Nietzsche - Book Report/Review Example

Nietzsche Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality, which has been recognized Nietzsche’s masterpiece, is a work of sustained brilliance and power, and it offers the most straightforward explication of some of the vital concepts of the author concerning morality. The three interrelated essays of the work trace the various episodes in the evolution of moral concepts, and the “Second Essay” advances Nietzsche’s theory concerning the origin of the institution of punishment. Significantly, the author deals with pertinent concepts such as guilt, bad conscience etc in this section of the work and he begins the discussion by talking about forgetfulness and memory.

Human beings breed these opposing faculties which help them in determining on the real ‘memory of the will’ and this process of ‘forgetting’ and memory suggests how responsibility originated. (Nietzsche, 58) According to the author, the concept of ‘conscience’ has a long history and variety of forms behind it and he traces the development of this concept in the next part of the book. (Nietzsche, 60) He maintains that one of the oldest and enduring psychologies on earth concerning memory is that if something needs to stay long in memory, it should be ‘burned in’ and only things that can never cease to hurt stays in the memory.

(Nietzsche, 61) As the author illustrates, man has always regarded blood, torture, and sacrifice as a means to create a memory for him and the most dreadful sacrifices and pledges, the most repulsive mutilations, and the cruelest rites of the religious cults etc substantiate this view. (Nietzsche, 61) Nietzsche also analyzes how the ‘bad conscience’ or the other ‘somber thing’ came into the world which directs the book toward the genealogy of morals. (Nietzsche, 62) The author purports in the course of the book that it was in the sphere of legal obligations that the moral conceptual world of ‘guilt’, ‘conscience’, ‘duty’, and ‘sacredness of duty’ had its origin.

(Nietzsche, 63) In short, the “Second Essay” of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality has been significant in order to realize some of the most important concepts of the author regarding the genealogy of morality. Work Cited Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. P 58.