Nietzsche: The Violent Birth of Morality

For this session, we'll be reading Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of Morals, First and Second Essays." Nietzsche traces morality to its origins in power relations, not timeless truths. The First Essay exposes the "slave revolt in morality"—how the powerless priestly class inverted aristocratic values, rebranding strength as evil and their own weakness as virtue. Ressentiment (festering revenge) created "good and evil" to replace the noble "good and bad." The Second Essay excavates conscience as internalized cruelty: when instincts could no longer discharge outward, man turned aggression inward, breeding guilt and self-torture. The "bad conscience" is simultaneously humanity's sickness and its depth—the wound that makes us interesting, capable of promises, memory, and meaning. Nietzsche reveals the psychological economies behind our highest ideals: Christianity as refined revenge, justice as sublimated violence, guilt as unpaid debt to ancestors and gods. The task: diagnose the genealogy of our values to imagine their transvaluation.

The text can be found here