Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2025
Chapter 7 draws on Nietzsche’s autobiographical writings to focus in on his philosophical methods. Here I identify the three features of genealogical analysis. First, Nietzsche attests to being gripped and limited by theological and moral prejudices, which, as he further suggests, functioned to constrict his evaluative horizons (GM P 3). Second, Nietzsche substantiates further that those deeply entrenched patterns of value and habits of thought, which (non-consciously or pre-reflectively) shaped his outlook, also oriented him in a particular way toward his suffering. As a way of combating that precarity, he adopts, for a time at least, thoroughly moralized responses: He warded off precarity through decadence in the forms of either world-denial (pessimism) or ascetic self-renunciation. Finally, he confirms that refracting these automatic responses through his long-drawn-out illnesses opened up, for him, a new line of sight.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.