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Here is the list of prompts for reflection #3. All prompts are entirely on Nietzsche. Same rubric,
same requirements. Please reread both of the excerpts on d2l to get an impression of
Nietzsche’s thinking and please always ground or relate your personal views to the text by
including quotations and explain not only what the quote is saying, but also how the
quote relates to your thinking/how they are significant.
Nietzsche intro (from Tuesday’s class)
1. Consider Nietzsche’s claim that British Empiricists, who formed the foundations of
contemporary psychology, think of concepts ‘ahistorically’: “So you have to respect the good
spirits which preside in these historians of morality! But it is unfortunately a fact that historical
spirit itself is lacking in them…As is now established philosophical practice, they all think in a
way that is essentially unhistorical; this can’t be doubted.”
a. Prompt 1.1: First, give your own personal definition of what it is to understand a concept
historically, as opposed to ahistorically. Then, think of an example of a topic and illustrate
how one might approach it historically, as opposed to ahistorically. Then, if you still have
space, talk about which approach is more interesting to you.
b. Prompt 1.2: What is one concept that you think everybody thinks too ‘ahistorically’? How
would we benefit from thinking about that concept historically? What do you think a
historical approach to understand that concept could look like?
2. Nietzsche continues on to critique the conception of morality that the British Empiricists have
come up with: “The idiocy of their moral genealogy is revealed at the outset when it is a
question of conveying the descent of the concept and judgment of ‘good’. ‘Originally,’ – they
decree, – ‘unegoistic acts were praised and called good by their recipients, in other words, by
the people to whom they were useful; later, everyone forgot the origin of the praise and because
such acts had always been habitually praised as good, people also began to experience them
as good – as if they were something good as such.”
a. Prompt 2.1: Try to come up with a way to defend Nietzsche’s account here against
someone who might disagree. Specifically, give a reason as to why, or whether, it is
mistaken to think of morality in relation to humility. How might one say that humility
doesn’t entail goodness? Think of examples that you can come up with from your own
life or any element of your engagement with the world and incorporate that into your text
to try to convince your reader.
b. Prompt 2.2: Nietzsche is also critiquing the idea that goodness emerged out of what is
“useful”. Try to explain your own understanding of the relationship between usefulness
and goodness. Are good things to be understood as useful? Does the usefulness of
something add to its goodness? Whatever you think of their relation, try to give an
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example of something that shows both usefulness and goodness and try to understand
how those properties connect to one another.
3. Broadly, the goal of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals is to identify the origin of morality (how
what we call “good” and “bad” came to be).
a. Prompt 3.1: Assume that Nietzsche is right, and that “good” and “bad” are concepts that
have been invented and redefined throughout time. Do you personally think that the
hypothetical truth of this remark would “eliminate” or “prove against” Plato’s notion that
there is an essential, ideal “good”, to which we strive for in our lives? If so, explain your
reasoning, using examples either from the text or from your experience, life, or
something you have learned from in the past.
b. Prompt 3.2: Normally, the study of ethics is pretty straightforward: to know, for sure,
what is truly good and what is truly bad (in terms of action, behavior, etc.). Do you think
Nietzsche’s emphasis on the historical origins of morality is a destruction of the study of
ethics, or, does it still allow us to categorize actions as “good” and “bad”? Explain your
reasoning and include an example.
4. Consider Nietzsche’s quote concerning the way in which, goodness, from a historical
standpoint, is revealed to be tightly coupled with power: “That everywhere, ‘noble’, ‘aristocratic’,
in social terms is the basic concept from which, necessarily, ‘good’ in the sense of ‘spiritually
noble’, ‘aristocratic’, of ‘spiritually highminded’, ‘spiritually privileged’ developed: a development
that always runs parallel with that other one which ultimately transfers ‘common’, ‘plebian’, ‘low’
into the concept ‘bad’” (13)
a. Prompt 4.1: First, give an example from our age to try to show how you think power and
goodness are related (power here can refer to, political power, fame, wealth/class, social
strata, or simpler things like having power over someone else within a friendship,
relationship, etc.) Next, compare that to Nietzsche’s idea of how the term “good”
originated in the Greek and Roman culture, where goodness is nothing more than a
name that people of higher social status found for themselves. Does your example
parallel this Greek and Roman conception, or does it pose a challenge to it?
b. Prompt 4.2: Similar to the previous question, first explain: do you think that we as
human beings generally view people of power as “better” than people without power? Or,
do you think we view them as “worse”? After your response to this, ask yourself: has this
always been the case, or is it a recent thing that we see power and goodness coupled in
this way? Try to find an example, maybe of developments in human rights, womens’
rights, or of class conflict, or any other example you can find.
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Nietzsche cont’d (from Thursday’s class)
5. According to Nietzsche, people lie to themselves, or rationalize or justify their
emotional reaction to others, by identifying their actions as ‘instating justice’. He argues
this in Chapter 10 of the Genealogy of Morals:
“I understand. Once again I’ll open my ears (oh! oh! oh! and hold my nose). Now I’m hearing for
the first time what they’ve been saying so often: ‘We good men—we are the righteous’—what
they demand they don’t call repayment but ‘the triumph of righteousness.’ What they hate is not
their enemy. No! They hate ‘injustice,’ ‘godlessness.’ What they believe and hope is not a hope
for revenge, the intoxication of sweet vengeance (something Homer called ‘sweeter than honey’)
but the victory of God, the righteous God, over the godless. What remains for them to love on
earth are not their brothers in hatred but their ‘brothers in love,’ as they say, all the good and
righteous people on the earth.”
Based on this quote:
● Prompt 5.1: Do you think Nietzsche is right that human beings have a tendency to lie to
themselves to justify their behavior? If so, why do you think that is?
● Prompt 5.2: First explain what you make of someone who acts according to what
Nietzsche calls “ressentiment”. For this prompt, give me an example of ressentiment, but
from your own experience or from something you know/heard of and show me how it
exemplifies/ represents Nietzsche’s claim here.
6. According to Nietzsche, the desire for revenge becomes associated with the desire to
reinstate justice, and thus it is understood to contain “goodness”. But this association,
for Nietzsche, is not an inherent aspect of human existence that exists across history,
but has been generated only after the cultural shift triggered by the rise of Christianity.
Answer one of the following prompts:
● Prompt 6.1: If you disagree with this, explain your reasoning. Can you give some
examples that go against Nietzsche’s claim? One option is to show that the association
between revenge and goodness is not tied to monotheistic religions, but has always
been the case across time.
● Prompt 6.2: Think of whether we really associate “revenge” with “the good” today. If we
do think in this way, do we do it consciously, or is it something that we aren’t aware of? If
you do think that we have this association but aren’t aware of it, is it in our cultural
unconscious that we act in this way? Explain your reasoning.
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7. Here is what Nietzsche says about how the behavior of “good” people differ from the
behavior of the “evil” people:
“While the noble man lives for himself with trust and candour (gennaios, meaning “of noble birth”
stresses the nuance “upright” and also probably “naïve”), the man of resentment is neither
upright nor naïve, nor honest and direct with himself. His soul squints. His spirit loves hiding
places, secret paths, and back doors. Everything furtive attracts him as his world, his security,
his refreshment. He understands about remaining silent, not forgetting, waiting, temporarily
diminishing himself, humiliating himself. A race of such men will necessarily end up cleverer
than any noble race. It will value cleverness to a very different extent, that is, as a condition of
existence of the utmost importance; whereas, cleverness among noble men easily acquires a
delicate aftertaste of luxury and sophistication about it. Here it is not nearly so important as the
complete certainly of the ruling unconscious instincts or even a certain lack of cleverness,
something like brave recklessness, whether in the face of danger or of an enemy, or wildly
enthusiastic, sudden fits of anger, love, reverence, thankfulness, and vengefulness, by which in
all ages noble souls have recognized each other.”
To understand this quote better, think of the distinction between what Nietzsche calls
ACTIVE and REACTIVE forces that we embody in our relationships with others:
Accordingly, someone who embodies an active force is someone who is independent and who
acts according to their desires and wills. Someone who embodies a reactive force is someone
who has to constantly antagonize the active force in order to feel a sense of self, and even
though they may think this antagonization, or reaction “frees” them from that person, they are
ultimately dependent on that person.
Prompt 7.1: Describe a hypothetical relationship between two people (this can be of any sort:
romantic, friend, professional, etc.). How might someone who embodies a reactive force in that
relationship act “cleverly”? What do you think is an example that may demonstrate what
Nietzsche means by the “cleverness” of the “man of resentment” here?
Prompt 7.2: Similarly, imagine a hypothetical relationship again, and this time, think of the
behavior of the person embodying an active force. How do you understand Nietzsche’s claim
that the person embodying the active force acts “naively” or with “candor”?
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