Laura Valentina Vaca Neira

202013790

Good, bad, and evil: The moral upside down

Nietzsche displays the moral genealogy as a conception of good and bad as usual opposed

matters. Although he also exposes the word evil as a contradiction of the good, and in his efforts

to understand the difference between these two linguistic paths, he states that the conception of

evil comes from an inversed view of the moral system, not from the noble perspective, but from

the one the repressed common man has.

Firstly, to address the moral concepts of good and bad and its difference with good and evil,

Nietzsche refuses to accept the unegoistic definition of goodness and turns to the etymological

roots of different languages to discover it. In the study of the definition of good, he finds terms

based on aristocratic values which used the word to refer to what is noble, real, higher, true, and

brave. Meanwhile, he uses their antithesis to define what is bad as the common man, untruthful,

plain, and coward. Between definitions, the Latin relation between bad and dark is brought up,

hence he presents the bad as the lower caste conformed by black headed people, and good as the

superior level where only blonde headed people belonged. This conception reinforces the master

and slave ideology, were the good is the warrior or the godlike man, and the bad is an animal

who’s just not made for the greater life.

Secondly, from that study and comparison, he notices that the highest caste is also the priestly

caste, which leads to an understanding of the good as the pure and the bad as the impure. The
priestly aristocracy is used to act according to what is pure, sometimes in extreme ways. We

would think that type of living is a good thing, but from Nietzsche´s perspective it is unhealthy

and potentially dangerous. He accepts that the priestly form made man more interesting, however

he claims that it also gave him the depth to develop what is evil. The knightly-aristocratic way of

living is just one step away from its opposite and Nietzsche exposes priests as the most evil

enemies because of the impotence they hold against their opponent. He basically says that the

noble are made to live a happy life, while the common man an unhappy and pitiful one, which

makes the latter grow a deep resentment against the noble and that’s why they see them as the

evil enemy. To support the previous statement, he uses the Jews as an example of repressed

priestly vengefulness that ends up inverting the aristocratic values, which he calls slave morality:

the poor and unfavored are blessed by God, consequently they are the good, and the powerful

and noble are the evil and cruel.

Finally, Nietzsche extends his contempt on the slave morality the common man imposes through

Christianity and talks about the fallacy it is to identify their weakness as a merit. But regarding

the main subject of this paper, it is important to nail down the two perspectives Nietzsche

presented.

On one hand, the good and bad, is a quality spectrum based on the primary aristocratic

understanding of the moral values, where what is noble is good, and the opposite of that is bad.

On the other hand, the good and evil, is the former aristocratic moral system turned upside-down

due to a deep resentment from the lower caste, the noble is the evil enemy, thus the good is the

plebeian; in Nietzsche words it is the regular moral structure seen through the poisonous and

resentful eye of the commoners.

References

Nietzsche, F. (1887). On the genealogy of morals: First Essay “Good and Evil,” “Good and

Bad”. (Kaufmann and Hollingdale. Translation). Vintage Books: Random House, INC. New

York