Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential thinkers of the past hundred and fifty years and On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is his most important work on ethics and politics. A polemical contribution to moral and political theory, it offers a critique of moral values and traces the historical evolution of concepts such as guilt, conscience, responsibility, law, and justice. It is a text affording valuable insight into Nietzsche's assessment of modern times and how he envisaged a possible overcoming of the epoch of nihilism. Nietzsche himself emphasized the cumulative nature of his work and the necessity for correct understanding of the later work as a development of the earlier. This volume contains new translations of the Genealogy and of the early essay 'The Greek State' and sections from other of Nietzsche's work to which he refers within it (Human, All Too Human, Daybreak, The Joyful Science, and Beyond Good and Evil). Keith Ansell-Pearson's Introduction places the Genealogy in its intellectual context and includes a chronology of Nietzsche's life and a guide to further reading.