QuestionsWhat makes something right?The genealogy of morality
What makes something right?Morality questioned

The genealogy of morality

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 · 1900God is dead: new values must be created.
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What it claims

Inherited morality must be called into question and re-evaluated.

Why

To judge the worth of our values we must know where they come from: the morality of good was born of the resentment of the weak.

In short

"The genealogy of morality" is an argument by Friedrich Nietzsche (Genealogy of Morality, I 10) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: morality questioned). Its claim: Inherited morality must be called into question and re-evaluated. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 2 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Genealogy of Morality, I 10
Valid with an implicit premise

Nietzsche does not ask "what is good?" but "where does our idea of good come from, and what is it worth?". His historical enquiry aims to shake the inherited Christian morality.

P1To judge the value of our values, we must know the conditions in which they arose.
P2The morality of "good" and "evil" was born from the resentment of the weak against the strong: a "slave revolt in morality".
P3 · implicit premiseA value born of resentment and impotence expresses a weakness rather than a truth, and loses its authority once its origin is uncovered.
Therefore inherited morality must be called into question and re-evaluated.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds a case where the history of morality is as Nietzsche describes, yet its worth is untouched: the conclusion does not follow.
The historical account alone (P1, P2) is not enough: it needs P3, which links a value's origin to its worth. That is precisely the step critics contest, under the name of the "genetic fallacy".
Analogy. Finding out a medicine was invented by a quack does not prove it is useless. But if we accepted it only out of trust in its inventor, we must test it again. Nietzsche demands that new test for morality.

Objections

2

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

T
The "genetic fallacy" attacks premise 3

An idea's origin says nothing about its truth: a value may be born of resentment and still be right, just as a scientific truth may come from a dream.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
We have not yet found a direct reply by Nietzsche in the texts.
H
Historians and theologians attacks premise 2

The account is historically fragile: the ethics of neighbourly love and the dignity of the weak also stems from Judaism, Stoicism or compassion, not only from resentment.

no reply
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
We have not yet found a direct reply by Nietzsche in the texts.
What today's voices say
Defend it
John LennoxHe credits Nietzsche, a serious atheist, with seeing that giving up God removes the ground of Christian morality, a point he says soft atheists miss. He does not share Nietzsche's conclusion.