Nietzsche's The Genealogy Of Morals, Good And Bad

In Essay I of Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, ‘Good and Evil’, ‘Good and Bad’, Nietzsche attempts to study the origin of contemporary morality by examining the conditions and circumstances by which the values of morals have emerged. This investigation of his, lead him to conclude that the morals that exist in us now, are not inherent in us, but were caused by a “slave revolt” in morality through the feeling of ressentiment. In this essay, I will be discussing what ressentiment is, why and where it came from, and how it is associated with morals according to Nietzsche. Ressentiment is basically a reactive feeling to a sustained and repeated condition of powerlessness of a weaker social class against another more powerful class. Ressentiment is a kind of envy in such a way that the slave does not have the means to express it or let it out. This venom stays in the soul and comes out in other ways. It was this sense of feebleness, the frustration of being powerless against someone stronger, which resulted in the creation of a new imaginary “sanctuary” where these frustrations could be …show more content…
The priests claim that the nobles are free to pick their actions and are, thus, held responsible for the suffering and violence they cause. “It is within the discretion of the strong to be weak.” (Nietzsche, 179). This new claim, of the priests’, not only makes the spontaneous and instinctual actions of the nobles as evil doings, but also portrays the priests’ weakness as a willed and worthy act. The weak also claim that they “prefer their suffering which they propose as an unassailable index of their goodness. The slaves could retaliate if they so desired… but they choose instead the righteous path of suffering and self-deprivation.” (Conway, 46). Thus, this concept of ‘free will’ allows the slaves to interpret the suffering they endure, which is caused by the nobles, as a virtuous