On the Genealogy of Morality

On the Genealogy of Morality traces the origins of moral concepts — good and evil, guilt and bad conscience, the ascetic ideal — back to their roots in relations of power and domination, revealing morality not as a timeless truth but as a historical product of human conflict. Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of ressentiment — the envious, resentful inversion of values by which the weak redefine their weakness as virtue — became one of the most influential ideas in modern thought, providing the methodological foundation for Michel Foucault's genealogical approach to the study of power, knowledge, and institutions.

Published in 1887, On the Genealogy of Morality consists of three interconnected essays that trace the development of moral concepts from their origins in power relations and social hierarchies. The work's method of genealogical analysis — uncovering the hidden history and power dynamics behind seemingly natural or universal values — was directly adopted by Michel Foucault and became one of the defining intellectual tools of late twentieth-century critical theory.