The second essay of On the Genealogy of Morality ostensibly develops an account of the origins of the feeling of guilt, which is marked by the appearance of tight conceptual cohesion: the essay begins with an analysis of the concept of conscience, proceeds to an examination of bad conscience, and concludes with a view of moral bad conscience, or guilt itself, with an emphasis throughout the essay on the crucial influence of socialization on the development of all these phenomena.

Still, there remains much disagreement among commentators over the precise structure of the account Nietzsche develops in that essay. In this chapter, I shall propose a new interpretation of this structure, which keeps to the conceptual resources Nietzsche actually offers in the essay. My objective is therefore primarily exegetical and, in some respects, modest, for although this chapter supplies (arguably) the groundwork for a philosophical exploration of Nietzsche’s account by circumscribing its philosophical stakes, it does not engage very far in such an exploration.