Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Criminology
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480620977853 |
| Author | Prashan Ranasinghe |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480620977853
Theoretical Criminology
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480620977853
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Friedrich Nietzsche,
On the Genealogy of Morals
and Criminology
Prashan Ranasinghe
University of Ottawa, Canada
Abstract
The writings of Friedrich Nietzsche have much to offer criminology. To date, however,
his work has been largely neglected in this scholarship. Taking this lacuna seriously, this
article reads Nietzsche’s second essay of On the Genealogy of Morals and explicates its
importance to criminology. Specifically, focus is cast upon Nietzsche’s exposition of crime
and particularly punishment, pertaining to the production of a calculating and calculable
being upon whom pain and suffering can be inflicted and the ways that concerns over
excesses of punishment come to be framed as problematic. Via this reading, it is claimed
that On the Genealogy of Morals can serve, among others, as an important critique to many
of the presuppositions that ground the classical school of criminology, epitomized in the
work of Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham. The article concludes by locating the
importance of Nietzsche to penology specifically and criminology more broadly.
Keywords
Cesare Beccaria, classical school of criminology, crime and punishment, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Jeremy Bentham, justice, On the Genealogy of Morals, pain and suffering,
proportionality, rationality
Introduction
While Friedrich Nietzsche’s writings have been explored in relation to legal theory (e.g.
Goodrich and Valverde, 2005), they have received scant attention in criminology.1 This is
unfortunate because Nietzsche’s writings, specifically On the Genealogy of Morals
Corresponding author:
Prashan Ranasinghe, Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa, 120 University Street, Ottawa, ON
K1N 6N5, Canada.
Email: prashan.ranasinghe@uottawa.ca
977853TCR0010.1177/1362480620977853Theoretical CriminologyRanasinghe
research-article2020
Article
2022, Vol. 26(1) 75–90
(1998/1887), are of immense value to situating and making sense of the intellectual history
that has shaped and grounded penal practices during the Enlightenment. As such, Nietzsche’s
writings help illuminate the political-religious-moral programme of penology and the far
from innocuous nature of the moral entrepreneurship that grounded penal reform.
Two important exceptions to the aforementioned lacuna, both of which have inspired
this article, deserve mention. Friedrich Balke’s (2003) essay on Nietzsche’s exposition of
the criminal as a dichotomization of the “exceptional” or “rare” criminal versus the
“pale” criminal permits readers to focus upon the remarkable resemblances between
Nietzsche and the school of positivist criminology (Lombroso, 1968/1899: 45–46,
2006/1876–1897; see also, Galton, 1909, 1978/1869). As well, George Pavlich’s (2009:
58, 65) exhortation for a new “vocabulary of crime and punishment” that “does not cling
to modern ‘grammars’ of critique”, is chiefly inspired by Nietzsche’s groundbreaking
polemic. While only passing mention is made of both articles, they unequivocally situate
the import of probing Nietzsche’s relevance and contribution to criminology.
This article explores On the Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche, 1998/1887)2 and articu-
lates its import to criminology, especially penology. As it will argue, this text is indispensa-
ble to understanding the history of the production of punishment as an important value to/
of society—what can be called a “value of values” (Acampora, 2019: 225; emphasis omit-
ted)—and the processes that undergird this production. Specifically, the article claims that
On the Genealogy of Morals can be read as a critique of, or even a corrective to, the myriad
presuppositions propounded by the classical school of criminology. While the heyday of
the classical school was more than 200 years ago, this does not mean that its ideas are anti-
quated. Rather, many of its key tenets are still of profound importance, best evinced, per-
haps, in the ways that many legal systems have incorporated them into their core values.3
Nietzsche’s discussion, which draws upon and gives primacy to genealogy (discussed in
the next section) aids in showing the problematic manner the classical school grounds its
beliefs. Nietzsche’s genealogical work helps illustrate that criminology (and penology
more specifically) keeps constantly and dogmatically returning to the works of the likes of
Jeremy Bentham and Cesare Beccaria without reflecting on their effects in cementing and
justifying penal regimes and particular practices of punishment. These figures were them-
selves moral entrepreneurs who, wittingly or not, promoted specific historical agendas and
programmes, some of which were far from innocuous, especially regarding alienation in
punishment. On the Genealogy of Morals, then, can serve as a new vocabulary (Pavlich,
2009: 58) that reveals the intellectual history of the production of the value of punishment
and is, thus, indispensable to criminology.
The article begins by situating On the Genealogy of Morals in its intellectual history.
The remainder of the article explicates Nietzsche’s discussion of punishment as a cri-
tique of the classical school and of criminology and penology more broadly.
On the Genealogy of Morals and intellectual history
On the Genealogy of Morals “is now recognized as a masterpiece” (Laforce, 2019: 292),
thought to be Nietzsche’s “most important and systematic work” and considered “one of
the key texts of European intellectual modernity” (Pearson, 2006: 16). The text directs
itself toward the normative practices of western morality which Nietzsche believed to be
76 Theoretical Criminology 26(1)
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