Thursday, June 27, 2013

Dionysian Genealogy of Morals

In I, 2 of the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche argues that Consequentialism falsifies the fundamental scenario of Morality by abstracting the effects of an action from the performance of it, thereby deriving an Axiology of non-Egoism, i. e. the imposition on an agent of an impersonal criterion.  Accordingly, his subsequent alternative incorporates the agent into the scenario, from which he develops, his 'Master' Morality.  However, he overlooks that also abstracted out by the Consequentialist analysis is the performance of an action qua dynamic process, thereby facilitating the establishment of what might be termed a 'Morality of Passivity' as paradigmatic.  From that perspective, his doctrine of Power-relations relatively calcifies his original Dionysian vision, according to which a more proper 'Genealogy of Morals' might begin with a Morality of Vitality, and be threatened by a Morality of Inertia, as Bergson suggests.

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