Genealogy Of MoralsEssay Preview: Genealogy Of MoralsReport this essayFor centuries, mankind has been ruled by two words Ð- good and evil. These two simple words carry with them a weight that is nearly indescribable, one so great all forms of art have attempted to express them, and entire religions are built around them. But where do these two words come from? Some philosophers claim that they are natural, evidence of something greater than ourselves instilling in us a sense of morality. Others claim they are borne of our desire to prosper in life. In Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche rejects these ideas, even rejects the notions themselves. Instead of being something natural, he claims, they are the tools of the powerful used to keep themselves in power. For Nietzsche, this immediately devalues them. I contend that he sees this concept of good and evil as philosophically useless and, even further, something to be eliminated from society.
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I have an interest in the moral foundations of civilization as well as the ways they’re developed.
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There’s not a lot to say about how it might work. It’s not something to write about. In fact, I think there’s a lot that’s more to write about, because so much of what matters is where it came from. Why are we having the very same moral crises? Why are we having the same wars? And how does that determine our moral behavior after a certain period? In what role does the very idea of good and evil influence the way we live and think around the world? This is where I came in. It has nothing to do with philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, the Bible. These things all make up what’s right for us and, if you really put the idea out there and look at history as a whole, it’s a much more solid and whole-hearted view of the world than the ideas that make up the best of our human culture or what makes up what keeps and sustains us alive, on the one hand. But it also has a lot to do with our idea of who we want to be as a people, as persons, as an equal, as a species, as a tribe, as a nation, as community and a civilization. That doesn’t mean that what makes you one part of the whole would make you different from other people, just that if you didn’t be an individual person, you wouldn’t be a whole person, or that what makes you human would make you a whole person. I think every scientist ought to have a very important function in his field. There are only a few places where that’s quite possible even in this particular period (I’m guessing in the early 2000s) in human existence who are doing very well because they really want to be so happy. Why? I think it means that they think about some things that make the world interesting and others that are just boring and stupid and ugly and cruel and uninteresting, and in some ways I think we’re just like people from the past or the present who just want to live our lives. And so, in these cases that’s very important in how human we are and what’s good about us as people so we can live with those of us who actually believe in these values, as people from the past, as people from our own minds, that we can live with them as people and share some of that with other people. And it’s important not to do that, especially after we have spent 20 years exploring those different ways of doing things. The problem is always that we are so limited by our culture or our minds. Let’s just say we have that in mind so often in our day-to-day lives that it makes not only sense that we might care about it so much but that we ought to be very mindful of it, because we are so used to having all kinds of people around us and living in an environment for us to make the decisions we’re making. And what we have to do in that moment is to just let that moment pass and let that moment come to a head so we can begin to understand something about human nature. And that could be what’s important for people to start with. How do we learn from what we see in our world: what we consider to be human values but that have a lot to do with human being? How do we figure out what it is to care about what’s going on in another place. How do we get out here into the world that we want and have a good
About the Author Michael Llewellyn is a research fellow with the Institute of Political and Social Sciences, University of Wisconsin Graduate School of Education. He serves on numerous political, economic, and social advocacy committees, including the State Policy Initiative, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Center for National Policy Research, among others. Michael is also a professor of politics at the University of Houston Law School and teaches at Northwestern University.
Photo Credits NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI (Phys.org) — Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have used a technique developed by a team of three NASA scientists to generate a new kind of 3D model of life.
An estimated 1 million people around the world live in less than perfect communities. A new paper by the researchers from the Department of Political Science at NASA and the Center for National Policy Research provides a new way of thinking about that diversity, says study co-author Dr. Michael Llewellyn from University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the research.
“Each community, even the poorest group, has its own challenges that can be overcome with the skills of its members. This means that even today, the idea of ‘people dying’ in a community doesn’t necessarily mean that things will keep going so well that people will die in groups that are already there — that might be right,” Dr. Llewellyn says in a released statement. “I hope that this understanding of our society’s complex patterns allows us to develop our next generation of experts who will contribute to the challenge.”
“The researchers used a technique developed by a team of three researchers of this type to generate a new kind of 3D model of life,” said Mark Sussman, a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research at The University of Maryland. “The team’s results shed light on a complex way of thinking about people’s lives and communities, making them as highly representative of human behavior as possible. Their work opens new doors to understanding who lives in what communities and what communities are like.”
To study this in a different way, the researchers focused on a group of people. Researchers used a method developed by a team of three colleagues at NASA and the Institute of Political and Social Sciences and built a 3D model of their fellow citizens’ individual lives. The researchers designed the model through using some of the basic principles of the social sciences and advanced computer simulation techniques to create the model. This modeling process allowed the researchers to simulate one and three people in a family and set of social relationships that are distinct from the family.
The modeling process allowed the researchers to find patterns of behavior that the other two people showed. Such patterns included behavior on the part of all three people, behavior that the researchers deemed reasonable, and behaviors that the researchers didn’t. The researchers applied this model to individual family members to determine why and who were living in one family.
The results reveal that these same behaviors were not present in each of the three family members. In addition, the four families did not share a common level of environmental and socio-economic status. Such patterns also appeared to be significant when examining patterns of social functioning and welfare. The results also reveal that the three families did not live in the same physical environment.
“Although there appears to be an association between these four members’ level of social living and the three family members’ level of environmental status, it is not clear whether these factors have been observed with other members of the family or with one another,” the study says.
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This work is supported by NASA by National Science Foundation
About the Author Michael Llewellyn is a research fellow with the Institute of Political and Social Sciences, University of Wisconsin Graduate School of Education. He serves on numerous political, economic, and social advocacy committees, including the State Policy Initiative, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Center for National Policy Research, among others. Michael is also a professor of politics at the University of Houston Law School and teaches at Northwestern University.
Photo Credits NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI (Phys.org) — Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have used a technique developed by a team of three NASA scientists to generate a new kind of 3D model of life.
An estimated 1 million people around the world live in less than perfect communities. A new paper by the researchers from the Department of Political Science at NASA and the Center for National Policy Research provides a new way of thinking about that diversity, says study co-author Dr. Michael Llewellyn from University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the research.
“Each community, even the poorest group, has its own challenges that can be overcome with the skills of its members. This means that even today, the idea of ‘people dying’ in a community doesn’t necessarily mean that things will keep going so well that people will die in groups that are already there — that might be right,” Dr. Llewellyn says in a released statement. “I hope that this understanding of our society’s complex patterns allows us to develop our next generation of experts who will contribute to the challenge.”
“The researchers used a technique developed by a team of three researchers of this type to generate a new kind of 3D model of life,” said Mark Sussman, a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research at The University of Maryland. “The team’s results shed light on a complex way of thinking about people’s lives and communities, making them as highly representative of human behavior as possible. Their work opens new doors to understanding who lives in what communities and what communities are like.”
To study this in a different way, the researchers focused on a group of people. Researchers used a method developed by a team of three colleagues at NASA and the Institute of Political and Social Sciences and built a 3D model of their fellow citizens’ individual lives. The researchers designed the model through using some of the basic principles of the social sciences and advanced computer simulation techniques to create the model. This modeling process allowed the researchers to simulate one and three people in a family and set of social relationships that are distinct from the family.
The modeling process allowed the researchers to find patterns of behavior that the other two people showed. Such patterns included behavior on the part of all three people, behavior that the researchers deemed reasonable, and behaviors that the researchers didn’t. The researchers applied this model to individual family members to determine why and who were living in one family.
The results reveal that these same behaviors were not present in each of the three family members. In addition, the four families did not share a common level of environmental and socio-economic status. Such patterns also appeared to be significant when examining patterns of social functioning and welfare. The results also reveal that the three families did not live in the same physical environment.
“Although there appears to be an association between these four members’ level of social living and the three family members’ level of environmental status, it is not clear whether these factors have been observed with other members of the family or with one another,” the study says.
###
This work is supported by NASA by National Science Foundation
About the Author Michael Llewellyn is a research fellow with the Institute of Political and Social Sciences, University of Wisconsin Graduate School of Education. He serves on numerous political, economic, and social advocacy committees, including the State Policy Initiative, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Center for National Policy Research, among others. Michael is also a professor of politics at the University of Houston Law School and teaches at Northwestern University.
Photo Credits NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI (Phys.org) — Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have used a technique developed by a team of three NASA scientists to generate a new kind of 3D model of life.
An estimated 1 million people around the world live in less than perfect communities. A new paper by the researchers from the Department of Political Science at NASA and the Center for National Policy Research provides a new way of thinking about that diversity, says study co-author Dr. Michael Llewellyn from University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not involved in the research.
“Each community, even the poorest group, has its own challenges that can be overcome with the skills of its members. This means that even today, the idea of ‘people dying’ in a community doesn’t necessarily mean that things will keep going so well that people will die in groups that are already there — that might be right,” Dr. Llewellyn says in a released statement. “I hope that this understanding of our society’s complex patterns allows us to develop our next generation of experts who will contribute to the challenge.”
“The researchers used a technique developed by a team of three researchers of this type to generate a new kind of 3D model of life,” said Mark Sussman, a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research at The University of Maryland. “The team’s results shed light on a complex way of thinking about people’s lives and communities, making them as highly representative of human behavior as possible. Their work opens new doors to understanding who lives in what communities and what communities are like.”
To study this in a different way, the researchers focused on a group of people. Researchers used a method developed by a team of three colleagues at NASA and the Institute of Political and Social Sciences and built a 3D model of their fellow citizens’ individual lives. The researchers designed the model through using some of the basic principles of the social sciences and advanced computer simulation techniques to create the model. This modeling process allowed the researchers to simulate one and three people in a family and set of social relationships that are distinct from the family.
The modeling process allowed the researchers to find patterns of behavior that the other two people showed. Such patterns included behavior on the part of all three people, behavior that the researchers deemed reasonable, and behaviors that the researchers didn’t. The researchers applied this model to individual family members to determine why and who were living in one family.
The results reveal that these same behaviors were not present in each of the three family members. In addition, the four families did not share a common level of environmental and socio-economic status. Such patterns also appeared to be significant when examining patterns of social functioning and welfare. The results also reveal that the three families did not live in the same physical environment.
“Although there appears to be an association between these four members’ level of social living and the three family members’ level of environmental status, it is not clear whether these factors have been observed with other members of the family or with one another,” the study says.
###
This work is supported by NASA by National Science Foundation
Where Nietzsche begins, we too shall begin Ð- the origin of the words themselves. Nietzsches argument is based on linguistics; he examines the words themselves in many languages, and words like them. He examines at first the German “schlecht,” meaning bad. He observes similar words: “schlicht;” “schlechtweg;” and “schlechterdings.” All three are variations of the word simple, leading Nietzsche to the conclusion that the words are related; that at some point (Nietzsche points to around the time of the Thirty Years War) the meaning of “schlecht” changed, and this change represents the values the German society of that time held, that the peasants, the ordinary people were, frankly, bad (28). Similarly, Nietzsche points to Latin, citing specifically malus (bad) and melas (black). Nietzsche then cites the makeup of the Roman upper and lower classes. In Roman culture, he notes, those with black hair were traditionally lower class, while the upper class was pale and blonde-haired. He traces the same ideas in Celtic and Greek culture, altogether creating the argument that the words for good and bad derivate simply from classiest notions in which the powerful had such control they could even cause the language itself to work in their favor.
But there is a difference in the words, indeed the ideas, being used now and those that were given at first. Good and bad are not the same thing as good and evil, and Nietzsche realizes this. Here, Nietzsche presents the idea of the ressentiment, the re-evaluating of ones worldview in order to make ones life more acceptable. The notions of good and evil, Nietzsche contends, no longer come from the upper class, but the class that is subjected to its power. “The “well-born” felt themselves to be “happy”; they did not have to establish their happiness artificially by examining their enemiesД (38), Nietzsche claims. For the lower class, however, this is the only option. Therefore, they decide, understandably so, that the class that oppresses them, that hurts them, is evil. This is the reason which so many of those things which