Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche’s On The Genealogy of Morality - A Polemic, which he published in 1887 towards the end of his working life and in which he considered the price humans have paid, and were still paying, to become civilised. In three essays, he argued that having a guilty conscience was the price of living in society with other humans. He suggested that Christian morality, with its consideration for others, grew as an act of revenge by the weak against their masters, ‘the blond beasts of prey’, as he calls them, and the price for that slaves’ revolt was endless self-loathing. These and other ideas were picked up by later thinkers, perhaps most significantly by Sigmund Freud who further explored the tensions between civilisation and the individual.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Stephen Mulhall 8 episodes
  Professor of Philosophy and a Fellow and Tutor at New College, University of Oxford
• Fiona Hughes 2 episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Essex
• Keith Ansell-Pearson 2 episodes
  Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick

Reading list

• The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation
  David B. Allison (ed.) (The MIT Press, 1985) Google Books →
• Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals
  Daniel Conway (Continuum, 2008) Google Books →
• Nietzsche, A Critical Life
  Ronald Hayman (Oxford University Press, 1980) Google Books →
• Beyond Selflessness: Reading Nietzsche's Genealogy
  Christopher Janaway (Oxford University Press, 2007) Google Books →
• Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-Christ
  Walter Kaufmann (Princeton University Press, 2013) Google Books →
• Nietzsche on Morality
  Brian Leiter and Neil Sinhababu (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality: A Critical Guide
  Simon May (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Google Books →
• On the Genealogy of Morality
  F. Nietzsche (ed. Keith Ansell-Pearson and trans. Carol Diethe) (Cambridge University Press, 2017) Google Books →
• Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality
  David Owen (Acumen Publishing, 2007) Google Books →
• Nietzsche, God, and the Jews: His Critique of Judeo-Christianity in relation to the Nazi Myth
  Weaver Santaniello (SUNY Press, 1994) Google Books →
• Reading Nietzsche
  Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 1988) Google Books →
• Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays
  Robert Solomon (ed.) (Anchor Books, 1973) Google Books →
• Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration
  Tracy B. Strong (University of California Press, 1988) Google Books →

Related episodes

• Good and Evil
  
  1 Apr, 1999 200 Religion
• Evil
  
  3 May, 2001 170 Ethics
• Nihilism
  
  16 Nov, 2000 190 Modern Western Philosophy
• Guilt
  
  1 Nov, 2007 170 Ethics
• Atrocity in the 20th Century
  
  28 Oct, 1999 900 History
• Evolutionary Psychology
  
  2 Nov, 2000 150 Psychology
• Philippa Foot
  
  16 May, 2024 170 Ethics
• Kant’s Categorical Imperative
  
  21 Sep, 2017 170 Ethics
• Human Nature
  
  7 Nov, 2002 150 Psychology
• Altruism
  
  23 Nov, 2006 170 Ethics

Experimental. For more related episodes, visit the visual explorer.

---

Programme ID: b087rt4z

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b087rt4z

Auto-category: 100 (Philosophy)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, what price of human animals pay to become civilized?