How long does it take to read On the Genealogy of Morals?
On the Genealogy of Morals by Friedrich Nietzsche takes about 3 hours 32 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 32 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1887. 193 pages, about 53,075 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 5 hours 54 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 32 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 13 minutes |
The page count is the median across 34 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) is a book about the history of ethics and about interpretation. Nietzsche rewrites the former as a history of cruelty, exposing the central values of the Judaeo-Christian and liberal traditions - compassion, equality, justice - as the product of a brutal process of conditioning designed to domesticate the animal vitality of earlier cultures. The result is a book which raises profoundly disquieting issues about the violence of both ethics and interpretation. Nietzsche questions moral certainties by showing that religion and science have no claim to absolute truth, before turning on his own arguments in order to call their very presuppositions into question. The Genealogy is the most sustained of Nietzsche's later works and offers one of the fullest expressions of his characteristic concerns. This edition places his ideas within the cultural context of his own time and stresses the relevance of his work for a contemporary audience.
Subjects: Ethics, Asceticism, Good and evil, Ethiek, Etica, Philosophy, german
