On Liberty as a (Re-)Source for Nietzsche: Tracing John Stuart Mill in On the Genealogy of Morality

Reference 1: Of Predators, Herd Animals, and Civilization

With the introductory reference, I will make the case that in the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche draws on Mill’s metaphorical illustration of the history of civilization in order to unfold his own take on the origin of morality.^[10] Nietzsche would therefore adapt Mill’s metaphorical setting but reverse the narrative perspective in a decisive way. Instead of conceiving the history of civilization from the ethical^[11] perspective of the ruled, Nietzsche takes the perspective of the prehistoric despotic rulers. Ironically, this conversion, which opens up the differentiation of master-and-slave morality, is then substantiated with a thread of arguments taken out of another section of On Liberty. Nietzsche’s transformation of Mill’s metaphor would lay the grounds to eventually explore liberty beyond Mill in On the Genealogy of Morality’s second essay.

Already in the first pages of On Liberty, Mill introduces a metaphor from the animal realm to illustrate the history of civilization. With frequent pencil marks, Nietzsche follows Mill along the margins of his copy, watching the English philosopher unfold a graphic, rather negative concept of liberty.^[12] Consequent to the essential phrase “By liberty, was meant protection against the tyranny of the political rulers,”^[13] which Nietzsche marked, Mill sketches the beginnings of civilization as a political arena in which weak herd animals – the ruled – install stronger predators as despotic rulers to gain security.

Damit die schwächeren Glieder des Gemeinwesens vor den Angriffen zahlloser Geier geschützt seien, schien es nöthig, ein mächtiges Raubthier zu ihrem Schutze zu bestellen; da jedoch der König der Geier oft nicht weniger als die kleinen Räuber geneigt war, die Heerde zu bedrohen, so befand man sich notgedrungen in fortwährendem Vertheidigungszustande gegen die Schärfe seines Schnabels und seiner Krallen. Das Streben aller Volksfreunde war daher darauf gerichtet, der Macht des Herrschers Schranken zu setzen, und diese Beschränkung verstand man unter Freiheit.^[14]

To prevent the weaker members of the community from being preyed upon by innumerable vultures, it was needful that there should be an animal of prey stronger than the rest, commissioned to keep them down. But as the king of the vultures would be no less bent upon preying on the flock than any of the minor harpies, it was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude of defence against his beak and claws. The aim, therefore, of patriots was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty.^[15]

The ruling predators appear in the shape of vultures, while the herd animals are not further defined. Mill focuses on the difference between rulers and ruled as a discrepancy of strength. During the progress of history as a narration of civilization, the weaker animals would advance rights and liberties that protect the herd from the rulers’ power.

Before Nietzsche lays out an animalistic arena of his own, he already introduces “animals of prey”^[16] in GM I 11 and associates them with representatives of his concept of master morality. Instead of freedom as protection from tyranny, the noble masters enjoy “freedom from every social constraint” – freedom from the herds – expressed through spontaneous and creative actions. While Mill portrays the process of civilization as a progress toward the liberation of weaker creatures,^[17] Nietzsche turns civilization upside down, portraying it as the “decline of mankind.” The recourse to Mill becomes even more apparent in GM I 13, when Nietzsche finally introduces his metaphor of eagles and lambs to exemplify the difference between master-and-slave morality, completing the conversion of Mill’s narrative perspective:

There is nothing strange about the fact that lambs bear a grudge towards large birds of prey: but that is no reason to blame the large birds of prey for carrying off the little lambs. And if the lambs say to each other, “These birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey and most like its opposite, a lamb, – is good, isn’t he?,” then there is no reason to raise objections to this setting-up of an ideal beyond the fact that the birds of prey will view it somewhat derisively, and will perhaps say: “We don’t bear any grudge at all towards these good lambs, in fact we love them, nothing is tastier than a tender lamb” (GM I 13).

Nietzsche thereby narrates the relationship between herd animals and strong predators – originally Mill’s story – from the viewpoint of the latter. Instead of positioning the fear of weak animals in the center of human civilization, he sets his sights on the power of strong animals that good-naturedly deal with the inferior lambs. The origin of morality found in Mill is conversed. It is noteworthy that Nietzsche does not simply copy Mill’s terminology, but he transforms the rather unpopular vultures into majestic eagles and also incorporates Mill’s patriots as lambs. He thereby strengthens the qualitative difference between the rulers and the ruled – the lamb is not just gradually weaker than the eagle, it is a very different animal. With Mill, all animals were primarily “members of the community”^[18] while their differentiation in weak and strong members was secondary. Nietzsche’s “supra-ethical” animals (GM II 2) transgress Mill’s approach, since they are primarily constituted through their strength which places them beyond the need for community membership.

Taking the side of the ruled, Mill would continue to unfold civilization, eventually defending the individual against the tyranny of the majority. Drawing on this first conversion of Mill’s perspective, we can already anticipate that Nietzsche’s take on individuality in the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morality tackles a challenge that could not be pictured within Mill’s ethical approach. In the same section, however, Nietzsche delivers a thread of arguments to elucidate his partisanship for the strong animals: “It is just as absurd to ask strength not to express itself as strength, not to be a desire to overthrow, crush, become master, to be a thirst for enemies, resistance and triumphs, as it is to ask weakness to express itself as strength” (GM I 13). Ironically, Nietzsche finds this argument in Mill’s On Liberty and turns the English philosopher’s weapons against him – entirely unnoticed by the reader, since it is well hidden by the author. The following section received a pencil line in Nietzsche’s copy and is set after a heavily marked passage on individual freedom. It indicates that Nietzsche adapted Mill’s argument, even reproducing the structure of the sentence.

Wenn Sie aber einen starken Charakter besitzen und ihre Fesseln sprengen, so macht die Gesellschaft, der es nicht gelungen ist, sie zur Trivialität herabzudrücken, aus ihnen Warnungszeichen, auf die man mit feierlichem Schauder als auf Beispiele wilder Verirrung hindeutet, ungefähr mit demselben Recht, mit dem man sich über den Niagara beklagen könnte, daß er nicht gleich einem holländischen Canal ruhig in seinem Bett dahinfließt.^[19]

If they are of a strong character, and break their fetters, they become a mark for the society which has not succeeded in reducing them to commonplace, to point out with solemn warning as “wild,” “erratic,” and the like; much as if one should complain of the Niagara river for not flowing smoothly between its banks like a Dutch canal.^[20]

The metaphor of lambs and eagles in On the Genealogy of Morality had already been established as a commonplace through classic authors of Western culture like Homer or Hesiod^[21], and there is good reason to assume that not only Nietzsche’s transformation but also Mill’s original was inspired by Western traditions of animal metaphors.^[22] The explanatory capacities of Mill’s On Liberty as a source, however, are unique due to the overlap in terminology as well as topical context. Explicitly dealing with the pioneering works of English thinkers in the field of morality, Nietzsche finds a suitable way to initiate his own approach by transforming Mill’s animal metaphor as a philosophical resource.

Andreas Urs Sommer argued that in the section in question, Nietzsche would avoid philosophical complications arising with animal metaphors illustrating natural states, such as Hobbes’ famous wolves.^[23] Based on the knowledge of the demonstrated reference, we can assume that this specific way to employ an animalistic metaphoric realm was actually an adaptation of Mill. By transforming Mill’s illustrative history of civilization, Nietzsche opens up a horizon of questions for the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morality and gains a counterpart to further develop his approach.

With this first reference, it already becomes apparent that Nietzsche draws on Mill’s text in a creative and versatile way. By changing the perspective of narration, Nietzsche builds a case for civilization as a movement toward decline and he generates a metaphorical context to develop his explorations of the origin of morality that already indicate a supra-ethical perspective. In turning Mill’s weapons against him, Nietzsche fundamentally questions underlying teleological assumptions in Mill’s take on civilization. However, in analyzing On Liberty’s impact on On the Genealogy of Morality, it is crucial to note that Nietzsche does not openly attack Mill’s approach, but rather decides to obscure any traces of his source.

Reference 2: Critics of Christian Morality

The second case considers Mill’s critique of Christian morality as one source for On the Genealogy of Morality’s illustration of slave morality. In On Liberty, we find key terminology corresponding to the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morality, as well as an analogous systematic approach focused on the reactionary character of a certain concept of morality. Again, Nietzsche turns Mill’s own arguments against him: he applies the English philosopher’s defense of the individual to Mill’s ethical concept of liberty as it was alluded to above. I will not make the case, however, for Mill as the original source of master-and-slave morality. As I briefly demonstrate below, the source situation as well as the development of the concept is far too complex to be reduced to this reference. Still, by taking Mill into consideration as a source, I show how we can achieve a better understanding of the narrative structure as well as the strategic thrust of On the Genealogy of Morality.

In the second chapter of On Liberty, Nietzsche reads how Mill defends the liberty of the individual against potential encroachments, coming amongst others from Christian morality. In this context, the liberal Mill portrays Christian morality in a way that earned him fervent critiques from his contemporaries.^[24] With multiple vertical and horizontal pencil lines, Nietzsche marks the respective section in the text:

Die sogenannte christliche Moral besitzt alle Merkmale einer Reaction; sie ist zum großen Theil ein Protest gegen das Heidenthum. Ihr Ideal ist eher negativ als positiv, eher leidend als thätig, eher Unschuld und Meidung des Bösen als Seelenadel und thätiger Eifer für das Gute; in ihren Vorschriften behauptet, wie man richtig bemerkt hat, “Du sollst nicht” ein ungebührliches Übergewicht über “Du sollst”. In ihrem Abscheu vor der Sinnlichkeit ist sie in eine Vergötterung der Askese verfallen, die allmälig durch immer weitere Zugeständnisse zu einer Vergötterung der bloßen Legalität abgeschwächt wurde. Sie zeigt den Gläubigen die Hoffnung auf dem Himmel und die Drohung mit der Hölle als die für einen solchen Zweck bestimmten und am meisten geeigneten Beweggründe zu einem tugendhaften Leben; in dieser Beziehung steht sie sogar tief unter den besten der Alten […]. Das geringe Maß von Anerkennung, das die Pflichten gegen das Gemeinwesen in der modernen Moral finden, ist lediglich aus der griechischen und römischen, nicht aus christlichen Quellen hergeleitet, eben so wie selbst in der Moral des Privatlebens alle Seelengröße, alle Hochherzigkeit und persönliche Würde, ja selbst das Ehrgefühl lediglich dem rein menschlichen und nicht dem religiösen Theil unserer Erziehung entstammt und niemals aus dem Grundprincip einer Moral hätte erwachsen können, die eigentlich kein anderes Verdienst anerkennt als das des Gehorsams.^[25]

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active; Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good; in its precepts (as has been well said) “thou shalt not” predominates unduly over “thou shalt.” In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the ancients […]. What little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains in modern morality is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever exists of magnanimity, highmindedness, personal dignity, even the sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognised, is that of obedience.^[26]

For Mill, Christian morality therefore has a reactive and negative character at this point. It is contrasted with a positive and productive morality that is traced back to Greek and Roman origins. While Christian morality would primarily generate obedience, not least due to the threat of eternal damnation, the ancient moralities contribute the truly valuable fractions of the morals of his time. In GM I 10, Nietzsche introduces a concept of slave morality that bears significant resemblance to Mill’s take on Christian morality:

The beginning of the slaves’ revolt in morality occurs when ressentiment itself turns creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of those beings who, denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge. Whereas all noble morality grows out of a triumphant saying “yes” to itself, slave morality says “no” on principle to everything that is “outside,” “other,” “non-self”: and this “no” is its creative deed. This reversal of the evaluating glance – this essential orientation to the outside instead of back onto itself – is a feature of ressentiment: in order to come about, slave morality first has to have an opposing, external world, it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all, – its action is basically a reaction (GM I 10).

At first sight, it might seem as if Nietzsche finally found common ground with Mill. The concept of slave morality is explicated along the lines of “reaction” which not only indicates a terminological but also a systematic kinship. The critique of Christian morality in On Liberty is also framed “Pagan self-assertion”^[27] versus “Christian self-denial” – a dichotomy that resonates with the terms “affirmation” and “denial” Nietzsche developed drawing on Schopenhauer.^[28] In a preliminary work for the development of master-and-slave morality in On the Genealogy of Morality, we also find the “battle against ‘Paganism’” which might be a reference to Mill’s “protest against Paganism,” another overlap in reactionary systematics (Nachlass 1887, 8[4], KSA 12.332, my translation). Even though it is questionable whether Mill and Nietzsche had similar “Greek and Roman sources”^[29] in mind, a certain partisanship for pre-Christian thought that serves as a contrast to reactionary morality cannot easily be brushed aside.^[30]

Nevertheless, it would be too quick to assume an actual overlap in philosophical positions based on this resemblance. On a closer look, once again, Nietzsche turns Mill against Mill in this section. Nietzsche takes up Mill’s critique of Christian morality and directs it back at the “patriots” of the opening metaphor from the animal realm. These “patriots,” originally the first in Mill’s quest toward liberty, are revealed not only as representatives of slave morality, but as its actual creators. Similar to the justification of the strong animals in the last chapter, what might at first seem a resemblance is turned into a devastating critique. However, we also have to keep in mind that Nietzsche did not aim at exposing Mill’s inconsistencies at this point. Since Mill is not even mentioned in On the Genealogy of Morality, it rather seems as if Nietzsche either actively sought to cover the traces of his interlocutor or did not think it worthwhile to reveal the origin of his sources.

Besides multiple references to Leopold Schmidt’s Ethik der alten Griechen (1882) regarding the affirmative character of master morality, Sommer reveals Eugen Dühring as a likely source for the concept and illustration of ressentiment in GM I 10 and refers to literature on Fyodor Dostoevsky as an inspiration for the differentiation of activity and passivity.^[31] For the term “reaction,” Sommer rightly points to Nietzsche’s readings of the physiologist Wilhelm Roux.^[32] In general, these contributions give us reason to assume that Nietzsche dealt with a variety of sources while developing his concept of master-and-slave morality. The portrayed narrative structure of On the Genealogy of Morality, however, indicates that Mill can at least be considered a further interlocutor in this case, enabling Nietzsche to develop a precise critique of morality through supra-ethical individualism. By revealing Nietzsche’s resources and thereby contextualizing the development of master-and-slave morality, we can gain an understanding of the relevant opponents in On the Genealogy of Morality beyond Nietzsche’s self-declared addressees.

Mill’s rather brief critique of Christian morality in On Liberty is neither the one key source for the concepts of master-and-slave morality nor the single reference for its illustration in GM I 10. Nevertheless, the second reference suggests that it still played a crucial role in shaping the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morality and consequently raises new research questions. It is necessary to explore how far we can consider On Liberty a source for the general concept of master-and-slave morality, whose terminology probably stems from Schopenhauer.^[33] How does the reference complement existing research on Mill’s role in this context, especially regarding the earlier appearance of master-and-slave morality in Beyond Good and Evil (1886)? In any case, On Liberty is very likely to have served Nietzsche in developing and specifying his take on morality’s origin. Turning Mill not only against Mill – that remains hidden for the reader – but also against ethical conceptions of liberty in general, Nietzsche evokes doubts about attempts that seemingly aim at defending the individual against potential encroachments from morality.

Reference 3: The Sovereign Individual Beyond “Sittlichkeit”

Through a third reference, I present Mill’s concept of the nonconformist lifestyle as a resource for Nietzsche’s sovereign individual. After transforming Mill’s narration on morality’s origin in the first essay, Nietzsche continues to explore the transformation’s implications for individual freedom in the second essay. While Nietzsche’s “supra-ethical” concept of the sovereign individual transgresses Mill’s community, we find frequent references to the Englishman that hint at On Liberty’s role as midwife for On the Genealogy of Morality. Nietzsche’s masterpiece of dialectics, however, is contextualized by the narrative structure of the work underlining its experimental and exploratory character.

After Mill already contrasted his concept of individual liberty by drawing on the reactionary constitution of Christian morality, the Englishman extended it, employing a mechanical worldview^[34] as an opponent. Of the paragraph in question, Nietzsche highlighted the lower half, partly with double pencil marks in his copy of the book. There, Mill presents us with a concept of humanity as an organism that has individual judgement and feeling as its core. At first, however, we are introduced to two ways of life that create a tension between the ideal of individual liberty and its obedient counterpart that evokes the subsequent mechanical worldview.

Derjenige, welcher seinen Lebensplan von der Welt oder von seinem Theil der Welt für sich erwählen läßt, hat weiter keine Fähigkeit nöthig als die äffische der Nachahmung. Derjenige dagegen, welcher seinen Plan für sich selbst macht, wendet alle seine Fähigkeiten an: seine Beobachtungsgabe, um zu sehen, seinen Verstand und seine Urtheilskraft, um vorauszusehen, seine Thätigkeit, um das Material für seine Entscheidung zu sammeln, seine Unterscheidungskraft, um eine Entscheidung zu treffen, und wenn er sie getroffen hat, seine Festigkeit und Selbstbeherrschung, um seinem wohl erwogenen Entschlusse treu zu bleiben.^[35]

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.^[36]

In the same paragraph, Mill brings up the question of the relative worth of an individual indicating a certain ranking order amongst human beings – a question that, as is known, heavily occupied Nietzsche.^[37] According to Mill, the simple fact that something was done by a human being honors an act. This part of the paragraph recalling Mill’s metaphorical portrayal of all animals being members of the community, is most strongly marked by Nietzsche:

Wie wird es aber dann mit seinem verhältnißmäßigen Werth als menschliches Wesen stehen? Es kommt in der Tat nicht blos darauf an, was die Menschen thun, sondern auch darauf, welcher Art die Menschen sind, die es thun. Unter allen Menschenwerken, für deren Vervollkommnung und Verschönerung das menschliche Leben mit Recht verwendet wird, ist sicherlich keines wichtiger als der Mensch selbst. Gesetzt, es wäre möglich, durch Automate in Menschengestalt maschinenmäßig Häuser bauen, Äcker bestellen, Schlachten schlagen, Processe entscheiden, Kirchen gründen und selbst Gebete verrichten zu lassen, so wäre es doch ein beträchtlicher Verlust, wenn man solche Automate auch nur für die Männer und Weiber eintauschen wollte, die gegenwärtig die civilisirten Theile der Welt bewohnen, und die doch sicherlich nur gar dürftige Proben dessen sind, was die Natur hervorbringen kann und einst hervorbringen wird. Die Menschennatur gleicht nicht einer Maschine, die nach einem Modell construirt wird, um die ihr zugewiesene Arbeit genau zu verrichten, sondern einem Baum, der vermöge der Wirkung innerer Kräfte, die ihn zu einem lebenden Organismus machen, nach allen Seiten wachsen und sich entfalten muß.^[38]

But what will be his comparative worth as a human being? It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it. Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself. Supposing it were possible to get houses built, corn grown, battles fought, causes tried, and even churches erected and prayers said, by machinery – by automatons in human form – it would be a considerable loss to exchange for these automatons even the men and women who at present inhabit the more civilised parts of the world, and who assuredly are but starved specimens of what nature can and will produce. Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.^[39]

Mill eventually continues to demonstrate how in earlier times, “when the element of spontaneity and individuality was in excess,” it needed to be tamed through “law and discipline.”^[40] For his own times, he expresses a need for more individual action due to the “deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.” This strong call for individual liberty has earned Mill a reputation for being a nonconformist author.^[41]

Mill’s nonconformist diagnosis of his times, however, resembles passages at the beginning of On the Genealogy of Morality’s second essay. In GM II 1, Nietzsche turns the previously devalued process of civilization into the preliminary work preparing individual liberty. His depiction of the sovereign individual that emerges as a result of this process reminds of Mill’s explications of the non-conformist way of life:

But what a lot of preconditions there are for this! In order to have that degree of control over the future, man must first have learnt to distinguish between what happens by accident and what by design, to think causally, to view the future as the present and anticipate it, to grasp with certainty what is end and what is means, in all, to be able to calculate, compute – and before he can do this, man himself will really have to become reliable, regular, necessary, even in his own self-image, so that he, as someone making a promise is, is answerable for his own future! (GM II 1)

It is noteworthy that compared to On Liberty’s hint toward law and discipline, Nietzsche’s illustration of “morality of custom” (GM II 2) turns out rather brutal and vivid. The sovereign individual in On the Genealogy of Morality, however, seems to undergo similar steps of self-development to its relative in On Liberty. In the next section, Nietzsche, just like Mill, introduces a metaphor of humanity as a tree and portrays the sovereign individual as its “ripest fruit” (GM II 2). But instead of placing the individual within the community, as Mill did, Nietzsche continues to reshape Mill’s origin of morality resulting in the transgression of ethical concepts of liberty:

Let us place ourselves, on the other hand, at the end of this immense process where the tree actually bears fruit, where society and its morality of custom finally reveal what they were simply the means to: we then find the sovereign individual as the ripest fruit on its tree, like only to itself, having freed itself from the morality of custom, an autonomous, supra-ethical individual (because “autonomous” and “ethical” are mutually exclusive), in short, we find a man with his own, independent, enduring will, whose prerogative it is to promise – and in him a proud consciousness quivering in every muscle of what he has finally achieved and incorporated, an actual awareness of power and freedom, a feeling that man in general has reached completion. This man who is now free, who actually has the prerogative to promise, this master of the free will, this sovereign (GM II 2).

It seems like Nietzsche takes his transformation of the origin of morality to the test in this crucial section. After changing the perspective of narration in the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morality, the beginning of the second essay might explore the respective implications for a possible concept of individual liberty. Starting from the weaker herd animals, Mill sketched civilization as a progress toward individual liberty among members of the community. Since Nietzsche’s exploration begins with the stronger ruling animals who are not necessarily considered members as such, On the Genealogy of Morality’s narrative structure leads to the question of whether it was still possible to conceive a notion of freedom when the weak herd animals have already won.^[42] From this perspective, Nietzsche would stage a masterpiece of dialectics to reopen the possibility of freedom for the individual after the herd’s triumph.

Nevertheless, it would be too short-sighted to understand this illustration of the sovereign individual as the crown of Nietzsche’s supposed systematic philosophy or teachings. In light of the narrative structure of the Mill-references, the illustration of the sovereign individual can rather be considered dialectic (but experimental) in exploring the implications of the origin of morality. With his defense of the individual, Mill served Nietzsche the opportunity to break new ground beyond modern concepts and narrations of liberty. Instead of presupposing Nietzsche’s philosophy as a “coherent, balanced and well-proportioned building”^[43] that would systematically lead toward the sovereign individual, the narrative structure suggests a rather questioning procedure. Following its marked appearance in the second essay, the sovereign individual consequently disappears in the course of the work.

So far, scholars have accredited Eduard von Hartmann, Harald Höffding and several others for their roles as potential sources for the section on the sovereign individual.^[44] Understandably, the tree metaphor has been retraced to the Gospel of Matthew.^[45] As with last chapter’s master-and-slave morality, we thereby encounter multiple sources that contextualize the beginning of On the Genealogy of Morality’s second essay, and it is very likely that an interplay between these sources would constitute the most promising approach to the text. The reference to Mill, however, provides us with a unique combination of terminological overlap^[46] as well as involvement in the suggested narrative structure of the work. Taking into account On Liberty’s possible role as a dialogue partner or midwife, we get a deeper understanding of the referential dynamics within On the Genealogy of Morality as well as the character of Nietzsche’s work itself.

Nietzsche’s illustration of the sovereign individual surely cannot be traced back to an isolated source. However, the frequent references to Mill – within the narrative structure as well in terminology – suggest a productive relationship. Taking Mill’s non-conformist way of life as an opponent, Nietzsche advances a dialectical take on the possibilities of freedom for individuals under the new circumstances generated by the transformed origin of morality. Even though the contextualization of the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morality through the Mill-references increases the explanatory capacities and opens new perspectives to understand the work, the “results” of Nietzsche’s exploration remain ambiguous for the reader.

Conclusion

Given the course of the three explorations, we have good reasons to assume that On Liberty played an important role in the development of On the Genealogy of Morality. Existing suspicions regarding the relevance of Mill for Nietzsche’s work were substantiated by contextualizing passages in On the Genealogy of Morality with related sections in On Liberty. Nietzsche took up Mill’s narration of the origin of morality and reversed the perspective from the weak animals to that of the strong predators. He drew on Mill’s critique of Christian morality to explicate his concept of master-and-slave morality, and then used the Englishman’s notion of individual liberty to unfold his exploration into the possibilities of individuality beyond the community. Nietzsche would therefore break ground beyond Mill’s concept of individual liberty.^[47] Besides terminological overlaps and topical proximity, the narrative structure of On the Genealogy of Morality suggests On Liberty was a midwife for the work. Nietzsche’s interest in Mill was – following the development of On the Genealogy of Morality – less a matter of philosophical sincerity than the search for material to unfold his own approach. Nietzsche would not give justice to Mill in terms of understanding Mill for the sake of Mill, but effectively profit from Mill’s approach and its philosophical constitution.

Even though Nietzsche would have had the chance to openly attack Mill, twice turning his own weapons against him, he refrained from mentioning the Englishman once in the course of On the Genealogy of Morality. Why would Nietzsche, who has no reputation as a gracious reader, refrain from such an attack in On the Genealogy of Morality while bringing up polemic ad hominem arguments against Mill elsewhere? I suggest that Nietzsche actively and strategically covers his tracks in On the Genealogy of Morality. This obscuration of On the Genealogy of Morality’s link to On Liberty strengthens the deliberately cultivated impression that Nietzsche’s take on morality’s origin was original. Letting go of Mill as an addressee turns Nietzsche’s transformation of Mill into a general attack on morality. Even though Nietzsche goes beyond individuality as it is portrayed in On Liberty, a certain proximity still became obvious. Instead of delivering the “better” Mill, however, Nietzsche builds up tension between a then-common take on morality and its transgression. This way of challenging the reader clearly distinguishes Nietzsche from Mill at the end of the day.^[48]