\'The Genealogy of Morals\' (\'Zur Genealogie der Moral\' in German) is a philosophical work by Friedrich Nietzsche, written in 1887 and published in 1887 and 1888. In this influential text, Nietzsche conducts a critical examination of the origins and development of moral values in Western society.The work is structured in three essays:1. \'Good and Evil, Good and Bad\': Nietzsche begins by tracing the historical development of moral concepts and contrasting the distinction between \'good\' and \'evil\' with the earlier dichotomy of \'good\' and \'bad.\' He explores how moral values have evolved and how they are often shaped by power dynamics.2. \'Guilt, Bad Conscience, and Related Matters\': Nietzsche delves into the psychological and cultural roots of guilt and bad conscience. He argues that moral concepts such as guilt arise from the internalization of societal norms and values, often serving as mechanisms for social control.3. \'What Do Ascetic Ideals Mean?\': Nietzsche explores the ascetic ideals and their impact on culture, philosophy, and the individual. He discusses the role of self-denial, suffering, and the pursuit of an otherworldly existence in shaping moral values.\'The Genealogy of Morals\' is characterized by Nietzsche's sharp critique of conventional morality, his emphasis on the psychological underpinnings of moral concepts, and his exploration of the complex interplay between power, culture, and individual psychology. The work has been influential in fields such as philosophy, psychology, and cultural studies, and it continues to stimulate scholarly discussions and debates.
For there is no necessary antithesis between chastity and sensuality: every good marriage, every authentic heart-felt love transcends this antithesis. Wagner would, it seems to me, have done well to have brought this pleasing reality home once again to his Germans, by means of a bold and graceful "Luther Comedy," for there were and are among the Germans many revilers of sensuality; and perhaps Luther's greatest merit lies just in the fact of his having had the courage of his sensuality (it used to be called, prettily enough, "evangelistic freedom "). But even in those cases where that antithesis between chastity and sensuality does exist, there has fortunately been for some time no necessity for it to be in any way a tragic antithesis. This should, at any rate, be the case with all beings who are sound in mind and body, who are far from reckoning their delicate balance between "animal" and "angel," as being on the face
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Such "conflicts" actually allure one to life. On the other hand, it is only too clear that when once these ruined swine are reduced to worshipping chastity and there are such swinethey only see and worship in it the antithesis to themselves, the antithesis to ruined swine. Oh what a tragic grunting and eagerness! You can just think of itthey worship that painful and superfluous contrast, which Richard Wagner in his latter days undoubtedly wished to set to music, and to place on the stage! "For what purpose, forsooth?" as we may reasonably ask. What did the swine matter to him; what do they matter to us?
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3. At this point it is impossible to beg the further question of what he really had to do with that manly (ah, so unmanly) country bumpkin, that poor devil and natural, Parsifal, whom he eventually made a Catholic by such fraudulent devices. What? Was this Parsifal really meant seriously? One might be tempted to suppose the contrary, even to wish itthat the Wagnerian Parsifal was meant joyously, like a concluding play of a trilogy or satyric drama, in which Wagner the tragedian wished to take farewell of us, of himself, above all of tragedy, and to do so in a manner that should be quite fitting and worthy, that is, with an excess of the most extreme and
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That, as I have said, would have been quite worthy of a great tragedian; who like every artist first attains the supreme pinnacle of his greatness when he can look down into himself and his art, when he can laugh at himself. Is Wagner's Parsifal his secret laugh of superiority over himself, the triumph of that supreme artistic freedom and artistic transcendency which he has at length attained. We might, I repeat, wish it were so, for what can Parsifal, taken seriously, amount to? Is it really necessary to see in it (according to an expression once used against me) the product of an insane hate of knowledge, mind, and flesh? A curse on flesh and spirit in one breath of hate? An apostasy and reversion to the morbid Christian and obscurantist ideals? And finally a self-negation and self
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