First Essay — "Good and Evil," "Good and Bad"

The essay opens with Nietzsche's attack on the English moral historians — Spencer, Rée, the utilitarians — who argued that the concept "good" originated with the utility of unegoistic acts and, through habit, detached itself from the usefulness and became independently valued. Nietzsche's counterargument is both historical and etymological. The judgment "good," he argues, did not originate among those to whom good was done; it originated among the noble, the aristocratic, the strong, who called themselves "good" as a spontaneous act of self-affirmation. The philological evidence — Latin bonus (warrior), Greek esthlos (strong, capable), Sanskrit aryaman — all points in the same direction: "good" was first the name a ruling class gave itself.

The slave revolt enters midway through the essay. Unable to act — unable to discharge ressentiment in the direct way the noble discharges it — the powerless invent a counter-valuation. They do not say "I am good"; they say "you are evil, therefore I am good." The enemy must be constituted first. Nietzsche illustrates this with one of his most quoted metaphors: we do not blame the eagle for taking the lamb, but the lambs call the eagle "evil" and imagine themselves "good" by contrast. "To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a will to overwhelm, a will to overthrow, a will to become master... is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength." The slave revolt does not change what strength is; it changes what strength is called.

The essay closes with the question of historical outcome. Rome versus Judaea: which has won? Nietzsche's answer is unambiguous — Judaea has won, for now. You can see it in Rome itself, where you now kneel before a Jewish carpenter crucified under a Roman governor. The entire symbolic order of Christian Europe is the triumph of the slave revaluation. But Nietzsche leaves the question open: this is "for now." The polemic implies — without stating — that a further revaluation is possible. The philosopher of the future who could accomplish it has not appeared. The essay ends not as a solution but as a charge: the question of Rome or Judaea has not been answered; it has been fought, and the wrong side won, and there is perhaps still time.