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n Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche remarks that an interest in justifying morality has led moral philosophers to overlook an important question, the question
of what morality is: every philosopher so far has thought that he has provided
a ground for morality. Morality itself, however, was thought to be given
(BGE 186).1 Part of Nietzsches complaint in this passage seems to be that the
judgments, affective states, and practices grouped together under the concept
of morality do not possess the requisite unity to be evaluated as a whole, and
that consequently a more fine-grained typology is required.2 However, in GM,
Nietzsche claims that understanding morality requires not only a more sophisticated moral typology but an examination of moralitys history. He implies that
such an understanding is an important prerequisite to the ultimate task of GM,
assessing the value of morality.3
Yet it is not at all obvious why understanding moralitys history should be
helpful for understanding current morality, especially if ones ultimate aim is to
assess moralitys value. Would not a sophisticated typology be superior? After
all, it is obvious why such a typology would be necessary to avoid evaluative
errorsan overly simplistic typology may group together phenomena that differ in descriptive properties that make an evaluative difference, thus tempting
one to draw false evaluative conclusions. But there is not an analogous story
for why understanding moralitys history is important for coming to an accurate
assessment of it.
239
Of course, historical information may not be completely irrelevant for knowing what morality is like now, even if it has substantially changed. One way this
information might be relevant is that how morality is now may bear some logical
relation to the past. For example, if moral rules are (now) commands issued by
God, these rules must have beenat some point in the pastcommanded by
God. The present property of these rulesthat they are divine commands
makes implicit reference to the past. Interpretations of GM that locate genealogys critical potential in its ability to undermine self-serving myths often
emphasize this use of history.4 A second way information about moralitys past
may be important is by providing evidence that current morality has certain
features. Interpretations of GM that emphasize that investigating the origin of
morality reveals obscured features of current moral attitudes understand history
as evidentially useful in this way.
Many interpretations of the genealogy assume that Nietzsche uses genealogy
for one of these two purposes. However, neither of these considerations is sufficient to secure an important place for history in Nietzsches philosophy. The
number of cases in which historical investigation can serve the first purpose
is limited, and history is often redundant for the second purpose. Moreover,
Nietzsche believes that what we call morality has changed substantially over
the course of history. If Nietzsche believes this, it would be puzzling for him
to think he could directly infer features of our current moral practice from past
features of that practice.
This article considers an alternative account of how Nietzsches historical
story in GM is relevant for his critique of morality. I argue that Nietzsches history provides us with information about how to structure our interpretation of
morality. Information structures our interpretation when it serves as an interpretive guide, a guide to whether and where we should expect to find coherence
in our current moral practice. My article is organized as follows: Ibegin by
considering how information about the conditions of a texts production may
structure our interpretation of that text. I then consider how information about
the emergence of a practice might structure our interpretation of that practice.
After explaining the basic ideas behind my account, I provide textual evidence
that Nietzsche considered the history of morality relevant to how we interpret
it. I conclude by showing how my account explains why Nietzsches genealogy
mixes fact and fiction.
of guilt. Nietzsche provides a complex historical story about the feeling of guilt
in which an association between pain and having debts (GM II:46) becomes
an expectation that we will be suffer for violating custom (GM II:19), which is
transformed into a premoral bad conscience when our aggressive tendencies turn
inward (GM II:16), which when interpreted using the concept of sin becomes
our current feeling of guilt (GM III:16, 20). Each of these transformations leaves
a trace, Nietzsche believes, in our current feeling. And because these various
traces derive from quite different historical contexts, there is little reason to think
that they interconnect to serve some simple end. That is, a structurally complex
interpretation of the feeling of guilt is required.
Let us consider what these histories show. They do not, for all that has been
said so far, show whether punishment or guilt is valuable. Rather, they show that
a certain kind of account of the value of these aspects of morality is misguided:
an account in which these aspects of morality have a single basic function that
can be used as a basis of assessment. This conclusion can be used for critique
when accounts of the positive value of these phenomena require a structurally
simple interpretation of them. So, history on this account does not directly provide reasons for affirming or rejecting morality; rather, it guides our reflection
about those reasons. But this role for history is still relevant for critique because
it guides our reflection in a way that is at odds with widely shared assumptions
about how such reflection should proceed. Historical investigation is thus a
prolegomenon to a critique of morality.
This account of the role of Nietzsches historical story can help explain some
otherwise puzzling features of GM. An odd feature of GM is that despite Nietzsches
ostensible focus on detailed historical study,7 it has a mythic quality. It is often
the story of big collective actors battling it out to influence our social practices
and psychological makeup. My account of the role of history should make this
feature of Nietzsches genealogy less surprising. If my interpretive hypothesis
is correct, one would expect Nietzsche to focus on a certain sort of historya
history of singular or collective agential influence on practices rather than, for
example, history focusing on structural change. This is exactly the type of history
Nietzsche writes. For all its problems, this sort of history does possess at least one
virtueit tells a story that most directly displays the sort of information we need
for deciding how to structure our interpretation of morality. Because agents act
with a certain unity and purpose, it is appropriate to look for unity and coherence
in changes to phenomena brought about by those agents. For instance, in the first
book of GM, Nietzsche treats the slaves as an undifferentiated collective actor.
This is at best a simplification of the historical dynamics. Why should Nietzsche
simplify the history in this way? I suggest it is because when the slaves are depicted
in this fashion, the changes the slaves make to master morality can be expected
to display a certain degree of ideological coherence. (Of course, given the other
events described in the genealogy, we do not have reason to expect that the end
product of these developmentsnineteenth-century middle-European Christian
moralitywill possess such unity.)
Conclusion
This essay is an attempt to answer the question of why the argument in GM takes
a historical form. The suggestion is that the history provides us with information
about how we should structure our understanding of a complex phenomenon
like morality. History does not tell us what to think about m
orality but rather
how we should go about t hinking about it. Thus, history is important not because
it establishes or disestablishes moralitys value but because it attacks a common
presupposition of moral apologetics.
Harvard University
prescott@fas.harvard.edu
Notes
I presented this paper at the Central Division Meeting of the North American Nietzsche Society
in 2013, and I would like to thank audience members for very helpful feedback. I would also like
to thank Olivia Bailey, Rachel Cristy, Ned Hall, Andrew Huddleston, Paul Katsafanas, Nathan
Pensler, and Timothy Stoll for invaluable comments and discussion.
1. In citing Nietzsches work, I have used the Cambridge editions: Beyond Good and Evil,
ed. Rolf-Peter Horstmann, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002); The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams, trans. Josefine Nauckhoff and Adrian Del Caro
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); On the Genealogy of Morality, ed. Keith AnsellPearson, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
2. In GM, Nietzsche describes the first steps of his investigation as developing a more
sophisticated moral typology: To these questions I found and ventured all kinds of answers,
Idistinguished between epochs, peoples, grades of rank between individuals, I focused my
inquiry, and out of the answers there developed new questions, investigations, conjectures,
probabilities until I had my own territory, my own soil, a whole silently growing and blossoming
world . . . (P:3). There is also a passage in BGE that expresses this idea: We should admit to
ourselves with all due severity exactly what will be necessary for a long time to come and what
is provisionally correct, namely: collecting material, formulating concepts, and putting into order
the tremendous realm of tender value feelings and value distinctions that live, grow, reproduce,
and are destroyed,and, perhaps, attempting to illustrate the recurring and more frequent shapes
of this living crystallization,all of which would be a preparation for a typology of morals
(BGE186).
3. For instance, he writes that GM is concerned with the questions under what conditions
did man invent the value judgments good and evil? and what value do they themselves have?
(GM P:3).
4. For example, in Nietzsche and Genealogy, Raymond Geuss argues that genealogy
opposes what he calls tracing a pedigree. Tracing a pedigree has five characteristics: (1) In the