NIETZSCHE BEGAN TO MAKE PREPARATORY NOTES for Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality (Morgenröthe: Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurteile) in January 1880, and performed most of the main work of composing it in Genoa between November 1880 and May 1881; the preface was added in 1886. In Ecce Homo (published 1908), Nietzsche claims that the particular pathologies of his existence provided the necessary conditions for Daybreak. He writes that during the winter of 1880, spent at Genoa, a “sweetening and spiritualization” (Versüssung und Vergeistigung) almost inseparable from an “extreme poverty of blood and muscle” (extremen Armuth an Blut und Muskel) produced Daybreak (EH “Why I Am So Wise” §1; KSA 6, 265). He claims that Daybreak is characterized by a perfect cheerfulness and exuberance of spirit compatible with profound physiological weakness and pain. This combination of convalescence and relapse enabled Nietzsche to look from the perspective of the sick toward healthier concepts and values, and to scrutinize the “secret work of the instinct of decadence” (heimliche Arbeit des Décadence-Instinkts) from the possible perspective of a rich and healthy existence (KSA 6, 266). In the text, as I will show, he engages with three main questions, drawing thematic connections between physical and psychological health on the one hand and ethics on the other, in order to develop a foundation for his project of critical transvaluation of values. First, what is the nature of, and relationship between psycho-physiological and cultural health?