Abstract

Nietzsche attacks morality throughout his writings, but it is difficult to specify what exactly he thinks is wrong with it. My project is an attempt to provide such an account by tracing the development of Nietzsche's critique of morality from the middle period works starting with Human, All Too Human through to On the Genealogy of Morality. This task is challenging given that Nietzsche seems to approach his target from several different perspectives. In this study, I argue that Nietzsche's critique of morality develops and that the changes observable over the course of his writings account for the various perspectives he takes on morality. There is a pattern in the development of these distinct attacks and it is this pattern that I trace. The focus of my account---the thread in terms of which I tie together the various developments---are the motivational notions involved in Nietzsche's explanations and criticisms of morality. Nietzsche explains morality sometimes in terms of pleasure, at other times utility, often self-preservation, or community preservation and, finally power. But, in his later writings, Nietzsche seems to deny the explanatory value of pleasure, utility and preservation, and the will to power is left to do all of this work. In the light of this development, the latter half of my project is an attempt to explain how Nietzsche uses one substantial notion of power to account for the origins of various, and often opposed, moralities. ;In the earlier chapters I attempt to give an account of Nietzsche's attacks on morality in each work from the Human series through to Beyond Good and Evil. I go on to present an interpretation of the Genealogy in my final chapter that builds upon this earlier analysis. Reading the Genealogy in the light of Nietzsche's earlier works allows us connect the notions of ressentiment , bad conscience and the ascetic ideal in ways that have not been done before. Bad conscience is interpreted as a condition for the possibility of the ascetic ideals and these latter as an answer to search for meaning entailed in ressentiment. Nietzsche interpreters have too often been satisfied to see Nietzsche giving us three distinct, yet somehow linked, views or perspectives on the history of morality in the three essays of the Genealogy. I attempt to bring these three essays together as the three main lines in a single story by laying out the connection between the primary concepts in each essay