Reading Qs for Nietzsche 5/13
May 8, 20081. Describe Nietzsche’s writing style. How is different than or similar to previous authors? Why do you think he writes this way?
2. On page 906 Nietzsche discusses and describes his aphoristic style. How does he explain his preference for this style? Note that he compares reading his work to rumination—and compares a good reader to a cow. This is characteristic of Nietzsche; what does it tell us about his style and his approach?
3. If Nietzsche is not entirely serious and certainly not literal when he describes his ideal reader as a cow, we should be attuned to the fact that Nietzsche employs both humor and exaggeration—and deliberate provocation—in his writing. That said, beware of reading terms such as “master and slave,” “health”
4. Why do you think this piece is considered political theory and not, say theology?
5. Why does he call this a genealogy?
6. Nietzsche describes his genealogy of morality as probing the question of whether morality is the height of himan achievement or “what if the reverse were true? What if a symptom of regression were inherent in the ‘good’ living at the expense of the future? Perhaps more comfortably, less dangerously, but at the same time in a meaner style, more basely—So that precisely morality would be to blame if the highest power and splendor actually possible to man was never in fact attained? So that precisely morality was the danger of dangers?” (905)
7. How does he propose to study morality? What does this tell us about Nietzsche’s view of history (contrasted with that of, say, Mill or Marx?)
8. What is the difference between good and bad vs. good and evil?
9. What is the slave revolt in morality? (912-14) What is ressentiment (913)?
10. Nietzsche tells a little story about birds of prey and tasty little lambs on page 918. What does this parable suggest about the origins and purposes of morality?
11. On page 920, section 15 Nietzsche makes a very strong claim about religion—what is it?
12. How is the Enlightenment tangled up in Christian morality according to Nietzsche? (922-23)
