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.
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 →
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Programme ID: b087rt4z
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b087rt4z
Auto-category: 100 (Philosophy)