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Most Nietzsche scholars read the third essay of On the Genealogy of Morals as an account of the development of Christian asceticism after the slave revolution in morals. In this article, I argue that that is a misreading of Nietzsche's argument, the consequence of which is a failure to understand Nietzsche's treatment of the transition from noble morality to slave morality. I contend that we can track this transition only once we understand the role of the ascetic priest in the slave revolution. The third essay's account of asceticism, then, is indispensable in understanding how slave morality grows out of priestly values. With this argument in place I begin to trace the deep lines of asceticism in the slave revolt as described in the first essay.

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In this paper, I bring the Second and Third Essays of On the Genealogy of Morality into conversation with the anthropological work that Nietzsche uses to inform his understanding of human prehistory. More specifically, I show the ways in which Nietzsche’s genealogical use of prehistory both calls upon and departs from the work of figures like Edward Tylor, John Lubbock, and Albert Hermann Post. This departure is most significant in Nietzsche’s rejection of the progressive or developmental account of social and moral history for an account that emphasizes the way in which morality develops out of the psychological effects of recurring human traumas.