Bergoffen, Debra B.  "Why a Genealogy of Morals?"  Man and World 16 (1983): 129-138.

Excerpt:

“Why a genealogy of morals? At first glance this does not appear to be one of the

more pressing or difficult issues of Nietzsche’s philosophy. It is common knowl-
edge that On The Genealogy of Morals was written to directly explicate the ideas
of Beyond Good and Evil, and, as Beyond Good and Evil was intended to clarify
the philosophy of Thus Spake Zarathustra, to indirectly provide a commentary for
Zarathustra. 1 Further, everyone knows that the question of morality was central to
Nietzsche’s work. If, however, we shift our attention from the issue of morality
to the issue of genealogy and ask ourselves why Nietzsche chose to discuss morality
genealogically, we discover something about Nietzsche’s philosophy as a whole and
some things about the specific meanings and implications of the doctrine of the
eternal recurrence.”

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