to beg the further question of what he really had to do with that manly (ah, so unmanly) country bumpkin, that poor devil and natural, Parsifal, whom he eventually made ...

Let me speak out my mind in a case like this, which has many painful elements⁠—and it is a typical case: it is certainly best to separate an artist from his work so completely that he cannot be taken ...

What, then, is the meaning of ascetic ideals? In the case of an artist we are getting to understand their meaning: Nothing at all⁠ ⁠… or so much that it is as good as nothing at all. Indeed, what is t...

Schopenhauer has made use of the Kantian treatment of the aesthetic problem⁠—though he certainly did not regard it with the Kantian eyes. Kant thought that he showed honour to art when he favoured and...

Let us beware of making dismal faces at the word “torture”⁠—there is certainly in this case enough to deduct, enough to discount⁠—there is even something to laugh at. For we must certainly not underes...

These philosophers, you see, are by no means uncorrupted witnesses and judges of the value of the ascetic ideal. They think of themselves⁠—what is the “saint” to them? They think of that which to them...

A certain asceticism, a grimly gay wholehearted renunciation, is, as we have seen, one of the most favourable conditions for the highest intellectualism, and, consequently, for the most natural coroll...

There is in the same book, Aph. 12, an explanation of the burden of unpopularity under which the earliest race of contemplative men had to live⁠—despised almost as widely as they were first feared! Co...

And now, after we have caught sight of the ascetic priest, let us tackle our problem. What is the meaning of the ascetic ideal? It now first becomes serious⁠—vitally serious. We are now confronted wit...

Granted that such an incarnate will for contradiction and unnaturalness is induced to philosophise; on what will it vent its pet caprice? On that which has been felt with the greatest certainty to be ...

But let us turn back. Such a self-contradiction, as apparently manifests itself among the ascetics, “Life turned against Life,” is⁠—this much is absolutely obvious⁠—from the physiological and not now ...

The more normal is this sickliness in man⁠—and we cannot dispute this normality⁠—the higher honour should be paid to the rare cases of psychical and physical powerfulness, the windfalls of humanity, a...

If you have understood in all their depths⁠—and I demand that you should grasp them profoundly and understand them profoundly⁠—the reasons for the impossibility of its being the business of the health...

You can see now what the remedial instinct of life has at least tried to effect, according to my conception, through the ascetic priest, and the purpose for which he had to employ a temporary tyranny ...

But is he really a physician, this ascetic priest? We already understand why we are scarcely allowed to call him a physician, however much he likes to feel a “saviour” and let himself be worshipped as...

Such a hypnotic deadening of sensibility and susceptibility to pain, which presupposes somewhat rare powers, especially courage, contempt of opinion, intellectual stoicism, is less frequent than anoth...

The methods employed by the ascetic priest, which we have already learnt to know⁠—stifling of all vitality, mechanical energy, the little joy, and especially the method of “love your neighbour” herd-o...

But you will soon understand me.⁠—Putting it shortly, there is reason enough, is there not, for us psychologists nowadays never getting from a certain mistrust of out own selves? Probably even we ours...

So far as all this kind of priestly medicine-mongering, the “guilty” kind, is concerned, every word of criticism is superfluous. As for the suggestion that emotional excess of the type, which in these...

The ascetic priest has, wherever he has obtained the mastery, corrupted the health of the soul, he has consequently also corrupted taste in artibus et litteris⁠—he corrupts it still. “Consequently?” I...

The ascetic ideal has corrupted not only health and taste, there are also third, fourth, fifth, and sixth things which it has corrupted⁠—I shall take care not to go through the catalogue (when should ...

And now look at the other side, at those rare cases, of which I spoke, the most supreme idealists to be found nowadays among philosophers and scholars. Have we, perchance, found in them the sought-for...

No! You can’t get round me with science, when I search for the natural antagonists of the ascetic ideal, when I put the question: “Where is the opposed will in which the opponent ideal expresses itsel...

Or, perchance, does the whole of modern history show in its demeanour greater confidence in life, greater confidence in its ideals? Its loftiest pretension is now to be a mirror; it repudiates all tel...

Enough! enough! let us leave these curiosities and complexities of the modern spirit, which excite as much laughter as disgust. Our problem can certainly do without them, the problem of the meaning of...

If you except the ascetic ideal, man, the animal man had no meaning. His existence on earth contained no end; “What is the purpose of man at all?” was a question without an answer; the will for man an...

The German is: “Sittlichkeit der Sitte.” —⁠H. B. S. ↩ The German word “schuld” means both debt and guilt. Cp. the English “owe” and “ought,” by which I occasionally render the double meaning. —⁠H. B. ...