Vrftjkry

up vote 17 down vote favorite In the first treatise of On the Genealogy of Morality , §5, Nietzsche proposes the following derivation of bonus (good): I believe I may interpret the Latin bonus as "the warrior": assuing that I am correct in tracing bonus back to an older duonus (compare bellum = duellum = duen-lum , in which that duonus seems to me to be preserved). Bonus accordingly as man of strife, of division ( duo ), as man of war--one sees what it was about a man that constituted his "goodness" in ancient Rome. (translation by Clark and Swensen) Obviously, a lot of important etymological scholarship by more level heads has happened since 1887. Is Nietzsche's proposed etymology for bonus plausible? etymologia philosophy