Nietzsche and the Origin of “On the History of Moral Sensations”

“On the History of the Moral Sensation”, the second chapter of Human All Too Human, is Nietzsche’s first serious and immediate encounter with the problem of morality through his published works till then. Hence, its significance in forming Nietzsche’s complicated views on morality. The current article firstly shows why and how the history of moral sensation begin to become one of Nietzsche’s main concerns through his middle period, where its origin lies, through which way such a concern developed and on what background it is founded. To explain the background and context, I briefly turned to Schopenhauer and Paul Rée’s philosophy of morality, following the threads bringing us to Nietzsche’s. Then, through investigating into the main themes of “On the History of the Moral Sensation”, I show in what ways Nietzsche’s thinking departs itself from that of Schopenhauer and Paul Rée, paving the way for the emergence of a genealogy-psychology of morality in his works of middle and late periods.