In the first essay of On the Genealogy of Morals, titled “‘Good and Evil,’ ‘Good and Bad,’” Friedrich Nietzsche does more than critique morality, he performs an outright autopsy on it. He argues that instead of being the sentiment of eternal truth, moral values are the byproduct of cultural utility and historical power. Goodness, he says, was not born from divine command but from pattern recognition.

A Theological Reflection In the Appendix to Part I of The Ethics , Spinoza critiques the human tendency to assign value to things based...