All of the primary readings for this class will be from Nietzsche's work, On The Genealogy of Morals. This is a relatively short work, but it is one that you will find is quite dense and rich, so you will likely need to go back over what you're reading multiple times. You may want to take notes as you are working through the text's sections.

Nietzsche is not a systematic thinker, and is in fact critical of systematic approaches to philosophy, but if you compare this with his other works, you will find that that the Genealogy is the most systematic of his works (along with the earlier Birth of Tragedy). That doesn't mean that there isn't a complex, structured philosophy worked out in the Genealogy, but rather that Nietzsche leaves it up to us readers to carry out the work of assembling the portions of his thought into a coherent perspective.

There's absolutely no reason that you can't read ahead in the work, if you'd like to. That might give you some sense of where Nietzsche is going with the work as a whole. You'll also notice how the different sections, and the arguments, distinctions, and ideas worked out in them, intersect with and build upon each other

Here is our weekly plan for the course

• Week 1 - Preface to the work
  
• Week 2 - First Treatise: "Good and Evil", "Good and Bad"
• Week 3 - Second Treatise: "Guilt", "Bad Conscience", and "Related Matters"
• Week 4 - Third Treatise: "What Is The Meaning Of Ascetic Ideals?"
• Week 5 - Third Treatise : "What Is The Meaning Of Ascetic Ideals?" (continued)
• Week 6 - going back over selected sections of the work