l never become a pure science like mathematics. . . . For by excess of history life becomes maimed and degenerate, and is followed by the degeneration of history as well (Nietzsche, Use, 1957, p. 12).
History as an aspect of moral philosophy, which is to say as an aspect of political and social man, is what Nietzsche seeks to discover. In Genealogy of Morals, an exploration of the emergence of society, the theme is good versus evil, but the real enterprise is to explain the political society as the difference between the morality of the master (i.e., hero, superman) and slave. Nietzsche's definition of what he terms noble morality, which "grows out of a triumphant affirmation of oneself" (Nietzsche, Morals, 1976, p. 51), is illustrative of this.
It [noble morality] acts and grows spontaneously, it seeks out its opposite only in order to say Yes to itself still more gratefully, still more jubilantly; and its negative concept, "base," "mean," "bad," is only an after-born, pale, contrasting image in relation to the positive basic concept, which is nourished throu
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