The Will to Nothingness: An Essay on Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality

210 Pages·2021·0.965 MB·English

by  Bernard Reginster

The Will to Nothingness

The Will to
Nothingness
An Essay on Nietzsche’s On
the Genealogy of Morality
BERNARD REGINSTER
1
1
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934537
ISBN 978–0–19–886890–3
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868903.001.0001
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Contents
Pre/act
vii
Introduction
I.G enealoagnydC ritique 11
II. G enealogy as EpistemicD tbu11king 13
J.2Ge nealoagnyd N aturalism 19
1."3M oraliAtre iOesn layS igLna 11g1o1ftag leAfi fedsc" 23
1.4 SentimPernatagmla tism 29
J.SG enealoagnyd H istory 35
1.6"T hFeu ndamenFatiallho ft hMee taphysicions" 37
J7. Tu'O ProblemDyssfun:c lionalitya ndM ultiplFeun ctionality 4l
2.Resst11 ti men I 49
2.1T heC ausoefR essliltctenttt 51
2.2R es.se11tin1atnndWt i ltlo P ower 58
2.3Po wearn dR eality 65
2.4S trengtahn dW eakness 71
2.5R evenge 75
2.6" AnA cotf t hMeo st Spiritual Revenge" 78
2.N7e gatiaonndR eaction 83
3.Good and Evil 89
3.1E quality 90
3.2P reedom of Will 98
3."3A 11Im aginary Revenge" 107
3.A4 "eSlf-D«:epotflmpolieonn ce" 114
4.G uialnld P unishment 121
4.l "ThRei ghtto MakPer omises" 125
4.2C onscience 129
4.3G uialntdP unishment 134
4.4S adCo nscience 143
4.S" Guibletfo "'G od" 148
5.A sceitcism 153
5.l WhatIs anA scetIidce al? 155
5.2Th •P aradooxfA sceticism 158
vi CONTENTS
5.3" SufefriUnnderg thPeres pectivoefG uilt" 161
5.4M eaninPg,owe r,R elief 167
5.5W halIs thGee nealogCriictailqo ufMe o rality? 173
5.6As ceticiansdm S ickness 177
5.7The Wiltol Nolhingness 184
Bibliography
1.89
Index 199
Preface
The present study is a work of interpretation. While I attempt to make phil-
osophically compelling the ideas and concepts Nietzsche deploys in the
Genealogy, I try to keep as much as possible to the actual resources on offer
in this book (and related works). Nevertheless, given that both the overall
shape of the argument and its substantive details are left rather sketchy,
some of the interpretive claims I defend might still strike some readers as
strained, perhaps even implausible. Most readers of Nietzsche’s works, and
of the Genealogy in particular, know that it is very difficult, if not outright
impossible, to produce an interpretation of that book that does not incur
exegetical costs. Those I chose to live with are consequences of the assump-
tions framing my interpretation: the genealogies are “psychological studies”
and they aim to expose and assess the functional role that the Christian
moral outlook—and the distinctive evaluative and descriptive beliefs that
compose it—is well suited to play in the emotional economy of moral
agents. Specifically, Christian morality is well suited to express the ressenti-
ment, and to serve the will to power, of agents who have been beset with a
feeling of impotence by chronic frustrations; and this functional role pro-
vides the unifying thread for the three studies that compose the book.
There have been several new translations of the Genealogy in the recent
past. Nevertheless, I have opted to use Walter Kaufmann’s original transla-
tion, in part because it remains a common reference in the scholarly litera-
ture. While it captures nicely the liveliness of Nietzsche’s prose, I have
occasionally made minor modifications to Kaufmann’s translation, usually
inspired by some of the more recent translations of the work. I also occa-
sionally refer to those of Nietzsche’s notes that were gathered posthumously
in the volume known as The Will to Power. Since the status of these notes is
controversial (leaving aside their particular organization into an alleged
book, which has no bearing on my use of them), I cite them only when they
echo, and sometimes clarify, claims Nietzsche makes explicitly in his pub-
lished works, particularly in the Genealogy.
I should note that some of the ideas in this book have appeared in various
articles I have published over the past few years. However, the form in which
these ideas appear here is often different—and hopefully better—than the
viii Preface
more tentative discussions of them I offered in those prior publications. In
some cases, the ideas resemble older incarnations in name only; in other
cases, while the resemblance is closer, the details of their articulation and
development are different in crucial respects. For this reason, I do not cite
or mention most of these articles in the present book, which super-
sedes them.
I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to many people who have helped
my research in one way or another, and always with a generosity I had no
right to expect. Work that more or less closely contributed to the present
study was presented in many venues, including Amherst College, Brown
University, Columbia University, the Federal University of Minas Gerais in
Belo Horizonte (Brazil), Georgia State University, Haverford College,
Northwestern University, Princeton University, the University of
Amsterdam (Holland), the University of California at Riverside, the
University of Oregon, the University of Southampton (United Kingdom);
and meetings of the London University Nietzsche Seminar, Nietzsche in
New England, the British Nietzsche Society, the International Society for
Nietzsche Studies, and the North American Nietzsche Society. I am indebted
to, and grateful for, comments and questions I received from all these
audiences.
I have also benefited from exchanges with Mark Alfano, Lanier Anderson,
Jessica Berry, Maudemarie Clark, David Christensen, Manuel Dries, David
Dudrick, Guy Elgat, Ken Gemes, James Gilligan, Beatrice Han-P ile, Andrew
Huddleston, Christopher Janaway, Scott Jenkins, Anthony Jensen, Scott
Johnston, Peter Kail, Paul Katsafanas, Brian Leiter, Simon May, Mark
Migotti, Alexander Nehamas, Alexander Prescott-C rouch, John Richardson,
Josh Schechter, Nicholas Smyth, Avery Snelson, Thomas Stern, Chris Syke,
Gundrun von Tevenar—and no doubt others, to whom, pleading a defective
memory, I can only apologize—as well as from discussions with the gradu-
ate and undergraduate students in a seminar on the topics of this book
given at Brown University in the fall of 2018. I also want to extend my
thanks to two anonymous reviewers who wrote extensive comments on an
early version of the manuscript for this book. They will hopefully recognize
their mark on the finished product. Last, but not least, I want to express my
heartfelt gratitude to my wife, Stephanie, who was an unfailingly open and
judicious interlocutor in my clumsy attempts to develop the sometimes
strange ideas discussed in this book, and to my two daughters, Iliana and
Talia, simply for being who they are.
Introduction
On the Genealogy of Morality stands out among Nietzsche’s works as his
most cohesive and self- contained book. Each of its three essays is devoted to
an explicitly stated topic, which it subjects to a fairly sustained and system-
atic treatment. The topics are unified insofar as they are the conceptual ele-
ments of a coherent outlook. And the essays devoted to them turn out to be
linked in various ways: each draws on the findings of the others, while also
shedding light on them. The contrast with Nietzsche’s other writings is
striking, and fuels the expectation that a clearly delineated, well worked- out
critical analysis of morality can be found in the book. Moreover, the book
makes some arresting claims about morality: most prominently, that its
invention is an act of revenge.
This might explain why it is arguably his most read, and most influential
work. A cursory review of the scholarly literature, which I conducted when
I began to contemplate writing the present book, revealed that in the pre-
ceding twenty-fi ve years, a major work of scholarship—be it a book-l ength
monograph, a collection of articles exclusively devoted to it, or a new trans-
lation with substantial introduction and notes—had been published on this
book alone, in the English language alone, on average nearly every year.
And this does not include hundreds of articles, as well as works in disci-
plines other than philosophy.
It is not just the inviting allure of the book or its tantalizing claims that
explains this abundance, however, but also the perplexity it continues to
inspire. Bernard Williams expressed a widespread feeling when he described
the book as having “the property of being at once extremely compelling, in
particular because it seems to hit on something with great exactitude, and at
the same time of being infuriatingly vague.”1 And it is, indeed, a frustrat-
ingly elusive book. To this day, despite the abundance of scholarly literature
devoted to it, there is no consensus on the precise character of its critical
1 Williams (2000, 157).
The Will to Nothingness: An Essay on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality. Bernard Reginster.
Oxford University Press. © Bernard Reginster 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868903.003.0001
2 Introduction
ambitions or on the analysis of the most important concepts it brings
into play.
The Genealogy formulates “a new demand” for a genuine “critique” of
morality, the execution of which requires an inquiry into its origin and
development (GM Preface §6). The morality it targets refers (roughly) to
Christian morality, which has, in its more or less original Christian form or
in its modern secular variants, become dominant in Western culture and
beyond. More specifically, Nietzsche focuses on certain distinctively central
aspects of it, including the evaluative concepts “good and evil,” the concepts
of guilt and punishment, and the idealization of asceticism enshrined in the
idea that what is most valuable in life transcends, and therefore excludes in
whole or in part, natural well- being. While it appears undeniable that the
genealogies Nietzsche produces for these aspects of morality should have
critical implications for our assessment of it, there is no scholarly consensus
on precisely what critical bearing they could legitimately claim to have.
But it is not just the overall shape of the genealogical critique that is
unclear, the details of its execution are also recalcitrantly vague. Thus, there
is no agreement on the analysis of the most important concepts on which it
draws: for example, the nature of ressentiment, or the exact relation of guilt
to indebtedness, or the precise character of the problem of suffering, which
asceticism is intended to address, or even the fundamental claim that the
invention of Christian morality is a kind of “revenge.”
In the present study, I make a fresh attempt at understanding the critique
of morality Nietzsche develops in the Genealogy. My approach is inspired
by his characterization of the three essays the book comprises as “psycho-
logical studies” (EH III, “Genealogy”). Specifically, I take the genealogical
inquiries to be applications of his claim that moralities, and moral
judgments in particular, are “signs” or “symptoms” of affective states
(BGE §187; TI “Improvers” §1). And his critique of the moral outlook is
directed at the role it is suited to play in the affective life of the agent who
subscribes to it.
In one respect, the genealogies the book offers are just what one would
expect. They explain the existence and character of certain concepts by trac-
ing their emergence out of the contingent combinations of other, older con-
cepts, just as, by revealing the lineage of a particular individual, a
genealogical tree sheds light on where she came from and, to a certain
extent, on who and what she is. The genealogical development of the moral
concept of guilt out of trading practices and contractual relations, social