There is an abundance of literature on Nietzsche. The suggestions below were selected not only for their quality but also for their specific focus on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Suggestions for further reading that coordinate with the main parts of the present text are annotated. A few more general works on Nietzsche’s moral and political philosophy are included at the end.
Conway, Daniel W. “Writing in Blood: On the Prejudices of Genealogy.” Epoche 3:1/2 (1995): 149–81. Consideration of how to apply the insights of the Genealogy as they relate to Zarathustra’s ideas “On Reading and Writing” and then to a reading of Nietzsche’s activity of writing the Genealogy itself.
Geuss, Raymond. “Nietzsche and Genealogy.” European Journal of Philosophy 2:3 (1994): 274–92. Distinctive in its rare treatment of relevant discussions in Nietzsche’s Antichrist.
Guay, Robert. “The Philosophical Function of Genealogy.” In A Companion to Nietzsche. Ed. By Keith Ansell Pearson. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2006, 353–70.
Hoy, David Couzens. “Nietzsche, Hume, and the Genealogical Method.” In Nietzsche as Affirmative Thinker. Y. Yovel, ed. Dordtrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986, 20–38. Describes genealogy as a way of doing philosophy that is akin to Hume’s notion of “experimental reasoning,” personalized and evaluative in the hands of Nietzsche.
Kemal, S. “Some Problems of Genealogy.” Nietzsche-Studien 19 (1990): 30–42. Compact explication of objections to Nietzsche’s genealogical investigations, including particularity, relativism, and normativeness. Kemal grants that these are central to genealogy, and offers an account of how they are positive features (rather than negative consequences) of Nietzsche’s work.
Owen, David. “Criticism and Captivity: On Genealogy and Critical Theory.” European Journal of Philosophy 10:2 (2002): 216–30.
Schrift, Alan D. “Nietzsche and the Critique of Oppositional Thinking.” History of European Ideals (1989), 783–90. A succinct account of Nietzsche’s critique of binary reasoning and how this idea is developed in the writings of postmodern (specifically French) philosophers. See also the later version of this work, along with related discussions applied to a wide range of “post-structuralist” thinkers in Nietzsche’s French Legacy. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Williams, Bernard. “Naturalism and Genealogy.” In Morality, Reflection, and Ideology. Ed. by Edward Harcourt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 149–61. Provides interesting discussion of what is wanted from a naturalistic orientation in philosophy, particularly ethics. Offers the especially provocative suggestion that fictional stories generally, and Nietzsche’s gencalogical stories particularly, could be compatible with such aims.
Butler, Judith. “Circuits of Bad Conscience: Nietzsche and Freud.” In The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997, 63–82. Explores the “performative” dimension of bad conscience and guilt. Considers the ascetic ideal, the desire for desire, and the “sorry bind” of subjectivity, which involves subordination (to the community) as the very condition for the possibility of the affirmation of individual existence.
Clark, Maudemarie. “Nietzsche’s Immoralism and the Concept of Morality.” In Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Ed. by Richard Schacht. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, 15–34. Argues that Nietzsche’s immoralism is largely limited to his critique of one particular kind of morality, which is thought to be all that morality is. Provides a reading of the second essay of GM that is supposed to show the possibility of a nonmoral social contract theory, which includes conceptions of justice, fairness, and other concepts associated with morality generally.
Janaway, Christopher. “Nietzsche’s Illustration of the Art of Exegesis.” European Journal of Philosophy 5:3 (1997): 251–68. Conclusively argues that the third essay of GM is organized according to the order outlined in the first section of the essay, and that the “exegesis” the third essay is supposed to constitute (see GM P:8) is of that rather than the epigraph from Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Loeb, Paul S. “Is There a Genetic Fallacy in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals?” In International Studies in Philosophy 27:3 (1995): 125–41. Articulates Nietzsche’s interest in aristocratic origins to consider whether fallacious reasoning is at the core of GM, and how our conception of the “genetic fallacy” has some origination with Nietzsche’s book.
Newman, Michael. “Reading the Future of Genealogy: Kant, Nietzsche, and Plato.” In Nietzsche and Modern German Thought. Ed. by Keith Ansell Pearson. New York: Routledge, 1991, 257–82. Considers the relation between GM and Z, partially through consideration of how GM III is an exegesis of the epigraph from Z (cf. Janaway). Focused on the cultivation of readership and how Nietzsche’s texts relate to each, other in this way.
Reginster, Bernard. “Ressentiment, Evaluation, and Integrity.” International Studies in Philosophy 27:3 (1995): 117–24. Emphasizes that Nietzsche’s discussion of ressentiment is rooted to his implicit conception of integrity such that the resentful person is characterized by their peculiar inability to integrate the values he or she professes.
Risse, Mathias. “Origins of Ressentiment and Sources of Normativity.” Nietzsche-Studien 30 (2003): 142–70. Considers how ressentiment, particularly, arises given Nietzsche’s “speculative anthropology.” The conceptions of mind and practical identity that emerge from the account are compared and contrasted with Korsgaard’s Kant and Nietzsche.
Risse, Mathias. “The Second Treatise in On the Genealogy of Morality: Nietzsche on the Origin of the Bad Conscience.” European Journal of Philosophy 9:1 (2001): 55–81. Analyzes GM II:21 particularly to distinguish the bad conscience that is associated with guilt from an earlier stage of bad conscience. Focuses on the idea of “indebtedness to the gods,” Christianity’s appropriation of indebtedness, and the relation between Christianity and morality generally.
Siemens, Herman. “Nietzsche’s Agon with Ressentiment: Towards a Therapeutic Reading of Critical Transvaluation.” Continental Philosophy Review 34 (2001): 69–93. Develops an agonal model of transvaluation that supplies the basis for therapeutic practice, which accounts for the existing decadence Nietzsche finds in modern culture and meets his critiques of conceptions of health and healing as practiced by the ascetic priests.
Solomon, Robert C. “One Hundred Years of Ressentiment: Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals.” In Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Ed. by Richard Schacht. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, 95–126. Considers Nietzsche’s discussion of ressentiment particularly in light of his characterization of weakness and strength.
Ansell Pearson, Keith. “The Significance of Michel Foucault’s Reading of Nietzsche: Power, the Subject, and Political Theory.” Nietzsche-Studien 20 (1991): 267–83. Discusses Foucault as among the first to recognize the political implications of Nietzsche’s conceptions of power and freedom, particularly as they relate to thinking about the political subject as historicized and in the wake of critiques of modern metaphysics. Useful even for those lacking great familiarity with Foucault’s work.
Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ed. Donald F. Bouchard. Trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977. Challenges what he considers to be metaphysics’ emphasis on origins, which supplies the basis for certain views about universal history and considerations of difference that Foucault rejects. He considers himself to be aligned with Nietzsche in rejecting such conceptions of origins and their value for helping us to understand ourselves, our history, and our future prospects.
Maclntyre, Alasdair. “Genealogies and Subversions.” In Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990. Gifford Lectures given at University of Edinburgh in 1988. Discusses the relation of the genealogical text to canonical authority and the tradition of encyclopedia, and considers this in the case of Foucault. While genealogy appears to have an advantage in the recognition of the historical development of ideas, norms, and standards, Maclntyre doubts that the genealogist’s own position escapes that which he critiques.
Owen, David. “The Contest of Enlightenment: An Essay on Critique and Genealogy.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 25 (Spring 2003): 35–57. Compares Kant’s critical projects with Nietzsche’s, leading to a comparison of the two on the issue of self-legislation. Owen argues that Nietzsche is wholly committed to enlightenment rather than abandoning it for myth as Habermas suggests.
Pippin, Robert B. “Nietzsche’s Alleged Farwell: The Premodern, Modern, and Postmodern Nietzsche.” In The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Ed. by Bernd Magnus and Kathleen Higgins. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, 252–78. Consideration of problems associated with linking Nietzsche with a renunciation of modernity. Includes discussion of Habermas’s critique of Nietzsche with significant discussion of Nietzsche and Hegel and Nietzsche’s GM.
Pizer, John. “The Use and Abuse of ‘Ursprung’: On Foucault’s Reading of Nietzsche.” Nietzsche-Studien 19 (1990): 462–78. Challenges the view that Nietzsche abandons consideration of origins and a sense of organic development in meaning.
Saar, Martin. “Genealogy and Subjectivity.” European Journal of Philosophy 10:2 (2002): 231–45. Endeavors to pin down precisely in what genealogy consists. Defines genealogy as always concerned about the subject, as history, as critique, and as textual practice. Contrasts “stabilizing” genealogies with those that are disruptive.
Brown, Wendy. “Nietzsche for Politics.” In Why Nietzsche Still? Reflections on Drama, Culture, and Politics. Ed. by Alan D. Schrift. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, 205–23. Argues for an agonistic relationship between theory and politics that moves beyond “identity and application”; genealogy plays a role in creating this alternative.
Card, Claudia. “Genealogies and Perspectives: Feminist and Lesbian Reflections.” International Studies in Philosophy 28:3 (1996): 99–111. Offers a particularly interesting take on hatred and evil and the perspective from which Nietzsche makes his critical observations.
Diprose, Rosalyn. “Nietzsche, Ethics and Sexual Difference.” Radical Philosophy 52 (1989): 27–33. Argues that Nietzsche supplies “a genealogy of the divided self” that could be useful for developing an “ethics of difference.”
Roodt, Vasti. “Nietzsche’s Dynamite: The Biography of Modern Nihilism.” South African Journal of Philosophy 16:2 (1997): 37–43. Develops the idea that Nietzsche’s texts provide conceptual resources for thinking of ourselves as having multiple biographies and genealogical lineages upon which we can draw to develop new senses of community among those who ordinarily think they have little in common.
Scott, Jacqueline. “On the Use and Abuse of Race in Philosophy: Nietzsche, Jews, and Race.” In Race and Racism in Continental Philosophy. Ed. by Robert Bernasconi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003, 53–73. Argues that Nietzsche’s notion of race is tied to his conception of decadence, purity, and health, all of which include various psychological, not simply biological features, which differs from the strictly biological conception of Nietzsche’s nationalist and anti-Semitic contemporaries.
Shapiro, Gary. “Diasporas.” In Nietzsche and Jewish Culture. Ed. by Jacob Golumb. New York: Routledge, 1997, 244–62. A personal narrative that ties reading Nietzsche to living one’s life. Focuses on Nietzsche’s seduction of Jewish readers, and then provides a compelling account of how the author himself was seduced.
Warren, Mark. “The Historicity of Power.” In his Nietzsche and Political Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988, 79–110. Includes an interesting discussion of “the genealogical method” in chapter 3, see esp. 102–10, challenging a number of prominent interpretations and arguing for the notion of genealogy as a mode of critique.
Allison, David B. Reading the New Nietzsche. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001.
Ansell Pearson, Keith. Nietzsche Contra Rousseau. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
———. An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker: The Perfect Nihilist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Babich, Babette E. Nietzsche’s Philosopby of Science: Reflecting Science on the Ground of And and Life. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.
Clark, Maudemarie. Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
Havas, Randall. Nietzsche’s Genealogy: Nihilism and the Will to Knowledge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.
Owen, David. Nietzsche, Politics, and Modernity. London: Sage Publications, Ltd., 1995.
Ridley, Aaron. Nietzsche’s Conscience: Six Character Studiet frotn the Genealogy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Scheler, Max. Ressentiment. Trans. William Holdheim. Ed. Lewis A. Coser. New York: The Free Press, 1961.
Schacht, Richard. Making Sense of Nietzsche: Reflections Timely and Untimely. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.
Schrift, Alan. Nietzsche’s French Legacy: A Genealogy of Poststructuralism. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Schrift, Alan. Nietzsche and the Question of Interpretation: Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Strong, Tracy B. Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfiguration. Expanded Edition. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Bailey, Tom. “Nietzsche’s Kantian Ethics.” International Studies in Philosophy 35:3 (2003): 5–27.
Bergmann, Frithjof “Nietzsche’s Critique of Morality.” In Reading Nietzsche. Ed. by Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen Marie Higgins. Reprint. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, 29–45.
Danto, Arthur C. “Some Remarks on The Genealogy of Morals.” International Studies in Philosophy 18:2 (1986): 3–15.
Foot, Philippa. “Nietzsche: The Revaluation of Values.” In Nietzsche: A Critical Collection. Edited by Robert Solomon. Reprinted in Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002.
Geuss, Raymond. “Nietzsche and Moraticy.” In Morality, Culture, and History: Essays on German Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Hunt, Lester. Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Leiter, Brian. Nietzsche on Morality. London: Routledge, 2002.
May, Simon. Nietzsche’s Ethics and His War on “Morality. ”Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Moore, Gregory. “The Physiology of Morality.” In his Nietzsche, Biology, Metaphor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 56–84.
Parkes, Graham. Composing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche’s Psychology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Parsons, Katherine Pyne. “Nietzsche and Moral Change.” In Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. by Robert C. Solomon. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973.
Schacht, Richard, ed. Nietzsche’s Postmoralism: Essays on Nietzsche’s Prelude to Philosophy’s Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Schacht, Richard. Editor. Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Thatcher, David S. “Zur Genealogie der Moral: Some Textual Annotations.” Nietzsche-Studien 18 (1989): 587–99.
Williams, Bernard. “Nietzsche’s Minimalist Moral Psychology.” European Journal of Philosophy 1:1 (1993): 1–14.