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  • Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of Morals": A Reader's Guide
  • Robert Guay
Daniel Conway . Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of Morals": A Reader's Guide. New York: Continuum, 2008. xi + 181 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-8264-7817-7. Cloth, $95.00. Paper, $19.95.

There is no doubt which has been victorious, between On the Genealogy of Morals and Thus Spoke Zarathustra: GM long ago prevailed as the single text that is taught as representative of Nietzsche's thought as a whole. The spoils of this triumph have turned out to be a whole bunch of introductory texts and commentaries. Remarkably, this has been an unqualified blessing. Whether as philosophically partisan maneuvers or as candy for Nietzsche scholars, these books have all been interesting, illuminating, and even pleasant to read. In this company, no book better sustains the values of a student introduction than Daniel Conway's Reader's Guide. It remains persistently close to the text; it is clear in its focus on the main narrative and its thematic presentation; it is informed by but largely free of secondary discussion. It even has study questions.

The features of the text and the details of the narrative are explicated with great care. Although this does allow for some points of innovation or possible controversy—such as in the account of the nobles' defeat (33) or in the newly extended role of the priests (44)—these particulars are, I think, less important than the interpretive framework as a whole. Part of what Conway has accomplished here is having stitched together a number of important interpretive strands. So, after providing a brief overview, I shall identify four main strands, which I call the theoretical, the historical, the protreptic, and the polemical. In that process I shall offer some reasons to endorse, reject, or be ambivalent toward these strands.

Apart from a perfunctory observance of the publisher's series format, Conway organizes the book around the structure of the text. Within this organization one can find that Conway manages to present an overall reading of GM as taking advantage of a particular audience and relating to them an explanation of morality for the sake of a particular goal. The audience in question is one that is exceptionally committed to truth and inquiry, and thus will be prepared to follow the genealogies to their conclusions, even when this undermines some of their deeply held commitments. Nietzsche's message to them is a naturalistic explanation of morality offered primarily in terms, of course, of the slave revolt, bad conscience, and the ascetic ideal. The explanatory accounts emphasize the critique of pity (23), a novel account of human evolution (73), and the functioning of the ascetic ideal as an "artificial injection of vitality"(16), among other things. The point of presenting such explanations is to facilitate an assault on Christian morality. But because, as the explanatory accounts show, Christian morality has been thoroughly internalized, the audience must "host the self-destruction of morality, even at their own expense" (151). The self-directed destruction of Nietzsche's audience could make room for a new Napoleon (51) who ushers in a triumphant new extramoral self-affirmation.

One strand of this interpretation is a common one, its theoretical element. By 'theoretical' here I mean that GM, on Conway's reading, aims to observe epistemic commitments that are available independent of any praxical or other commitments: The point is to "disclose the undesirable truth [End Page 96] about morality" (28) or "to determine the genuine origins of our most cherished moral values" (3; cf. 24) by conducting an inquiry that is free from typical prejudices. In short, Nietzsche's aim is to present a correct theory of the history of morality. To do so is inevitably preparatory to assessment or reorientation, since theory as so conceived bears no normative weight. But genealogy can "demonstrate the contingency and mutability" (24; cf. 52) of moral values and thereby lay the foundation for a critique that comes later.

This kind of interpretation sets up a split between the truth about morality, on one hand, and what we are to think or feel about it, on the other. There is...

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