TYPOLOGY OF MODES OF LIFE: A DELEUZIAN PERSPECTIVE ON NIETZSCHE’S GENEALOGY OF MORALS

Abstract

This research proposes a reading of Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality based on Gilles Deleuze's interpretative key in Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), starting from a typology of modes of life, from which a non-normative ethics emerges. We will first address an analytical description of the aforementioned work, with an emphasis on the concepts of guilt, bad conscience, and the internalization of instincts; subsequently, this analysis is revisited and deepened in light of Deleuze's reading, especially drawing on chapter 3, The Critique, of Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962). Starting from the understanding of the genealogical procedure, discussed in the Preface of On the Genealogy of Morality (1987), the historical constitution of moral values is examined as expressions of forces, highlighting the opposition between noble morality and slave morality, as well as the processes of ressentiment and the production of the bad conscience, driven by the ascetic ideal. Through Nietzsche's proposed critique of guilt, morality is highlighted as a device for the negation of life and the production of reactive forms of existence. In contrast, it is speculated that the assumptions of a Nietzschean ethics, as interpreted by Deleuze, operate as an immanent evaluation of forces, guided by the criteria of potency, health, and affirmation of life, opening space for the creation of new modes of life beyond herd morality.