Abstract

In a well-known passage of the Preface to On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche makes audible a “new demand”: namely, that “we need a critique of moral values, the value of these values themselves must be called into question—and for that there is needed a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances in which they grew, under which they changed and evolved”.1 Here Nietzsche is relatively clear. We need an understanding of the historical conditions under which our moral values have changed in order to call into question the value of our moral values and to subject such valuations to critique. Less obvious, however, is what Nietzsche’s methodology contributes to such a critique of morality and how...