Why Must Read Nietzsche: On the Genealogy of Morality and Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)?

The 240-page 2017 third edition of the book Nietzsche “On the Genealogy of Morality” and Other Writings, edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson; translated by Carol Diethe (Cambridge University Press) is an excellent study edition. The book’s contents include the following parts: Ansell-Pearson’s informative “Introduction” (pages ix-xxxi); a useful “Chronology” of Nietzsche’s life (pages xxxii-xxxiv); a usefully categorized “Further Reading” list (pages xxxv-xl); a helpful “Biographical Synopses” of persons named in Nietzsche’s text (pages xli-xliv); the footnoted text of Nietzsche’s self-styled polemic (pages 1-123); handy “Supplementary Material to On the Genealogy of Morality” (pages 125-184); the “Index of Names” (185-188); the “Index of Subjects” (pages 189-196), followed by the alphabetized list of “Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought” (unpaginated pages 197-200). The handy “Supplementary Material” (pages 125-184) “includes full translation of all the material which Nietzsche either refers to or partly cites from in the Genealogy of Morality” (page 125). The last item included is Nietzsche’s early essay “Homer’s Contest” (1872; pages 177-184), which I will quote below momentarily. In the useful “Chronology” of Nietzsche’s life (pages xxxii-xxxiv), we learn that he was born on October 15, 1844, in a Prussian province southwest of Leipzig (page xxxii) and that he died on August 25, 1900, in Weimar (page xxxiv). On January 3, 1889, he had a mental breakdown from which he never recovered (page xxxiv). In short, Nietzsche lost his sanity and lived out his days bereft of sanity. However, he enjoyed his sanity on this earth for a wee bit longer than the crucified historical Jesus did. In any event, like the historical Jesus, Nietzsche came to enjoy posthumous fame among certain modern atheists (such as the editor Keith Ansell-Pearson; see page xxx) who, like Nietzsche also rejected God and Christianity and who studied Nietzsche’s stylishly written texts carefully, as Nietzsche wanted them to be studied by readers. Disclosure: I am not an atheist. In 1864 and 1865, young Nietzsche pursued studies in classical philology. In February 1869 he was “appointed Extraordinary Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel” (page xxxii). However, in January 1871, he “[u]nsuccesfully applie[d] for the Chair of Philosophy at [the] University of Basel” (page xxxii). In 1879, “Nietzsche [was] forced to resign from his Chair at Basel due to ill health. For the next ten years he leads the life of a solitary wanderer living in hotel rooms and lodgings” (page xxxiii). Apart from anything Nietzsche may say about the ascetic ideal, he himself apparently lived a spartan ascetic life from 1879 onward. In Ansell-Pearson’s informative “Introduction” (pages ix-xxxi), he mentions a letter that Nietzsche wrote on September 22, 1886, to “his former Basel colleague Jacob Burckhardt” (page x). But Burckhardt’s name does not appear in the “Index of Names” (pages 185-188). In any event, at the University of Basel, Nietzsche met the famous scholar Jacob Burkhardt (1818-1897), the author of the posthumously published book The Greeks and Greek Civilization, translated by Sheila Stern; edited by Oswyn Murray (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). That posthumously published book makes it abundantly clear that Burckhardt does not see ancient Greek civilization as a golden age. In the useful “Chronology” of Nietzsche’s life (pages xxxii-xxxiv), we learn that, in 1882, Nietzsche’s The Gay Science was published. “In aphorism 125, a madman announces the ‘death of God’” (pages xxxiii). For a perceptive account of Nietzsche’s widely known expression about the so-called death of God, see the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong’s essay “Post-Christian or Not?” in his book In the Human Grain: Further Explorations of Contemporary Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1967, pages 147-164). In the useful “Chronology” of Nietzsche’s life (pages xxxii-xxxiv), we learn that, in 1883, Nietzsche wrote the “first and second parts of Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None and that, in 1884-1885, the third and fourth parts and that, in 1886, Nietzsche published Beyond Good and Evil: A Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (page xxxiv). For a well-informed discussion of Nietzsche's style in Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, see Wolfgang Mieder’s article “‘My Tongue – Is of the People’: The Proverbial Language of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra” in the journal Proverbium, volume 30 (2013): pages 171-226. In Ansell-Pearson’s informative “Introduction” (pages ix-xxxi), he says, “Nietzsche intended On the Genealogy of Morality [1887] as a ‘supplement’ and clarification’ to his previous book Beyond Good and Evil [1886]. That book is said by Nietzsche to be ‘in all essentials’ a critique of modernity that includes within its range of attack modern science, modern art, and modern politics” (pages ix-x). In the “Chronology” of Nietzsche’s life (pages xxxii-xxxiv), we are informed that on November 10, 1887, Nietzsche published On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic. If you like truth in advertising, then you should like the subtitle of Nietzsche’s 1887 book. Now, in Ansell-Pearson’s informative “Introduction” (pages ix-xxxi), he says, “Nietzsche conceived On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) as a ‘small polemical pamphlet’ that might help him sell more copies of his earlier writings. . . . For shock value no other modern text on the human condition rivals it. Nietzsche himself was well aware of the character of the book. There are moments in the text where he reveals his own sense of alarm at what he is discovering about human origins and development, especially the perverse nature of the human animal, the being he calls ‘the sick animal’ (GM III,14): ‘There is so much in man that is horrifying! . . . The world has been a madhouse for too long!’ (GM II, 22)” (page ix; the first ellipsis here is mine; but the second and third ellipses here are Ansell-Pearson’s). Now, the Greek word polemos means war, struggle. By contrast, the Greek word agon means contest, struggle. In Nietzsche’s 1887 book On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic, he is clearly at war on many fronts. However, let’s look at something he says in his early essay “Homer’s Contest” (1872; pages 177-184). In it, among other things, Nietzsche says, “Hellenic popular teaching commends that every talent must develop through a struggle: whereas modern educators fear nothing more than the unleashing of so-called ambition. Here [in the moderns], selfishness is feared as ‘evil as such’ – except by the Jesuits, who think like the ancients in this and probably, for that reason, may be the most effective educators of our times. They seem to believe that selfishness, i.e., the individual, is simply the most powerful agens, obtaining the character of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ essentially from the aims towards which it [the agent] strives. But for the ancients, the aim of agonistic education was the well-being of the whole, of state society” (pages 181-182). In this respect, over against the ancients, Jesuit educators in their pursuit of agonistic education and excellence were oriented toward individual personal development of the students. However, the problem that Nietzsche indicts modern educators for here may be deeper than he thinks it is. See Robert Faulkner’s book The Case for Greatness: Honorable Ambition and Its Critics (Yale University Press, 2008). I have no doubt that Nietzsche himself aspired to greatness in philosophy. For a succinct survey of aspirations to greatness in Western culture, see the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Maurice B. McNamee’s book Honor and the Epic Hero: A Study of the Shifting Concept of Magnanimity in Philosophy and Epic Poetry (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960) -- and Nietzsche adds his concept of the overman. Ah, but what about Jesuits such as the Jesuit educators Nietzsche here praises – are Jesuits permitted to aspire to greatness (i.e., to what Aristotle refers to as great-souled persons)? It seems that the answer is a qualified affirmative – provided that the aspire to great service to Jesus Christ. See the American Jesuit spiritual director E. Edward Kinerk’s essay exploring this titled “Eliciting Great Desires: Their Place in the Spirituality of Jesuits” in the periodical Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits (published by the American Assistancy Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality), volume 16, number 5 (November 1984). Now, the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) uses both the terms polemic and agonistic, but in different books. In Ong’s book The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Yale University Press, 1967), the expanded version of his 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University, he uses the term polemic (see esp. pages 195-222, 236-255, and 262-286). Briefly, Ong’s technology thesis about culture is the phonetic alphabetic writing in ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew culture was a form of material technology that was, through writing and also reading, interiorized by the human psyche, thereby producing a visualist tendency of cognitive processing in the human sensorium – which effectively distances the human person from the earlier forms of oral/aural cognitive processing in the human sensorium. Later in Western cultural history, the emergence in the mid-1450s of the Gutenberg printing press further advanced this interiorization of visualist tendencies in the human sensorium. However, the more recent material technologies such as television, radio, telephones, and sound-amplifications systems involve a kind of strengthening of the never entirely dormant oral/aural tendencies of the human sensorium. Now, in Ong’s book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Cornell University Press, 1981), the published version of his 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University, Ong switches to using the term agonistic (which he uses so frequently throughout the book that it is not listed in the “Index” [pages 223-231]). In it, Ong says, “Johan Huizinga’s wide-ranging Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture [Boston: Beacon Press, 1955; translated from the 1944 German edition; but the author’s “Foreword” is dated 1938] has made the present generation aware of the pervasiveness of agonistic activity in the form of play through the entire human lifeworld. Huizinga is concerned chiefly with human beings but makes some references to animal behavior. He suggests that the antagonistic, antithetical structures of archaic societies act out antithetical structures in the cosmos (53-56), but he has also outlined some of the civilizing or consciousness-raising effects of agonistic activity” (page 18; for Ong’s further references to Huizinga, see the “Index” [page 226]). Now, in the “Index of Subjects” (pages 189-196) in the 240-page 2017 third edition of the book Nietzsche of the Genealogy of Morality, we can look up specific page references there to find his discussion of shame (page 195) and guilt (page 192). For Ong. ancient Greek culture as an example of a larger pattern of honor/shame cultures, with the related accentuation of the heroic. However, as Nietzsche discusses in his first book The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872), ancient Greek culture also gave birth to tragedy as a collective public form of entertainment. But the ancient Hebrew culture introduced the concept of guilt, over against the concept of shame – and of the sense of personal responsibility as the underlying concomitant of personal guilt. In a certain sense, what Ong refers to as an oral/aural orientation is involved in conceptualizing oneself as a responsive and responsible person. For further discussion, see Susan Niditch’s book The Responsive Self: Personal Religion in Biblical Literature of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods (Yale University Press, 2015). For further reading in the spirit of a genealogical historical study of ancient Christian texts, see Michel Foucault’s posthumously published unfinished book Confessions of the Flesh: The History of Sexuality: Volume 4, translated by Robert Hurley; edited and with a “Foreword” by Frederic Gros (New York: Pantheon Books, 2021; orig. French ed., 2018).