On the Genealogy of Morals: a Work of History or of the Imagination

In On the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche provides three essays which collectively challenge the belief that morality is an eternal, absolute truth which originated from some otherworldly source. The first essay, "Good and Evil, Good and Bad," introduces the concepts of "master morality" and "slave morality." This distinction is the foundation for the Genealogy's subsequent analysis. In the second essay, "Guilt, Bad Conscience and the Like," Nietzsche explains how slave morality transformed and recreated the relationship between guilt and punishment. …