Ménissier, Thierry

Genealogy, the Critique of Moral Responsibility, and the Constitution of Subjectivity in Nietzsche - 2011.


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This article attempts to reconstruct Nietzsche’s critique of the notion of moral responsibility, based on a reading of the ideas contained in the Genealogy of Morals. This critique focuses on the stylistic aspect of Nietzsche’s genealogical enterprise; it reveals how, from a Nietzschean perspective, subjectivity is founded upon the structure of debt, enabling us to understand what every configuration of responsibility owes to the bad conscience. Moreover, the critique of responsibility sheds a striking light upon the training mechanisms that make up culture. The significance of the consequences of the Nietzschean critique is subsequently examined by considering the profile of types of subjectivity that are free from guilt, as described in the Genealogy of Morals (transformation or abolition of the notion of responsibility?)