How moral values acquire a history › What an origin can and cannot refute

The relationship between history and justification remains the book's central difficulty. If an evaluation developed through resentment, does that make it wrong? The conclusion does not follow from the origin alone. An angry person can identify an actual wrong. A belief inherited for poor reasons can later acquire a better justification.

A genealogy can nevertheless challenge authority in more specific ways. It might reveal that a reason offered for a value does not explain its actual formation. It might show that a practice now defended for one purpose has repeatedly served others. Or it might expose a psychological cost that an evaluation's defenders overlook. Each challenge requires its own evidence and inference; none is established merely by calling the value historical.

Nietzsche's question about the value of values goes beyond correcting a mistaken origin story. It asks what kind of life an evaluation supports. The strength of that question depends on making the criterion explicit. Preserving the largest number, encouraging particular achievements, and protecting people against cruelty are different possible concerns. Showing that a value frustrates one concern does not yet establish that the concern should always have priority.