Nietzsche's Conscience: Six Character Studies from the Genealogy

176 Pages·1998·13.156 MB·English

by  Aaron Ridley

Nietzsche's Conscience
ALSO BY AARON RIDLEY
Music, Value and the Passions
Beginning Bioethics
R. G. Collingwood: A Philosophy ofA rt
NIETZSCHE'S
CONSCIENCE
....
~
Six Character Studies from
the Genealogy
AARON RIDLEY
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
ITHACA AND LONDON
Copyright © I998 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, inust not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House,
5I2 East State Street, Ithaca, New York I485o.
First published I998 by Cornell University Press
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, I998
Printed in the United States of America
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Ridley, Aaron.
Nietzsche's conscience : six character studies from the Genealogy
I Aaron Ridley.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o-8or4-3557-9 (cloth : alk. paper}
ISBN 0-80I4-8553-3 (pbk.)
r. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, I844-I900. Zur Genealogie der
Moral. 2. Ethics. I. Title.
B33I3.Z73R53 I998
I70-dc2I
Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers
and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such
materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are
recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers.
Cloth printing ro 9
Paperback printing ro 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
To Ann

CoNTENTs
Preface Vlll
Note on Sources Xl
Introduction I
Chapter One The Slave 15
Chapter Two The Priest 41
Chapter Three The Philosopher 64
Chapter Four The Artist 78
Chapter Five The Scientist 96
Chapter Six The Noble 127
Conclusion 157
Index r6r

PREFACE
I had been fascinated by Nietzsche for a long time before daring to write
about him. But when I arrived in Southampton in 1994 and found myself at
last able to offer a course on him, my inhibitions began to falter-even if the
course was given in the event with more trepidation than competence. And
then the politics department hired David Owen, whose book Nietzsche, Poli
tics and Modernity I read with a dawning sense of how a decent course on
Nietzsche might actually have been put together. We started to talk, and it
was David's encouragement that finally got me to put pen to paper. Since
then we have thrashed through every word I've written on Nietzsche, many
of those words being themselves the products of earlier thrashings through.
I haven't made any attempt in what follows to flag the things I owe to him;
to have done so, apart from being tedious and embarrassing, would also have
been impossible. There is an art of virtual coauthorship, and David mastered
it here. l must also thank the proprietors and staff of the Avenue Bar, Pad
well Road, for providing the environment in which almost all of our discus
sions took place, as well as the vast majority of the actual writing, editing, and
revising.
But then I've been fortunate across the board. The editors of the journal
of Nietzsche Studies and of Nietzsche, Philosophy and the Arts (Cambridge
University Press, 1998) have kindly allowed me to reuse parts of two previ
ously published essays in Chapters 1 and 4· My father, Brian Ridley, read an
early version of the complete manuscript and persuaded me to take out some
awful bits and to clarify some others. Henry Staten, who read the book for
Cornell at the behest of the excellent Roger Haydon, understood what I was
up to so much better than I did that his comments struck often with the force
of revelation. To the extent that I have managed to incorporate or act upon
his suggestions, the book is a great deal more convincing now than it was.