On the Genealogy of Morality

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche offers a polemical critique of moral values, tracing the historical development of guilt, conscience, justice, law and responsibility. After a preface, the work unfolds in three linked treatises that develop themes he had sketched in Beyond Good and Evil. The first contrasts two pairs of opposites, good and bad against good and evil, and argues that what he calls slave morality grew from the ressentiment the weak felt toward the strong. Nietzsche also asks why poverty, humility and chastity became central religious virtues, and what instinct and freedom were lost as humans learned remorse and pity. It has been called the most important of his writings on ethics and politics.

Bryan Callen, co-host of The Fighter and the Kid, cited it in Tools of Titans among his Nietzsche reading, saying its truths are in many ways cut and dried and likening it to intellectual red meat. NETOPIA mobilPay founder Antonio Eram also lists it in an interview about the books that help him change.