Zur Genealogie der Moral (On the Genealogy of Morals).

Leipzig: C. G. Naumann, 1887. First Edition. contemporary boards. Very good. Master Morality and Slave Morality Compared

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. Zur Genealogie der Moral (On the Genealogy of Morals). C. G. Naumann, Leipzig, 1887. TP + [III]- XIV + half title + [1]-182 + [183] = Inhalt + [184] = Printer’s information, Octavo. First Edition. Schaberg 53.

Nietzsche's second privately-printed work of which he had 600 copies printed.

The Genealogy, meant to be an elaboration and an extension of Beyond Good and Evil, has generated more scholarly comments in the past twenty years than any other book that Nietzsche wrote. The book’s structure, which is more transparently discursive than most of his other works, is that of three sustained and interlocking essays. The first addresses the origins of our conceptions of "good" and "bad," as against those of “good” and “evil” and contains Nietzsche's famous analysis of master morality and slave morality (a topic he had first introduced in Beyond Good and Evil the previous year). The second essay traces the origin of a "bad conscience" – the phenomenon of the soul taking sides against itself – while the third and final essays attacks the Christian advocacy of ascetic ideals, even while recognizing that “almost everything we call ‘higher culture’ rests on the spiritualization of, and giving depth to, cruelty (against oneself).” Throughout, Nietzsche employs his "genealogical" method, which has proven to be so influential in the 20th century, most notably in the work of Michel Foucault. The work has been a traditional locus of confusion among simplistic readers of Nietzsche’s work: the apparent racial distinction, between master-morality and slave- morality, which Nietzsche ironically derived from the banal racist Gobineau, is turned to decidedly un-racial purposes. But then, Nietzsche’s meaning has never stood between his many ideological interpreters and their purposes.

CONDITION: Very good in contemporary quarter leather with marbled boards. Scattered pencil notes with pencil name to title page (all erasable). Pages browned as usual.

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