THE GENESIS OF GENEALOGY:
Naturalism and Morality in Nietzsche’s Early Works
Carl B. Sachs
University of California, San Diego
csachs@ucsd.edu
Abstract Recent Nietzsche scholarship has drawn attention to Nietzsche’s relation
with neo-Kantianism, and in particular the work of F. A. Lange. In
Human, All-too-human Nietzsche is strongly influenced by Lange with
respect to the criticisms of both metaphysics and morality. The structure
of the criticism of morality in Daybreak is significantly di®erent
from that of Human, All-too-human. This di®erence both demarcates a
point of di®erence with neo-Kantianism and presages the development
of an anti-representational or “hermeneutic” naturalism in Nietzsche’s
later works.
Although Nietzsche has been taken more and more seriously as a
philosopher to be reckoned with, contemporary Nietzsche studies remain
quite biased with respect to which texts are considered representative
of the “mature” or “real” Nietzsche. In Anglo-American studies, these
would include Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morality, and
The Gay Science (but especially Book V, written in 1887 just before the
Genealogy). These texts are philosophically rich (compared with the
earlier works) and rhetorically moderate (compared with Thus Spoke
Zarathustra and the writings of 1888, e.g. Ecce Homo and The Antichrist).
While these texts deserve the pride of place granted to them,
we run two risks if we ignore the earlier works. The first is that we
might misunderstand the problems that Nietzsche regarded himself as
addressing; the second is that we might ignore the issue of whether or
not Nietzsche regarded himself as resolving these problems adequately.
In Human, All-too-human1, Nietzsche abandons the issue-specific studies
that concerned him previously (i.e. the Untimely Meditations) as
1All references to Human, All-too-Human are to the Hollingdale translation, introduction by
Richard Schacht, Cambridge University Press, 1996. Translation modified as noted.
1
2
well as his attempt at a philological study-cum-blueprint for cultural
rejuvenation (i.e. The Birth of Tragedy). It is all the more interesting,
then, that the two volumes of Human, All-too-human, along with Daybreak2,
have received little attention from contemporary Nietzsche scholars.
HAH is frequently dismissed as a work of “uncritical positivism”,
and as result is considered philosophically inferior to the mature works;
Daybreak rarely receives any sustained comment at all, whether positive
or negative. In his introduction to HAH, Schacht notes that HAH, much
like Beyond Good and Evil and Twilight of the Idols, devotes a section
each to criticisms of philosophy and metaphysics, morality, religion, art
and literature, culture generally, family life, and politics. The question
must be asked, then, from what position does Nietzsche engage in his
criticisms?
In HAH, the position is that of “science”, which remains immune from
the stings of Nietzsche’s pen, though it remains to be seen just what precisely
Nietzsche means by “science”. The immunity granted to science
stands in sharp contrast, for example, from Book V of The Gay Science
(see, e.g., xx344, 373). For this reason HAH is considered closer to
Nietzsche’s “pre-critical” juvenilia, much as Kant’s pre-critical writings
are considered in relation to the Critiques. In what follows I will first
consider the question as what Nietzsche took to be his own questions
and problems, and show that Nietzsche’s point of departure was, in large
part, one that he inherited from F. A. Lange’s encyclopedic History of
Materialism (I). I will then consider how Nietzsche transforms Lange’s
project in the course of developing the naturalistic method of Human,
All-too-human (II), and show in particular how Lange’s framework in-
fluenced Nietzsche’s first attempt at a naturalistic critique of morality
(III). In this light, the transitions that Nietzsche makes in Daybreak may
be interpreted as a break with Lange’s own framework (IV), and therefore
as the beginning of Nietzsche’s distinctive philosophical positions
(V).
1. Lange’s Neo-Kantianism
The first part of this discussion traces the relation between Human,
All-too-human with Lange’s History of Materialism. Since this work
is little-known, even among Nietzsche scholars, some general comments
are in order. My discussion here is based on George Stack’s discussion
of the Lange-Nietzsche relationship as well as critical reviews of Stack,
2All references to Daybreak are to the Hollingdale translation, ed. Clark and Leiter, Cambridge
University Press, 1997.
The Genesis of Genealogy 3
although my presentation takes significant issue with his; I will return
to this point in (IV)3.
Nietzsche first encountered Lange’s work when it was published in
1866, a year after his encounter with Schopenhauer’s The World as Will
and Representation4. His initial reaction appears to have been enthusiastic,
as when he refers to it as a “treasure-house” of information about
natural science and political economy. In his excellent introduction to
Daybreak, Leiter suggests that it is was through Lange that Nietzsche
became acquainted with German materialism (e.g. Feuerbach, B¨uchner,
Moleschott, Helmholtz), and this is most likely correct. However, Lange
is not only a publicist for German materialism but also develops his own
version of a psychologized and naturalized neo-Kantianism on this basis.
Lange develops his neo-Kantianism along quite di®erent lines than
Schopenhauer, and this di®erence in method lays the groundwork for
Nietzsche’s method in Human, All-too-human. In order to understand
this method, however, we must first understand Lange’s version of neo-
Kantianism.
K¨ohnke (1991) reconstructs neo-Kantianism, very generally, as a rejection
of “system-building” (i.e. German idealism) and an a±rmation
of the independence of empirical science and philosophy5. Henceforth
the goal of philosophy was to reconstruct the method of science based
on science itself, rather than prescribe a method to the sciences. At the
same time, however, neo-Kantianism needed to distance itself from materialism,
which was gaining currency outside of the university and was
associated with liberal political views. Following the political repression
after 1848, German academic philosophy was characterized by emphasis
on epistemology to the exclusion of political or ethical questions.
In this context, Lange’s History of Materialism can be read as a critique
of all metaphysical systems, including materialism as well as Christianity
and “system-building” (i.e. idealism) (K¨ohnke 163). This radical
critique is accomplished by replacing Kant’s transcendental argument for
the forms of intuition with an empirical argument based on Helmholtz’s
research in the physiology of vision. In other words, natural science,
working strictly within the premises of nineteenth-century materialism,
becomes a form of transcendental idealism. This seemingly paradoxical
transformation occurs because scientific investigation into the nature of
the human sensory and cognitive apparatus reveal the same fundamen-
3Stack, George. Lange and Nietzsche. New York: de Gruyter, 1983.
4Stack argues that Nietzsche had access to both the revised second edition (1873) and the
fourth edition (1882), although he notes that it remains a matter of contention. See p. 13n9.
5K¨ohnke, Klaus Christian. The Rise of Neo-Kantianism, trans. R. J. Hollingdale. New
York: Cambridge, 1991.
4
tal cognitive limitations as described by Kant. Our knowledge is constrained
by the ways we can perceive the world. At the same time, however,
Lange dispenses with Kant’s formal structures developed through
the transcendental method. In place of the intricate architectonics of
“forms of intuition” and “categories of the understanding”, Lange puts
our entire psycho-physical organization, itself the product of evolutionary
processes as studied by empirical science. The result is a naturalized
a priori: the a priori is not a formal architectonic (forms of intuition, categories
of understanding, and Ideas of reason) that is justified through
transcendental argument, but rather our natural, psycho-physical constitution,
as it has evolved over geological time and is understood through
the methods of natural science. On the basis of this naturalized a priori,
Lange sets up a strong distinction between theoretical and practical philosophy.
The theoretical philosophy is scientific, materialistic, egoistic,
and determinist; all moral norms and values are sanctioned only through
practical philosophy, or what Lange calls “the standpoint of the Ideal”
(K¨ohnke 165). As summarized by Nietzsche himself, Lange’s account
holds that:
1 the world of the senses is the product of our organization;
2 our visible (bodily) organs are, like all other parts of the phenomenal
world, only a picture of an unknown object (Gegenstandes);
3 our real organization remains as unknown to us as the reality of
all other things. We continually have nothing but the product of
both before us. (translation modified; in Stack, p. 10)
This attempt to integrate materialism and idealism results, however,
in an “antithesis of materialism and idealism”. Scientific materialism,
if followed through rigorously, reveals the same limitations on cognition
than are established through transcendental idealism; at the same time,
however, Lange is too uncomfortable with the whisper of a dualistic ontology
that haunts the First Critique. Instead, the formal structures
of the mind are themselves given a naturalistic interpretation, and with
that we find ourselves once again in scientific materialism. Each position,
however reasonable in itself, leads to the other with no apparent resolution.
Lange attempts to resolve this antithesis by adopting a position
of dual phenomenalism (or, as he sometimes calls it, “materio-idealism”
(Stack p. 97). On the one hand, we have established the phenomenality
of the inner world (sensations, e.g. pleasures and pains); on the other
hand, we find the phenomenality of the outer world (forces and matter).
The antithesis of materialism and idealism is expressed by our inability
to “explain” or “ground” the outer world in terms of the inner one,
The Genesis of Genealogy 5
nor vice-versa. In either case we have access only to representations (of
sensations or of objects), and not “things-in-themselves”.
In fact, Lange is very skeptical about the thing-in-itself; he cannot
neither deny it nor assert it without being dogmatic. Nevertheless he
requires some explanation as to how representations arise. Lange therefore
finds himself locked into what I will call “the question of form”.
Both outer phenomena and inner phenomena have a certain structure
or form in virtue of which they can be described. However, we cannot
explain the form of the inner world in terms of the outer one, nor
vice-versa (or, more precisely, attempts to do so lead to a vicious circle),
nor can we remain entirely content with a phenomenalism that
explains nothing. This problematic leads Lange to speculate that if the
world is merely Vorstellung, then “the world of material forces or processes
and the world of sensation must be manifestations of some ‘third’
unknown something: ein unbekanntes Drittes” (p. 104). This “unbekanntes
Dritte” (or “unknown third”) clearly cannot be known, since the
condition of representability cannot itself be represented.
If the problem of “the unknown third” were exclusively epistemological,
Lange’s di±culties would be hard enough. However, that is not the
case; rather, Lange regards the antithesis of materialism and idealism,
and the dual-phenomenalism with which he attempts to solve it, as a
cultural problem as well as a philosophical one. Lange acknowledges
(perhaps under the influence of Marx) the alienation of humanity from
the natural world, as well as the alienation of human beings from one
another. Culture is no longer unified and united with nature, as it was in
the medieval period, but su®ers from two kinds of fragmentation. Firstly,
culture in internally fragmented—science, art, and ethics no longer form
a unified whole; secondly, culture is externally fragmented in so far as a
rift has opened up between culture and nature. The antithesis of materialism
and idealism, in which “nature” and “culture/mind” cannot be
reconciled, is only a philosophical reflection of a cultural problem. This
problem therefore demands a cultural solution, i.e. a new European culture
which, while recognizing the basic insights of natural science, will
nevertheless embrace a “eine Einheit des Geist und Natur”, a unity of
culture and nature6, in which the alienation of humanity from nature
will be overcome. A satisfactory resolution of the philosophical antithesis
will be to theory what a new (post-Christian, naturalistic) European
culture will be to practice.
6I have chosen to translate “Geist” by “culture” rather than by the more usual “spirit” or
“mind” because Lange’s usage makes clear that he referring to the totality of human cultural
practices, including science itself, rather than to any specific mental act or series of acts.
6
A final element worth noting in Lange’s massive monument to nineteenthcentury
science is his account of egoism. Lange seemed to be of two
minds with respect to egotism; on the one hand, he rejected the entire
edifice of Christian morality, but on the other hand, he was concerned
about the social consequences of unrestrained egoism. Christianity, he
considered, was false because it assumed that we can be at least sometimes
motivated by non-egoistic beliefs; on the contrary, the best in
psychology and political economy suggests that psychological egoism
predominates. It is worth noting that Lange’s position again has a Kantian
basis, since Kant holds that, considered as empirical selves, we are
egoistic; it is only insofar as we are also noumenal selves that we can be
motivated by practical reason, and so act morally. Nevertheless Lange
was sympathetic to Marx’s claim that egoism was socially destructive.
In order to resolve this tension, Lange distinguished between “natural
egoism” and “enlightened egoism” (p. 280). The former is the interest
in self-preservation that we possess simply by virtue of having evolved
through natural selection; the latter is the rationally restrained pursuit
of that self-interest which prevents a “tragedy of the commons”. A culture
that can adequately resolve the culture/nature dichotomy must also
be based on enlightened egotism, since egoism is “enlightened” according
to the knowledge of the basic principles of the human psyche, as
naturalistically understood. The next step is to see how Nietzsche picks
up where Lange leaves o® and incorporates Lange’s task into his own.
2. HAH: Naturalism as method
In Human, All-too-human Lange’s influence can be seen in two principle
respects. The first is how Nietzsche regards the basic problems
facing European culture, the second is how Nietzsche proposes to resolve
these problems. The most basic problem, on this view, lies in the
implications of “materialistic idealism”. On the one hand, a complete
naturalism undercuts precisely the kind of moral and metaphysical ideals
and concepts through which European culture has defined itself. On
the other hand, science itself is restricted to the realm of phenomena, or
of representations. If we think that the task of metaphysics is to provide
a picture of how the world “really is”, then science cannot step into the
vacuum that it helps to create. Nietzsche proposes to resolve this problem,
again leaning on Lange, by thinking through the implications of
naturalism to such an extent that we achieve a genuine liberation from
The Genesis of Genealogy 7
metaphysics, including the need for metaphysics7. Nietzsche radicalizes
the Langean project, however, by subjecting morality, religion, and art
to this naturalistic critique, whereas Lange himself insisted on preserving
such weltanschauungliche questions from naturalism’s slaughter of
sacred cows.
The first chapter of HAH, “Of First and Last Things”, serves two purpose,
one critical and one constructive. The criticism is directed against
“metaphysics”, although the target at hand is not medieval or early
modern philosophy, but rather against its idealistic successor. The only
target mentioned by name is Schopenhauer, although Kant might well
fall under the scope of the attack. The constructive project is Nietzsche’s
alternative to “metaphysics”, what he calls here “historical philosophy”
considered as a branch of natural science.
The hallmark of “metaphysics”, we are told early on, is its “faith in
opposite values” (HAH 1). This “faith” is the assumption that, regardless
of a thing’s value, it is impossible for that thing to have the same
origin as something with an opposite value. For example, those things we
call “good” can nothing in common with respect to the origin as things
that we call “bad” or “evil”. Since that which we call “bad” or “evil” is
associated with the realm of human things (i.e. the Christian doctrine
of the Fall), “good” must have some other, “miraculous origin” (Wunderursprung).
The opposite of metaphysics is natural science, including
history, which abandons the search for Wunderursprung and instead
seeks the origin of things in that which is “human, all-too-human”8. This
dichotomy paves the way for historical philosophy, which maintains that
there are no opposites, but rather than everything has “become” including
the faculty of cognition itself (HAH 2). Historical philosophy, which
at this point is simply a species of naturalism, will serve as the standpoint
from which Nietzsche will survey culture—morality, religion, art,
politics, gender relations and family life, and “man alone with himself”.
Having established this Langean-inspired contrast between metaphysics
and science/history, Nietzsche finds himself in need of a method for
7HAH is considered “positivistic” because of the status given to science, but it is not clear
if Nietzsche’s reasons for assigning the value to science that he does are the same as those
of “positivists”. For further discussion, see Jonathan Cohen’s “Nietzsche’s Fling with Positivism.”
(Nietzsche and the Sciences II, ed. Babette Babich and Robert Cohen, Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1999.) Stephen Crowell in “Nietzsche Among the Neo-Kantians” (Nietzsche
and the Sciences I, ed. Babette Babich and Robert Cohen, Kluwer Academic Publishers,
1999) presents an interesting discussion of how Nietzsche’s views became associated
with “positivism”.
8The irony of defining “historical philosophy” as the opposite of the faith in opposite values
should not go unnoticed; it may be one of the reasons why Nietzsche comes to abandon the
method of HAH.
8
his philosophical-cultural investigations. Nietzsche begins by suggesting
that if we are consider the biological and cultural evolution of cognition,
then what we are really after is “the physiology and history of the evolution
of organisms and concepts” (HAH 10). If we are to be consistent
naturalists, we should not permit ourselves to place nature and science
on one side and culture and history on another side. Doing so would
only reinstate precisely the kinds of dualism that Nietzsche, following
Lange, is trying to overcome. The only possibly consistent naturalism is
one that regards human beings as themselves purely natural, and in order
to do so, we must integrate physiology and history. That Nietzsche’s
project here is an echo of Lange’s attempt to synthesize materialism and
idealism should require little comment9.
At this point we have refined the question more precisely, and so we
can pose the question in terms of how we should integrate history and
psychology, concepts and organisms. The solution, Nietzsche suggests,
lies in “history of the emergence of thinking” (Entstehungsgeschichte des
Denkens) (HAH 16)10. A “psychohistory” would be an account of how
our concepts arose through an entirely naturalistic process. One would
ask, for example, about the selective benefits accrued from the ability
to compare di®erent things under the concept of “identity”. Such a
“psychohistory” is “the greatest triumph” of “the steady and laborious
process of science”. In reaching this moment of greatest triumph,
however, naturalistic science undergoes a remarkable transformation, for
from the perspective of psychohistory we will see that
That which we now call the world is the outcome of a host of errors
and fantasies which have gradually arise and grown entwined with one
another in the course of the overall evolution of the organic being, and
are now inherited by us as the accumulated treasure of the entire past—
as treasure: for the value of our humanity depends upon it. Rigorous
science : : : can, quite gradually and step by step, illuminate the history
of the emergence of this world as idea—and, for brief periods at any
rate, lift us up out of the entire proceeding. (HAH 16)
9The connection between idealism and history requires some comment, however, since one
of the distinctive features of Kantian idealism is the atemporal status given to the forms
and categories. Lange adopts a thoroughly historicized as well as naturalized version of neo-
Kantianism, although his relation to the Hegelian version of historicized idealism is unclear.
10Hollingdale translates this phrase by “history of the genesis of thought”. However, Entstehung
connotes an emergence from something else, rather than a genesis or Ursprung which
connotes an act of creation. Although “thinking” is somewhat more awkward than “thought”
(Gedanke) in English, the gerund form suggests an activity not suggested by the past participle.
Yet Nietzsche is not merely interested in how “people” have thought, but in how even
we “free spirits” still think.
The Genesis of Genealogy 9
In other words, a naturalistic understanding of how we have come to
be what we are reveals that our “knowledge” is really a gradual accumulation
of assumptions, judgments, and perceptions which have little or
nothing to do with correctly representing the way the world really is, but
a great deal to do with promoting survival of the species. This characteristically
Nietzschean theme, already advanced in the early essay, “On
Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense”, is presented here not as the
negation of knowledge but of its moment of greatest triumph. It is a moment
of triumph because science has conquered superstition, where we
must include as “superstition” such concepts as “identity”, “cause”, and
(as will be shown later) “will”. Yet psychohistory also presents us with a
challenge, because it also requires us to develop entirely an entirely new
understanding of “knowledge”, and also of “culture” (including morality,
religion, art, etc.). If our knowledge gives us no access to “the way
the world really is”, when we have traditionally thought of knowledge in
terms of precisely that kind of access, then we must develop a radically
di®erent account of knowledge. It remains to be seen how adequately
the argument of HAH can deal with this task.
HAH xx18-20 provide us with a more detailed picture of the psychohistorical
method. x18 suggests that “the history of the emergence of
thinking” will shed new light on how the principles of transcendental
psychology are in fact developments from the behavior of more primitive
organisms. The next step, then, is to trace the origin of rationality:
The first stage of the logical is the judgment: and the essence of the
judgment consists, according to the best logicians, in belief. At the bottom
of all belief there lies the sensation of the pleasurable or painful in
respect to the subject experiencing the sensation. A new, third sensation
as a product of two preceding single sensations is the judgment in
its lowest form. — In our primary condition, all that interests us organic
beings in any thing is its relationship to us in respect of pleasure and
pain. (HAH 18; emphasis original)
To make concrete sense of this example, let us consider an earthworm
that is able to detect qualitative di®erences in the amount of light. First
it experiences the quality of light, and then experiences the sensation of
pain caused by that exposure. These two sensations—“there is light” and
“there is pain”—combine to form the judgment, “the light is painful”.
There is no reference here to the means whereby sensations are combined
to form judgments, and in a sense no such an account is necessary.
The Kantian architectonic is brought to bear in order to explain how
cognitive agents are able to make judgments about objects and their
(causal) relations given sensory data. The earthworm, however, is not
in the business of making that kind of judgment; it merely wants to
avoid the light, and if it succeeds in doing so, it can help give rise to the
10
next generation of light-avoiding earthworms. If it is not successful in
making the right kind of judgment, it will be eaten by a bird.
We should note that, firstly, the method presumes a kind of materialistic
foundationalism, insofar as concepts and faculties are reduced to
purely physiological terms. Secondly, the method requires a kind of psychological
egoism. What we are concerned with here is not the cells and
tissues that make up the organism, but the organism itself as the subject
and “center” of experience. Psycho-history explains how our ways
of thinking and feeling are the product of biological and cultural evolution,
and that they can ultimately be explained in terms of sensations
of pleasure and pain with which experiences become associated.
This crude version of “eliminative materialism”, however, is insu±-
cient in itself to oppose metaphysics. We also need to learn the lessons of
HAH 20, which directs us to consider the relation between metaphysics
and culture. Liberation from metaphysics is itself a consequence of a
“very high level of culture” in combination with “the greatest exertion
of mind”, but even this is not enough:
Then, however, he needs to take a retrograde step: he has to grasp the
historical justification that resides in such ideas, likewise the psychological;
he has to recognize that they have been most responsible for the
advancement of mankind : : : I regard to philosophical metaphysics, I see
more and more who are making for the negative goal (that all positive
metaphysics is an error), but still few who are taking a few steps back
: : : The most enlightened get only so far as liberating themselves from
metaphysics and looking back on it from above: whereas here too, as
in the hippodrome, at the end of the track it is necessary to turn the
corner. (HAH 20; emphasis original)
In this passage, Nietzsche clearly distances his own position from that
of the “positivists” with which Human, All-too-human and Daybreak are
associated. By taking in account the historical and psychological justifi-
cations for metaphysical ideas, the practitioner of psycho-history comes
to understand the role that metaphysics has had in the development of
culture, and that without such ideas, our culture would not have reached
the point that it has. This is true even if metaphysics has now outlived
its usefulness, and so must give way to a new culture based on scientific
knowledge. The basic issue is not, then, whether metaphysics or
science is right. Rather, the basic issue is which should serve as the
basis for culture. Nietzsche has rejected epistemology in favor of what
might be called “the psychology of knowledge”, and Nietzsche’s method
The Genesis of Genealogy 11
places history and culture front and center11. Nevertheless, we must
note that Nietzsche’s reasoning here still depends on his naturalism; it
is as a result of naturalism that we must turn from epistemology to the
psycho-history of knowledge.
The turn from “the negative goal” (the critique of metaphysics) to
“the positive goal” (the construction of a new culture) paves the way
for the remarks on culture that make up the rest of “Of First and Last
Things”12 . The end of HAH 23 sets the tone:
Let us rather confront the task which the age sets us as boldly as
we can: and then posterity will bless us for it - a posterity that will
know itself to be as much beyond the self-enclosed original national
cultures [Volks-Kulturen] as it is beyond the culture of comparison [i.e.
the culture of the 19th and 20th centuries], but will look back upon both
species of culture as upon venerable antiquities.
The project, then, is neither one of returning to “the folk” out of nostalgia
nor one of resigning ourselves to the “fragmentation” of “the age
of comparison”. Instead we must participate in the construction of a new
culture precisely by engaging in the selection of higher moralities and the
elimination of lower moralities (HAH 23). How, then, are we to do this?
Only through knowledge, and in particular we must “attain to a hitherto
altogether unprecedented knowledge of the preconditions of culture as a
scientific standard for ecumenical goals. Herein lies the tremendous task
facing the great spirits of the coming century [i.e. the 20th]” (HAH 25).
In order to build a culture grounded in genuine knowledge rather than
in metaphysics, including the ways in which “knowledge” itself has been
understood metaphysically, we must clear away many superstitions, and
the rest of Human, All-too-human is designed to begin this task and
convince others (the “free spirits” for whom it is written) to continue
it. The rest of this paper will consider only one of these superstitions,
“morality”, and why the attack on morality that is picked up in Daybreak
di®ers from that in Human, All-too-human.
3. HAH: The Criticism of Morality
In “On the History of the Moral Sentiments”, Nietzsche employs the
naturalistic method outlined above to mount a criticism of morality.
In keeping with the psycho-historical method developed in Book I, the
11I owe the phrase “psychology of knowledge” to Elliot Jurist’s Beyond Hegel and Nietzsche
(The MIT Press, 2000).
12In this light we can now see that the “first things” refers to metaphysics and morality, the
basis for our culture, and the “last things” refers to science and history, which are the last
things of our current culture but which will make possible a new culture.
12
analysis of morality in Book II will reveal the naturalistic underpinnings
of morality, thereby leading us to reject the supernatural or metaphysical
understanding that we normally have of morality’s origins. Once this
origin is revealed to be no more than a Wunderursprung, however, we
will have to consider whether a naturalistic account of morality can really
count as “morality” at all.
The argument, in brief, runs as follows13. Nietzsche accepts from
Kant, but above all from Schopenhauer, the claim that morality is fundamentally
unegoistic. However, Nietzsche’s own naturalistic method
assumes that we are fundamentally motivated by egoism (at root, sensations
of pleasure and pain, and seeking the former while avoiding the
latter). Psychological egoism entails a denial of altruism; since we cannot
not act egoistically, we are deceiving ourselves if we maintain that
we should act unegoistically. There can be no such thing as genuine unegoism,
and all cases which are normally regarded as such are versions
of deception or misunderstanding, either of oneself or of others.. Knowledge,
however, will make such self-misunderstanding impossible, and
therefore raises the possibility of a non-moral or post-moral culture14.
The center-piece of the naturalistic dissection of morality comes in
HAH 97-99, because it is here that we see how morality “becomes custom,
later still voluntary obedience, finally almost instinct: then, like
all that has been for a long time been habitual and natural, it is associated
with pleasure—and is now called virtue” (99). By describing virtue
as the association of habit with pleasure, Nietzsche appears have succeeded
in showing how moral feelings of benevolence, compassion, etc.
are actually species of pleasure, and to that extent are just as egoistic as
supposedly “selfish” actions. Morality as “altruism”, or as “unegoism”,
is at best a kind of self-misunderstanding, and at worst a kind of deception.
The victory of knowledge over morality means, in light of HAH 18,
an understanding that people do not act out of moral motivations, i.e.
unegoistic ones, regardless of what they believe about their motivations.
Nietzsche accepts the morality-vs-egoism framework, and simply denies
that “morality” refers to anything besides a certain species of egoism
that is useful to others or to society generally. What we call egoism is
only that species of egoism that is harmful to others or to society generally.
Morality, as we commonly conceive of it, is based on two illusions
13The sketch of HAH here, and the discussion of Daybreak in (IV), are heavily indebted to
Leiter and Clark’s introduction to Daybreak. My main contention with their analysis is that
they read the break between HAH and D as due to the influence of Lange, whereas I read
HAH as heavily influenced by Lange and D as the emergence of Nietzsche’s “mature” views.
14Nietzsche never abandons this theme, although his development of it in later writings is
significantly di®erent from the presentation in HAH.
The Genesis of Genealogy 13
or mistakes: the first is that there is a distinction to be made between
“morality” and “egoism”, the second is that we have any degree of control
or freedom over how we act. Only with both of these illusions in
place can it make any sense to blame someone for acting “selfishly”
rather than “altruistically”, or to praise them for acting benevolently
rather than cruelly.
The predominance of naturalistic considerations over moral ones is
striking in Nietzsche’s introduction of the problem of “order of rank”.
It is the order of rank which determines morality, not vice-versa (HAH
42), yet the order of rank is treated naturalistically, i.e. also psychohistorically.
Hence a naturalistic explanation, not a supernatural justification,
is required for why we have the moral values that we have.
An interesting question here is whether or not the order of rank also
determines the criteria for judging between “superior” and “inferior”
moralities, as Nietzsche proposes in HAH 23, and if it does so, whether
or not Nietzsche can avoid committing some version of the naturalistic
fallacy.
The victory of naturalism is what Nietzsche calls “the theory of total
unaccountability” (HAH 105). If we are natural beings through and
through, then we are just as determined in our actions as the rest of
the natural world. A murderer is no more “responsible” for his actions,
or should no more be expected to feel “guilt”, then a storm should be
responsible or guilty for making us wet (HAH 102)—even if we should
happen to electrocuted by lightning or die of pneumonia. Nietzsche
even imagines a case through which our belief in “free will” can itself
be considered as part of the mechanism that is calculated (HAH
106)15. The theory of total unaccountability is the triumph of knowledge
over morality, but it merely sets the stage for the much larger
cultural project, namely “whether mankind could transform itself from
a moral to a knowing mankind” (HAH 107). The “influence of increased
knowledge” will make possible “the wise, innocent (conscious of innocence)
man as regularly as it now brings forth - not his antithesis but
necessary preliminary - the unwise, unjust, guilt-conscious man” (HAH
107). The “guilt-conscious”, i.e. moral man is the necessary preliminary
of the just man in the same way that a culture based on metaphysics is
the necessary preliminary for a culture based on science.
15Note the absence of the hostility to “mechanism” that we find in later writings, e.g. Gay
Science 109.
14
4. Naturalism and Morality in Daybreak
As I noted above, although HAH is far more systematic than it has
usually been supposed, it is nevertheless a far cry from the philosophical
and rhetorical heights that Nietzsche reached after Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
and it is for these works, as well as Zarathustra itself, that Nietzsche
is most well-known. We should consider, then, what led Nietzsche to
reject the project he developed in HAH, and in order to do that, we
must turn to one of the most important, but also most neglected, of
Nietzsche’s texts: Daybreak. In this case I will restrict my attention to
Nietzsche’s naturalistic critique of morality, although I will attempt to
make connections where this and broader Nietzschean themes as seems
appropriate.
In Daybreak Nietzsche develops a distinct criticism of morality that
is at considerable odds with the arguments in Human, All-too-human.
The crux of the di®erence is that Daybreak departs from the assumption
of egoism that orients the critique of morality in HAH. Nietzsche’s
argument hinges on the assumption that morality depends on the acceptance
of the reality of “the ego” just as much as so-called “egoism” does.
“Morality” is defined through its opposition to “egoism”, and vice-versa,
and so the morality-egoism dichotomy is central to our understanding of
what it means to be moral at all. One way of viewing the contrast between
the critique of morality in HAH and that of Daybreak is presented
by Nietzsche himself in D 103:
‘To deny morality’ -this can mean, first: to deny that the moral motives
which men claim have inspired their actions really have done so
: : : Then it can mean: to deny that moral judgments are based on truths.
: : : Thus I deny morality as I deny alchemy, that is, I deny their premises
: : : I also deny immorality: not that countless people feel themselves to
be immoral, but that there is any true reason to do so. (emphasis original)
Clark and Leiter argue that the first sense of morality-denial includes
not only La Rochefoucauld (who is mentioned by name) but also the Nietzsche
of HAH. There, Nietzsche argues that insofar as morality means
a kind of unegoism, then there really is no such thing, since all action is
egoistic. Morality in this case is grounded on false assumptions, that is,
the assumption that unegoistic action is possible. The strategy of Daybreak
also considers the false premises upon which morality is based, but
does so by questioning the nature of agency per se rather than accepting
The Genesis of Genealogy 15
the traditional view of agency and rejecting only one class of action16.
The question remains as to how Nietzsche constructs this argument.
The centerpiece of the argument hinges on Nietzsche’s views regarding
the relation between language/knowledge and “the drives and a®ects”.
The view begins in D 115, where Nietzsche argues that our language
is unable to capture the nuance and subtlety of our inner states, and
so misleads us as to their nature, and concludes, “We are none of us
that which we appear to be in accordance with the states for which
alone we have consciousness and words.” We are perpetually deluded
about the nature of our actions, such that “no amount of knowledge
about an act ever su±ces to ensure the performance, that the space
between knowledge and action has never yet been bridged even in a single
instance” (D 116). The result of this kind of psychological skepticism is
that no matter how much we think we know about ourselves, “nothing
can be more incomplete than the image of the totality of drives which
constitute [our] being” (D 119).
The ego with which we are trained to identity ourselves is only a fiction,
and it is not even clear if the fiction is necessary or not17. “Ego”
is at bottom a linguistic-cognitive prejudice that conceals a plurality of
drives and a®ects. If there is no “ego”, then there can be no “egoism”.
That does not mean, however, that all action is moral or that there is no
distinction to be drawn between moral and non-moral action. Rather,
it leads Nietzsche to attack morality in a far more direct way that previously.
A moral action is not unegoistic in that there is no ego per se, but
one in which the ego acts unegoistically, i.e. without concern for itself.
Why, then, call morality basically egoistic? Nietzsche’s point here is
that moral psychology depends on the presuppositions of ego-psychology
generally: that we can know at least what some of our actions and intentions
are, and that we can distinguish between moral and egoistic
actions. For example, we use non-moral (but ego-psychological) concepts
such as “belief” and “intention” in order to give meaning to distinctly
moral concepts such as “guilt” and “responsibility”. Without
the ego-psychological concepts that we use to distinguish between selfinterested
acts and altruistic acts, our moral concepts would no longer
be meaningful, and hence can be dispensed with.
16Nietzsche’s claim here that morality is somehow grounded on falsehoods, which he means
to correct by truths, is at odds with the skepticism about the possibility of knowledge that
Nietzsche also develops during this time period (see, e.g. Daybreak 117).
17If the Nietzsche of D holds that the ego is an unnecessary fiction, his position would mark
a significant departure from that of Lange, who held that the Idea of the Soul is the only one
of Kant’s Ideas of reason which is necessary.
16
By shifting the terminological terrain from “sensations” to “drives”,
Nietzsche accomplishes an important move within the naturalistic conception
of agency. In HAH, Nietzsche’s attack on morality is restricted
to denying that there are acts which can appropriately be called moral
ones, as distinct from non-moral ones, in the terms that moralists commonly
use (e.g. “selfish” vs. “selfless”). In the later work, Nietzsche is
no longer concerned with whether we call certain acts moral, immoral,
or non-moral, but with a certain conception of agency which makes it
possible to make distinctions in terms of egoism and morality in the first
place. Both properly count as naturalistic criticisms of morality, but the
latter should be considered a significant departure from neo-Kantianism
(i.e. Lange, Schopenhauer) because it resists Langean phenonemenalism
and because it resists Schopenhauer’s assumption of ego-psychology
5. The Multiplicity of Drives and A®ects
The question nevertheless remains as to how Nietzsche can justifiably
move away from neo-Kantianism in the direction outlined. Phenomenalism
and psychological egoism are closely related positions in neo-
Kantianism generally and in HA specifically. The naturalistic criticism
of morality in Daybreak rejects these assumptions, but it is not clear
exactly how Nietzsche can get away with this move. In particular, there
are two worries that should be dealt with. The first is that Nietzsche
is slipping from neo-Kantianism to Kantianism pure and simple. The
second, which I will not discuss, is that he is rejecting the critical turn
altogether and is now engaging in that worst of all sins, “uncritical dogmatism”.
I shall attempt to show that neither of these is the case, but
rather that the departure from neo-Kantianism marks the emergence of
a distinctive and interesting Nietzschean position that I shall refer to,
for the sake of convenience, as “anti-representationalism”.
Let us first take up the first challenge: that by rejecting phenomenalism
Nietzsche has become a full-blown Kantian. This interpretation
might go as follows. In a discussion of “drives and a®ects”, we are no
longer dealing with the strictly phenomenal world, but with a world that
lies hidden from introspection and from psychology, and which we can
only infer based on its e®ects, i.e. our own beliefs and actions. If “the
ego” is itself a representation, then what is the status of that which is
represents? Drives and a®ects clearly must be naturalistic entities of
some sort, yet it is not clear what kind of knowledge we can have of
them or how that kind of knowledge is possible. If our representations
can at best form only a poor image of them, and all cognition is representational,
then what kind of other access is possible? A non-cognitive
The Genesis of Genealogy 17
one, perhaps? This, however, is strictly out of the question. If the position
were really neo-Kantian, he would ultimately be forced to conclude
that all we have access to are our representations and never things-inthemselves;
hence “drives and a®ects” are still only the representation of
the unrepresentable18. It might appear, as a result, as though Nietzsche
were re-instating the thing-in-itself. Following Clark (1990), the thingin-
itself is not merely the claim that the world exists independently of
us, nor that the world has a determinate essence which could make it
impossible for us to know the truth about it. Rather, the claim that
there is the thing-in-itself means that the world has a certain structure
or nature which we cannot ever, in principle, adequately represent. Nietzsche’s
discussion of “drives and a®ects” in D seems to fit this definition
insofar as he asserts that they exist, and even that they have a certain
structure of their own, but that the very nature of language makes them
unknowable to us. Clark would most likely agree with this interpretation,
since on her view Nietzsche is wedded to the thing-in-itself in the
entire period leading up TSZ. .
This would certainly be a fair objection to the account in Daybreak
if Nietzsche were maintaining the neo-Kantian view that “der Welt ist
nur Vorstellung”, but then asserting that we are nevertheless justified in
speculating that there is something to the world “in itself”. There would
be at any rate an “us-in-ourselves”; the world of drives and a®ects then
becomes the Nietzschean version of the noumenal self19. To claim that
this is speculative rather than dogmatic on Nietzsche’s part, as Stack
does, hardly seems to remove the allegation that Nietzsche has removed
the “neo-“ from neo-Kantianism, if indeed he has not altogether lapsed
into uncritical dogmatism.
I will argue, however, that Nietzsche can be cleared of this charge if the
decisive move in Daybreak implies neither a return to Kantianism nor a
merely naturalistic conception of agency, but a naturalism that is deeply
anti-representational in its implications. By “anti-representational” I
mean a theory of cognition which calls into question the premise that
representations can yield an adequate understanding of agency. On the
contrary, Nietzsche asserts that we can only have a very impoverished
and explanatorily inadequate understanding of agency if we restrict our-
18This is not necessarily as serious a contradiction as may first appear. Kant insists on a
distinction between cognition and thinking, such that we can think even when we can never
have a determinate cognition of it, i.e. there is no intuition (e.g. B 157-9). It is not clear,
however, if Nietzsche understands this distinction, much less whether or not he accepts it.
There may even be good reasons to think that he does not.
19Something very much like this view is defended in Blondel’s Nietzsche: The Body and
Culture, trans. Se´en Hand, Stanford University Press, 1991.
18
selves to merely what is representable. What is represented appears to
be an “ego” with beliefs and intentions upon which it acts and for which
it is responsible; in fact, the “ego” is not that which is represented, but
is itself constructed out of the representations themselves.
This problematic should be taken as Nietzsche’s first step away from
neo-Kantianism because it calls into question the very idea of representations
in the first place. This is neither the place to defend an
interpretation of Nietzsche’s anti-representationalism, nor to show how
Nietzsche can be both a naturalist and an anti-representationalist20. Nor
am I arguing that Daybreak marks a total break with neo-Kantianism,
since there are still important neo-Kantian elements in Daybreak. The
criticism of language, for example, is strongly reminiscent of the rhetoric
deployed in “Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense”, as is the naturalistic
neo-Kantianism of D 117, where Nietzsche argues that the kinds of
representations that we able to form are conditioned by naturalistic and
contingent facts about us. The goal of the present study is to show only
that, insofar as we can plausibly interpret Nietzsche’s mature position
as naturalistic and anti-representational, the emergence of that position
can be seen in the transition from the naturalistic attack on morality in
Human, All-too-human to the naturalistic attack on morality in Daybreak.
6. Nietzsche’s Development
The transition suggested here from Human, All-too-human to Daybreak
may help shed some light on how Nietzsche later regarded his
intellectual development. In Twilight of the Idols (1888), Nietzsche summarizes
his rejection of the reality/appearance distinction in “How The
‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable: The History of an Error”. The
first three stages are readily associated with Platonism, Christianity,
and Kantianism respectively (though whether these are fair or adequate
characterizations, even by Nietzsche’s own standards, is a di®erent question).
In stages 4-6, however, it is less apparent which positions are being
summarized:
20On Nietzsche’s anti-representationalism, see Allen, Barry, “All the Daring of the Lover
of Knowledge is Permitted Again,” Nietzsche and the Sciences II, ed. Babich and Cohen.
New York: Kluwer Academic Press. On Nietzsche’s anti-representational naturalism, see
Cox’s insightful analysis of Nietzsche’s “hermeneutic naturalism” in Nietzsche: Naturalism
and Interpretation, Berkeley: University of California Press. Much of my project here may
be read as an attempt to comprehend the emergence of “hermeneutic naturalism”, which I
associate with Nietzsche’s “mature” philosophy, from the more neo-Kantian or “positivistic”
naturalism of his earlier works.
The Genesis of Genealogy 19
4 The true world—unattainable? At any rate, unattained. And
being unattained, also unknown. Consequently, not consoling, redeeming,
or obligating: how could something unknown obligate
us?
(Gray morning, The first yawn of reason. The cockcrow of positivism.)
5 The “true” world—an idea which is no longer good for anything,
not even obligating—an idea which has become useless and superfluous—
consequently, a refuted idea; let us abolish it!
(Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sens and cheerfulness; all
Platos blush; pandemonium of all free spirits.)
6 The true world—we have abolished. What world has remained?
The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have
also abolished the apparent one.
(Noon; moment of briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high
point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)
Clark (1990) holds that 4 is represented by Nietzsche’s early writings
(e.g. TL, HAH), although she does not connect this with the naturalistic
neo-Kantianism that was prevalent in German philosophy at the
time21. Stage 5 she associates principally with GS and some sections
of BGE. On her view, only GM and after clearly and unambiguously
present Stage 6. On my interpretation, rather, Stage 5 is associated
with Daybreak (Morgenrote, “bright day and breakfast”) and the discovery
of multiplicity—there is no unity, but “plurality all the way down”,
hence no foundation; the idea of a “true world” or “world in itself” can
therefore be abandoned. Stage 6 refers to Gay Science which ends (GS
342), as does Stage 6 in TI, with an allusion to Zarathustra. This is
not to deny, however, that remnants of earlier stages can remain in later
works. It is possible, as Clark maintains, that Nietzsche did not become
convinced of his “realism” until the final two years of his productive life.
Nevertheless, I wish to maintain that departure from neo-Kantianism
begins much earlier on than Clark suggests. Hence, rather than argue as
Clark does that Nietzsche rejects the thing-in-itself and then representationalism,
Nietzsche first rejects representationalism and later realizes
that, without representations, there is no basis for distinguishing between
“appearances” and “things-in-themselves”.
21Clark, Maudemarie. Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy, Cambridge, 1990.
20
Clark argues, to put it quite roughly, that Nietzsche’s mature position
(as opposed to his pre-Zarathustra writings) is roughly neo-Kantian;
he rejects the correspondence theory of truth and the metaphysical realism
that it requires, but not truth or common-sense realism per se.
My argument, rather, is that it is Nietzsche’s early writings which most
closely bear a family resemblance to “neo-Kantianism”, although even
here there are distinctive di®erences, whereas by Daybreak Nietzsche is
beginning to show signs of skepticism with its most fundamental assumptions22.
This skeptical turns increases in The Gay Science and
eventually leads Nietzsche to the cluster of problems that have made
him “Nietzsche!”: the value of truth, the value of knowledge, the creation
of values, and the need for a culture and ethics that can embrace
and a±rm life in the knowledge that there is no ultimate ground, form,
or world.
While I cannot explore the issue in su±cient depth here, I would like
to suggest that the crucial move that Nietzsche makes here is one from
a question of unity to a question of multiplicity. Multiplicity is one of
the central concepts for Deleuze’s influential study of Nietzsche, and despite
the resistance to it among some analytic Nietzscheans, some have
demonstrated that this reading of Nietzsche can be used to considerable
e®ect23. As long as we conceive of persons in terms of “the ego”, we will
be concerned with questions of representation, i.e. questions of the most
adequate picture. If persons are to be conceived in terms of a multiplicity
of drives and a®ects, and moreover a multiplicity which cannot be
reduced to a deeper underlying unity, then we should despair of capturing
this multiplicity through representations (e.g. theories). Rather, we
should consider this multiplicity as a®ording the construction of multiple
interpretations. Nietzsche’s later thought might then be read as a
considerable expansion and elaboration upon this shift from representationalism
to a philosophy oriented around the question of interpretation
(e.g. genealogy, hermeneutics).
The need for a di®erent method drives the transition from “the history
of the emergence of thought” to the genealogical method. The
discovery of multiplicity, and the requirement for a genealogical method
22Clark refers to Nietzsche’s mature position as “neo-Kantian” in large part because her
usage di®ers from mine. By “neo-Kantianism” Clark seems to mean that family of theories
which retain “truth” but deny the correspondence theory of truth; her principal figures are
James and Putnam. By contrast, I have used “neo-Kantianism” here to refer to currents in
German academic philosophy in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. Where Clark thinks of
Nietzsche’s break with representationalism as a shift from Kantianism to neo-Kantianism, I
regard it as a shift from neo-Kantianism to something quite distinct.
23See Schrift, Alan, Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation, New York: Routledge,
1990 and Cox, op. cit.
The Genesis of Genealogy 21
that can trace the development of multiplicity without reducing it another,
underlying unity, go hand-in-hand. This trajectory in Nietzsche’s
thought can be traced from Daybreak through The Gay Science to On
the Genealogy of Morality and Book V of The Gay Science, where the genealogical
method is most fully developed within Nietzsche’s own work.
In short, Nietzsche’s rejection of Lange’s synthesis of materialism and
neo-Kantianism, and the subsequent development of his “hermeneutic
naturalism”, can be traced to the need for a new method by which the
fundamental basis of morality can be attacked.