Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential thinkers of the past 150 years and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is his most important work on ethics and politics. A polemical contribution to moral and political theory, it offers a critique of moral values and traces the historical evolution of concepts such as guilt, conscience, responsibility, law and justice. This is a revised and updated 2006 edition of one of the most successful volumes to appear in Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Keith Ansell-Pearson modified his introduction to Nietzsche's classic text, and Carol Diethe incorporated a number of changes to the translation itself, reflecting the considerable advances in our understanding of Nietzsche. In this guise the Cambridge Texts edition of Nietzsche's Genealogy should continue to enjoy widespread adoption, at both undergraduate and graduate level.

'The clarity of the … translation and the supporting apparatus (chronology, further reading, biographical synopses, and index) make this an excellent edition for student use, as indeed it is intended. … what makes [it] particularly useful is the inclusion of material from other works by Nietzsche to which the Genealogy refers, such as Human, All Too Human, Daybreak, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Gay Science, as well as … the early texts, 'The Greek State' and 'Homer's Contest'.'

Source: British Journal for the History of Philosophy