Good and Evil: Affect, Artistry, and Revaluation
This chapter considers Nietzsche's use of broadly artistic methods in pursuit of his psychological aims of revealing the origins of moral attitudes and a revaluation of values: his rhetorical devices, concern for linguistic texture, evaluation of his works in terms of mood and tempo, and provocation of the reader's affects. Given his hypothesis that moral attitudes have their origin primarily in inherited affects, his way of writing is argued to be intrinsic to his aims. In the depiction of slaves and nobles in Genealogy I, Nietzsche's text provokes ambivalent emotional responses to both. In section 14 of Genealogy I there is a comic portrayal of ‘Mr. Rash and Curious’ who witnesses an imaginary creation of the Christian values ‘good’ and ‘evil’. It is argued that this passage provokes disgust at the suppressed aggression that motivates these values, harnessing a disgust for aggression prompted earlier by our reaction to the nobles.
Keywords: affects, artistic methods, Christian values, disgust, evil, good, revaluation of values
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