Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality occupies an unstable position in philosophical thought: it oscillates between seeming damning and irrelevant. The text’s central argument is that our most cherished evaluative beliefs have a revolting history: our moral beliefs are the product of a ressentiment-inspired revolt carried out by a lackluster, vengeful underclass approximately two thousand years ago. But what is the import of this conclusion? On the one hand, the reader is tempted to agree with Charles Taylor, who writes, “no one can fail to recognize that, if true, Nietzsche’s genealogies are devastating” (Taylor 1989: 72). On the other, one soon finds oneself wondering why, exactly, a recounting of events that took place two millennia ago should have any bearing on one’s acceptance of modern morality. One finds oneself torn between wanting to insist that the history of our moral evaluations must be relevant, while at the same time failing to see how the history could so much as aspire to relevance.

These reactions are heightened by Nietzsche’s own seemingly ambivalent stance toward history’s relevance for moral philosophy. Nietzsche tells us that the Genealogy comprises “three crucial preparatory works for a revaluation of all values,” thereby suggesting that the Genealogy constitutes a critique of morality (EH, “The Genealogy of Morality”). Yet he also insists that “the inquiry into the origin of our evaluations and tables of the good is in absolutely no way identical with a critique of them, as is so often believed,” thereby seeming to reject the idea that the Genealogy could serve a critical function (WP, 254).