Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

A landmark work of western philosophy, &quote;On the Genealogy of Morality&quote; is a dazzling and brilliantly incisive attack on European &quote;morality&quote;. Combining philosophical acuity with psychological insight in prose of remarkable rhetorical power, Nietzsche takes up the task of offering us reasons to engage in a re-evaluation of our values. In this book, David Owen offers a reflective and insightful analysis of Nietzsche's text. He provides an account of how Nietzsche comes to the project of the re-evaluation of values; he shows how the development of Nietzsche's understanding of the requirements of this project lead him to acknowledge the need for the kind of investigation of &quote;morality&quote; that he terms &quote;genealogy&quote;; he elucidates the general structure and substantive arguments of Nietzsche's text, accounting for the rhetorical form of these arguments, and he debates the character of genealogy (as exemplified by Nietzsche's &quote;Genealogy&quote;) as a form of critical enquiry. Owen argues that there is a specific development of Nietzsche's work from his earlier &quote;Daybreak&quote; (1881) and that in &quote;Genealogy of Morality&quote;, Nietzsche is developing a critique of modes of agency and that this constitutes the most fundamental aspect of his demand for a revaluation of values. The book is a distinctive and significant contribution to our understanding of Nietzsche's great text.