IB Philosophy 10.5.5 Critique of Morality and Call for a Revaluation of Values Notes

Beyond Genealogy: From Diagnosis to Prescription

1. Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality does not merely expose the historical origins of moral concepts; it culminates in a forceful call for a revaluation of all values. The three essays (10.5.1 through 10.5.4) reveal that morality is the product of specific power relations and psychological needs.
2. As discussed in 10.5.2, the slave revolt in morality transformed the original noble values of strength, creativity, and self-affirmation into a system that prizes meekness, obedience, and self-denial. Nietzsche sees this transformation not as moral progress but as a profound cultural sickness that must be diagnosed before it can be overcome.
3. The genealogical method (explored in 10.5.1) serves as the diagnostic tool, but diagnosis alone is insufficient. Nietzsche insists that once we understand how our values came into being, we face an urgent philosophical question: should we continue to live by values born from ressentiment, guilt, and ascetic self-denial, or should we create new values that affirm life?
4. The revaluation of values (Umwerthung aller Werthe) is Nietzsche's term for the project of critically reassessing every inherited moral assumption. This is a fundamental shift in how we relate to value creation itself.
5. Nietzsche draws a sharp distinction between those who passively inherit values and those who actively create them. The "free spirit" is the thinker who refuses to accept moral claims on faith and instead examines them through the lens of historical consciousness and psychological honesty.
6. This project is deeply connected to the Core Theme of Being Human. If our moral frameworks shape how we understand identity, freedom, and responsibility (topics explored across Unit 1), then questioning those frameworks is essential to understanding what it means to be a self-determining agent.
7. Nietzsche argues that the revaluation is not optional: the death of God (a concept he develops more fully in The Gay Science) removes the metaphysical foundation on which Judeo-Christian morality rests.
   1. Without a divine guarantor of moral truth, the entire system of inherited values becomes groundless.

Confronting Nihilism and Secular Moral Systems

1. The danger of nihilism looms large in this situation: if all traditional values lose their authority and nothing replaces them, humanity risks falling into a condition where nothing matters and no direction is possible.
   1. The revaluation is Nietzsche's affirmative response to nihilism: not a descent into meaninglessness, but an ascent toward new forms of value creation.
2. The revaluation also targets secular moral systems: utilitarianism subordinates the exceptional individual to the mediocrity of the herd.
   1. Kantian ethics and the categorical imperative suppress the creative individuality needed for genuine value creation, perpetuating the life-denying logic of the slave revolt.
3. The concrete phenomenon Nietzsche has in mind is 'incomplete nihilism': Europeans continue to feel that cruelty is wrong and that the weak deserve protection, but they no longer have God to explain why. The moral habits persist while their metaphysical justification has dissolved.
   1. The revaluation responds by asking which of these inherited values actually affirm life and which are residues of slave morality that can now be discarded. This is the task the Genealogy assigns to the 'philosophers of the future.'
4. Kant's imperative to act only on maxims one could universalise presupposes that all persons are equally rational and equally subject to the moral law.
   1. For Nietzsche, this is precisely the egalitarianism (the assumption that all people are equal and deserve equal treatment) of slave morality dressed in philosophical robes, denying the fundamental difference between the exceptional person and the sovereign individual (the self-governing person who sets their own standards) who lives by self-legislated standards that express their unique configuration of drives.

The Will to Power as a Framework for Value Creation