Why do evaluative frameworks succeed each other in the ways that they do? If ascetic morality is a prejudice, how does it assist us in hiding from ourselves? Which unbearable affective responses does it screen out or subdue? If ascetic morality is a prejudice, what might it propel us toward? Which affective responses does it support or even require? What forms of life does morality encourage, even support? Taking up these questions and issues is the work of Chapter 3. The answer, in the reading I propose, is that morality serves psychologically protective functions: It wards off the fear and anxiety born of powerlessness and vulnerability as it also functions to preserve and foster a sense of efficacy. When feelings of powerlessness strike, when feelings of inadequacy become overwhelming, morality can help one restore oneself by holding tight to a list of grievances, by blaming someone or something else for one’s suffering. The evaluative system, here, does double duty: Morality assists us in feeling less helpless and less powerless as it also fosters a sense of efficacy and perhaps even a sense of (moral) superiority.

In Chapter 6, I zero in on one of Nietzsche’s “granite sentences” (EH “The Gay Science”) – “What is the seal of having become free? – No longer to be ashamed before oneself” (GS 275) – to demonstrate that Nietzsche’s genealogical investigations offer one possible pathway to such liberation; to freedom, that is, from the shame we feel when in front of ourselves.