Locke's Influence On Nietzche

7 Pages 1683 Words

In On the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche uses history, etymology, and reason to attempt to explicate the origins of human social interaction. Nietzsche’s style is speculative (as all philosophy is), yet extremely convincing and challenging. Instead of merely projecting current behavior onto the past, as English psychologists in Nietzsche’s time did, he attempts to form his genealogy from the beginning of human morals, and project it onto the present. For example, in the first essay of the Genealogy, “’Good and Evil’, ‘Good and Bad’”, Nietzsche claims that the world’s current moral state is due to a massive “slave revolt” against hedonistic nobles. His grand vision of a war of morality seems almost Biblical- not entirely historically accurate, but metaphorically and broadly applicable to society.
In the second essay of the Genealogy, “’Guilt’, ‘Bad Conscience’, and the Like’”, Nietzsche begins by talking about basic human characteristics, and rationally builds up to an explanation of humans’ internal conflicts. Part of this essay, as stated by its title, contains Nietzsche’s hypothesis on the origin of Guilt.
Nietzsche, at the beginning of the second essay, refers to humans primitively, calling them “animals” with “the right to make promises”. (Genealogy, Second Essay, Section 1) The perspective of his account is mostly third person, taking the reader through nature’s development of the human animal. He talks about how memory and forgetfulness are both active, and related to human will. Memory is a person’s desire to make sense of his or her past, or construct a “long chain of the will”. (Genealogy, Second Essay, Section 1) According to Nietzsche, evolution caused humans to yield memory from their will.
Since people have the need to understand their past in a chronological way, they also want to predict and give structure to the future- the cliché phras...